Buried Prey

which was Fell. None of them had a John or a J.
    The one unlabeled mailbox was for Apartment Five. He curled up a long zigzag stairway, half blocked at one landing by a bicycle chained to the banister, and pounded on the door to Apartment Five until a woman shouted from Six, “Nobody lives there. Go away.”
    He stepped across the hall and rapped on her door: “Police. Could you open the door, please?”
    “No. I’m not crazy,” the woman shouted back. “What do you want?”
    “I’m looking for a John Fell,” Lucas said.
    “There’s nobody here named John Fell. Or anything Fell,” she shouted.
    “You mean, in your apartment, or in the house?”
    “In the house. There’s nobody named John Fell. Go away or I’ll call nine-one-one.”
    “Call nine-one-one. Tell them there’s a cop at your door named Lucas Davenport. I’ll call them on my handset. . . .”
    She did that, and opened the door three minutes later, a woman in her early twenties with bad sleep hair. “It is you. You played hockey with a friend of mine. Jared Michael? I’d see you on the ice.”
    “Oh, hell, yes,” Lucas said. “I haven’t seen him lately, maybe a couple years . . .”
    “He’s in marketing at General Mills,” she said. “He works twenty-two hours a day. You’re looking for those girls? I didn’t even know you were a cop now.”
    “Yeah, I am, and we’re looking for a guy named John Fell,” Lucas said. He described Fell, and she was shaking her head.
    “Everybody in this house is a student. Three apartments are Asians, I’m by myself, Five is empty and has been empty all year—it’s got a bad smell they can’t get out. The previous tenants put rat poison inside their walls because they could hear rats running, and I guess all the rats died and now they’re in the walls rotting and there’s no way to get them out.”
    “Nice story,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, well.” She took a moment to sweep her hair back from her face. “The last apartment, One, is Bobby and Vicki Arens, and Bobby’s got red hair and he’s about six-six.”
    “Who’s been here the longest?”
    “Well, me . . . and the Lees, in Four. We both got here two years ago. The Lees, you know, are Chinese, they’re studying medicine. They’re really nice.”
    “Okay. Shoot. I’m sorry I woke you up,” Lucas said.
    “Listen, come on in for some Rice Krispies,” she said. “We can think about it. I won’t be able to get back to sleep anyway.”
    “Huh,” he said. He looked at his watch. A little after five-thirty, and he could use a bite, and she was a pretty woman. “All right.”
     
     
    IN ADDITION TO a bowl of Rice Krispies, he advanced another inch in his education. The woman’s name was Katie Darin, and she suggested that a student house would be the perfect place to set up a fake credit card, or a mail drop.
    “Nobody knows who’s coming and going—people move in and out all the time,” she said. “The post office still delivers mail to my box for people who haven’t lived here for years. So, you know, you want a fake ID, you have it delivered here. The post office doesn’t know. Everybody’s in class when the mailman comes. He comes at ten o’clock, and this place is empty.”
    “The guy I’m looking for set up his Visa account two years ago,” Lucas said.
    “When did he set up the post office box?” she asked.
    “Six months ago.”
    “So he was picking up his mail here, for a year and a half?”
    “I guess,” Lucas said. “He didn’t charge much, but he did from time to time.”
    “So the mail gets sent to Apartment Five, or wherever, and the mailman doesn’t care, he just sticks it in the Apartment Five box,” Darin said. “There’s probably mail in it right now. This guy probably knows what day his Visa bill would get here, and he’d just come by and pick it up. No problem.”
    “The question is, why would he set up a fake ID?” Lucas asked.
    “Because he’s a criminal of some kind,” she answered. “Or maybe, political.”
    “Political?”
    “Yeah, you know, somebody who’s underground,” she said. “Somebody left over from the seventies.”
    Lucas scratched his nose: “I gotta think about it.”
    “How long have you been a detective?” she asked.
    Lucas looked at his watch: “About eight hours.”
    She smiled and said, “So you got thrown in the deep end.”
    “I’ll figure it out,” he said. “You don’t remember anybody like Fell? Do you think the Lees might? They