Broken Prey

left turn, and Lucas swung around it, a quick brake and a quicker acceleration. Then he looked at Sloan: “How the fuck can you talk about quitting when you pull off something like this?”
    “For all the good it did Louise Samples or anybody else,” Sloan said.
    “Man, you gotta take a couple of aspirin and lie down,” Lucas said. “I’m really startin’ to think you’re losing it.”
    “That’s what I’ve been telling you, dickweed,” Sloan said. He looked out the window as they crossed the river: “When I get my bar, I’ll want your list of songs. I’ll put them on the jukebox.”
    “No Beatles.”
    “No Beatles. But how about a couple of Tom Joneses? ‘Green Green Grass’ or something.”
    “Sloan—you gotta get help.”

9
    JUST OFF THE SOUTHWEST corner of the metro area, Lucas called his secretary and was told that he had two dozen phone messages, one each from Rose Marie Roux, the commissioner of public safety; from John McCord, the superintendent of the BCA; and from Neil Mitford, the governor’s top political operator. The rest came from various members of the media asking for interviews and updates.
    He answered the first three immediately: all three wanted updates, and he gave them a quick recap of the trip to St. John’s.
    To McCord: “I got an address for a schizophrenic guy, a Mike West, that we need to talk to. He’s an old pal of Pope’s.”
    “Shrake and Jenkins are sitting on their asses; I could send them,” McCord said.
    “Okay, but for Christ’s sake, tell them to take it easy.”
    “We got a charge?”
    “Just hold him for questioning; have them bring him in, we’ll get him a public defender if we need to, and see if we can work something out,” Lucas said. “But if we do find him just sitting around, then maybe he’s clear. If he’s gone, if he’s skipped, that’d be a little more interesting.”
    “I’ll send them over,” McCord said.
    “Tell them to leave their goddamn saps in their car, okay?”
    “I don’t know about any saps,” McCord said. “Saps would be against policy.”
    “Then tell them to follow policy.”
    “All right. If you need anything else, let me know.”
    “Mitford and Rose Marie called, and I told them I’d be doing another press conference this afternoon,” Lucas said. “Same deal as yesterday, except we’ve probably made Pope for another murder.”
    He explained, briefly, and McCord said, “Put Sloan in the press conference. Spread the publicity around. We’ll make some points with Minneapolis.”
    The publicity cut two ways: by putting Sloan out front, some of the glory was reflected onto the Minneapolis police department; and if they didn’t catch Pope fairly quickly, some of the blame, as well.
    “Press conferences are like fuckin’ the neighbor lady,” Sloan said, as he dialed up his own chief after Lucas finished with McCord. “Feels good at the time, but you’re gonna have to pay in the end.”
     
    THEY GOT BACK AT three-forty-five and went to Lucas’s office, where Carol had piled up everything that had come in from Albert Lea and the Freeborn County sheriff on the Louise Samples killing. They read through it, looked at everything else they had on Pope, and then walked down to the conference room.
    The press conference itself was the same routine: scraping chairs, posturing TV people. Ruffe Ignace was in the front row, but his story that morning had been anticipated by the TV news the night before. He was now behind in the cycle, had lost his edge, and wasn’t happy: he snapped questions out at Lucas, thrashing around, looking for something, anything. Lucas was polite.
    Lucas described how Sloan picked up on the Samples killing, outlined what had happened, and what they believed. The Albert Lea cops were going through the retained evidence from the case, he said, looking for anything that might have a dab of Pope’s DNA on it. When he finished, the reporters gave Sloan an only moderately sarcastic round of applause. That was a first, ever.
    Sloan said, “It really was nothing much,” but Lucas said, “It was amazing.”
     
    WHEN THEY WERE FINISHED , they headed back to Lucas’s office. Halfway back, they bumped into Shrake and Jenkins, the BCA’s designated thugs, who’d been sent to Mike West’s designated halfway house to pick him up.
    Jenkins was a square man who smoked too much; Shrake was tall and thin, and smoked more than Jenkins. They both wore sharp, shiny European-cut suits that