Buried Prey

moth shadows flicking crazily across it, and as the other four crowded around, pulled the flaps apart.
    Inside were two small pairs of jeans, carefully folded, a small brassiere, and a white blouse.
    “Motherfucker,” Lester said.
    “They’re dead. I told you they were dead,” Hanson said.
    Sloan’s hands were in his hair, holding on, as though he couldn’t stand his thoughts. Lacey had been smoking a cigarette, and turned away, dropped it in the alley and stomped it out, as though he were angry at the butt.
    Lucas carried the soggy box around to Hanson’s car and put it in the trunk, and asked, “When are you gonna get Mr. Jones down there?”
    “I’ll call him from the office after I talk to Daniel,” Lester said.
    “I want to be there,” Lucas said. “But I gotta get cleaned up. Wait for me.”
    “You’re not important enough to wait for,” Hanson said. “So you better hurry.”
    Lucas headed for his Jeep, and Lacey called after him, “Who’s going to throw this shit back in the dumpster?”
    “I investigate, I don’t clean up,” Lucas yelled back, and then he was in his Jeep and rolling.
     
     
    AT HIS APARTMENT, he stripped naked, put all the clothes except his boots and the newer canvas shirt in a garbage bag and threw it at the door. He put the shirt in another garbage bag, and left it on the kitchen table; he’d take it to a laundromat and wash it for an hour or so. The boots he carried back to the shower, and washed them with soap and hot water, until they looked clean, then left them on the floor to dry out. He scrubbed himself down, washed his hair, dried, dressed, picked up the garbage bag by the door, threw it in the trash on the way out, and headed downtown.
    The box was on Daniel’s desk, sitting on top of a pile of newspaper. Daniel was sitting behind his desk, while Sloan and Lester took the two guest chairs. Hanson wasn’t around. An amused look flitted across Daniel’s face when Lucas walked in, and he said, “They tell me you smelled worse than the box.”
    “They were right,” Lucas said. “I ruined about fifty bucks’ worth of clothes, if I manage to save the boots. You’ll be getting the bill.”
    “Go ahead and put in for the boots,” Daniel said. “A little bonus.”
    “Is Jones on the way?” Lucas asked.
    “Talked to him five minutes ago,” Sloan said. “He’s coming.”
    “But it’s theirs,” Daniel said. “The girls’.” There was no doubt in his voice.
    They all sat there, for a moment, in silence, and then Lucas said, “I’d like to know a little more about that nine-one-one tip.”
    The tip, Daniel said, had come from somebody who identified himself as a neighbor who didn’t want to get involved. He said he’d gone into the alley to move his car, and saw the guy with a basketball and a box, and saw him stop and loft the box into the dumpster, and then walk around the corner at Tom’s. He said he knew about the basketball from neighborhood rumor—that the cops were looking for the guy with the basketball.
    “So everybody in the world knows Scrape,” Lucas said.
    “Not the whole world,” Sloan said. “But the neighborhood around Matthews Park is pretty contained—and when you’re talking about a pedophile, the word gets around fast.”
    Lester: “The thing about Scrape is, all he does is walk. He walks up and down every street down there, every day. They all know who he is.”
    “I still don’t like it,” Lucas said. “We get an anonymous tip that Scrape threw the clothes in the dumpster, and we’re only chasing him in the first place because of a tip from a guy we can’t find, who might be some kind of an asshole operating under a phony name.” He remembered, then, and looked at his watch: eight o’clock. “Shit.”
    “What?”
    “I had an appointment at seven tonight. Gotta make a call.”
    “What you’re gonna find as you get into investigations,” Lester said, “is that all kinds of weird shit happens.”
    “I already learned that,” Lucas said. “Weird shit happens on the street, too—but there’s weird shit and then there’s weird shit . When it’s too weird, you gotta think about it some more. I need a phone.”
    He went into the outer office, to an empty desk, got Kenny’s number from the operator, and called. He asked for Katz, got him, identified himself. “Has John Fell been in? John Fell?”
    “Not tonight. Not so far.”
     
     
    HE’D JUST HUNG UP when George Jones, followed by a