Broken Prey

vibration this time. But he’d picked something up the first time he’d read it . . .
    He got on the cell phone and called Sloan at home: “Pope called and said he’s picked up a woman named Carlita Peterson from Northfield. He says he’s taking her north.”
    “Ah, no.” Cough. “What’d he say exactly?”
    Lucas read the transcript, flicking his eyes between the paper and the traffic he was knifing through. Sloan said, “Find out . . . never mind. If the house listing was to a Carlita Peterson, that probably means she’s single or divorced and lives alone. That’s three single people. We know Rice went to bars looking for women, and Larson used to go into Chaps when she got off work. I bet he’s picking them up in bars or some kind of social activity . . .”
     
    LUCAS THOUGHT ABOUT IT : Northfield was a college town just off I-35 and not far from Faribault, where Adam Rice had spent time at the Rockyard. If Lucas had been told that a sexual predator had been hanging out in Faribault and asked to guess where he would next attack, he might have guessed Northfield. A couple of thousand college girls would provide easy prey, and the college town’s mix of student and farm bars, cafés, and stores would provide plenty of camouflage through which to prowl.
    “I’ll buy that,” Lucas said to Sloan. “Listen: Any chance that Larson was gay, or had gay contacts?”
    “Nobody said anything. She had a boyfriend . . . What are you thinking?”
    “I’m thinking about the second man—or the second woman,” Lucas said. “What if she’s picking them up and Pope just does the killing? Nobody would ever see him in a bar. If she drives, nobody would ever see him in a car.”
    “Yeah, but you could make the same argument if it’s a guy—he picks up women as a straight guy, or men as a gay.”
    “But: nobody ever saw Larson hanging out with guys in Chaps,” Lucas said. “That paper you gave me said she mostly went in to chat with the bartender. And a woman would be more inclined to walk outside, or get in a car, with another woman, than with a man.”
    “Let me call around,” Sloan said. “I’ll get some guys asking questions.”
    “We’ve now got two people connected to colleges. Both the women. One a student, one a teacher.”
    After a moment of thought, Sloan said, “I don’t see much in that.”
    “Neither do I, but think about it,” Lucas said. And, almost as an afterthought, “How’re you feeling?”
    “Better. I get these coughing jags that make me think I’m gonna bust a rib, but I don’t feel too bad. Maybe get out tomorrow . . .”
     
    WHEN LUCAS RANG OFF , he realized that he’d become distracted, trying to read, talk on the phone, and drive all at once. He was speeding down a white line between two lanes, still running over a hundred. He guiltily moved back into the left lane; he hated to see other drivers on cell phones . . .
    And goddamnit! What had he picked up in the transcript? Something had stuck in his mind like a gooey old song, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Nothing obvious, something subtle . . .
    He held the Lexus at a hundred; any faster and the truck felt unstable. As it was, he made it into Northfield in a little more than half an hour from his office. Following the GPS map off I-35 down Highway 19, he buzzed past the Malt-O-Meal plant, across the bridge and a long block up to Division, right on Division and left on Seventh, and up a long rising hill until he saw, on the left, two cop cars outside a small blue-gray clapboard house that stood in a copse of maples.
    A couple of cops were leaning against a car and turned to look at his truck as he pulled to the curb. He killed the engine, pulled the flasher and tossed it on the passenger seat, and walked up the drive. A dilapidated detached garage sat just behind the house, and a stack of decorative birch firewood was piled next to a side door.
    “Davenport?” one of the cops asked.
    “Yeah—nothing?”
    The cop shook his head. “Nothing you don’t know about. A dab of blood, a piece of rope. It don’t look good.”
    “Who all’s inside?”
    “Only our lead investigator, Jim Goode. The chief’s down at the office, coordinating. If you’re going in, you should go in the back.”
     
    LUCAS WALKED AROUND to the back of the house, climbed a short wooden stoop, and looked in through the screen door. Inside, a thin man in a plaid shirt and gray slacks was talking on a cell