Broken Prey

people, we jot down every single license plate, and run them to see who we get,” Lucas said.
    Sloan shook his head: “Man . . .”
    “What the fuck else are we gonna do?” Lucas demanded, the anger riding on top of his voice. “Look at that fuckin’ woman hangin’ up there. What the fuck are we gonna do?”
    Sloan said, “I hate to think that we’re waiting for the next one, to start writing down numbers. There’s gotta be something better than that.”
     
    ON THE WAY HOME , Lucas’s cell phone rang. The incoming call was from a BCA number, and he flipped it open: “Yeah?”
    “John Hopping Crow says he’s got to see you, right now ,” Carol said, emphasizing the right now . “I told him that you were under a lot of stress, and didn’t sleep last night, and were heading home. He said, quote, ‘I don’t give a fuck if he’s been shot in the balls, tell him to come here before he goes anywhere.’ Unquote. He wouldn’t tell me what about.”
    “They got DNA on a second guy?” It was the only thing Lucas could think of that might be important enough. None of the other catalog of current cases amounted to much.
    “I don’t know,” Carol said. “He says he’ll be waiting in his office. He sounded scared.”
    “Scared?”
    “That’s what he sounded like,” Carol said. “And you know how polite he is. He’s never said ‘darn’ around me before, and now I’m getting ‘shot in the balls.’ ”
    “Tell him twenty minutes,” Lucas said. “I do feel like shit.”
    “With your poor nose, and this poor woman . . .”
    “Let’s talk about it some other time,” Lucas said. “Like next year.”
     
    WEATHER CALLED : he told her about Peterson. “Oh, my God. I wish I was there to help you. Do you want me to come . . .”
    “No. Won’t help. Right now, I just gotta get some sleep.”
     
    LUCAS FELT LIKE his ass was almost literally dragging up to Hopping Crow’s small office: getting too old for this all-night shit, living on coffee and vending-machine cookies.
    Hopping Crow’s office door was closed, and Lucas knocked. He heard a chair scuff back, and the door opened a bit. Hopping Crow’s dark eyes peered out. When he recognized Lucas, he pulled the door open, his eyes flicking up and down the hall.
    “Come on in.”
    “Jesus, man, you’re in a sweat,” Lucas said.
    Hopping Crow pointed at a chair and moved around behind his desk and sat down.
    “We’ve got a big, big problem.” He said it with a dark urgency.
    Lucas shrugged. Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t as big as Carlita Peterson’s had been. “Well?”
    Hopping Crow pushed his chair back to the wall, then sat on the front edge of it. “Three days ago, a couple of guys were fishing for mud cat down in the Minnesota River by Mankato. North of Mankato. Downstream, by the County Eighteen Bridge, wherever that is. Anyway, they hooked onto something. They were using these big hooks and heavy line, and they yanked it up, and they came up with part of a man’s decomposing hand.”
    “Surprised that there was anything left, if there’re mud cat in there,” Lucas said.
    “Shut up. Just listen,” Hopping Crow snapped. “Anyway, they brought in a dive team, and they looked around, and they found a decomposed body wrapped in a logging chain. They fished it out and sent us some samples for DNA and the medical examiner did some dental X rays, I understand. They’ll be looking for a match. The medical examiner says the body was in there for maybe a month.”
    He dropped his head and, with both hands, slicked back his long black hair.
    “And?” Lucas was leaning forward now, truly curious.
    “We got a match on the DNA. Nobody knows but me and Anita Winter. I shut her up, told her if it gets out, I’d fire her ass. I just . . .” He stopped, as though unable to continue.
    “Who the fuck was it?” Lucas asked.
    Hopping Crow looked up. “Charlie Pope.”
     
    LUCAS DIDN’T REGISTER the name for a half second: the words were something like another punch in the nose, leaving him stunned and disoriented. He opened his mouth, realized what he was about to say was stupid, and closed it.
    “Say something,” Hopping Crow said.
    “What the fuck are you talking about?” Lucas shouted.
    “Don’t yell—it’s not us. We didn’t fuck up. The DNA matches both our bank and the blood we took off Rice’s fingernails. We’re going back right now . . .” Hopping Crow snatched the phone off his desk