Buried Prey

for ten minutes, then sent him on his way. Lucas gave Daniel his statement, and Daniel read it, came back with a half-dozen questions, and told him to rewrite it.
    Lucas was working on the rewrite when he heard one of the cops talking to Daniel about Ronald Rice. He turned and looked at them, and the other detective was flipping through a stack of paper, explaining something, and Lucas said, “Hey.”
    Daniel looked over and Lucas asked, “What about Ronald Rice?”
    “He got stabbed,” Daniel said, and he started to turn back to the other cop.
    “I know that,” Lucas said. “Did he wake up?”
    Daniel: “No.”
    The other guy said, “He croaked.”
    Lucas: “He died?”
    “Lucas, write the statement,” Daniel said.
    “But I got a guy who told me who stabbed Rice, and who the witnesses were, but I sorta let it go—he wasn’t dead,” Lucas said. He held his hands out in a “What the hell?” gesture: “I was gonna bring it up,” he said.
    The other cop said, “What?”
    Lucas gave them a quick summary, and Daniel shook his head. “Okay. Give it all to Dick.” He turned to the first cop. “Dick, you go talk to this Delia. I mean . . .” He turned back, and sputtered: “Jesus Christ, Davenport, you were gonna bring it up ?”
     
     
    BY THE TIME Lucas finished, Daniel had gone off to talk to the chief and the mayor.
    Del came in. “I hear you bagged him,” he said to Lucas.
    “Not me. It was Ted Hughes,” Lucas said. “I don’t think he meant to, he sort of jerked off a shot.”
    “I meant, you were the guy who tracked him.” Del sat down in a chair across from Lucas’s desk.
    Lucas said, “You know what? Daniel was telling me about the evidence they got—that box from the pizza place. I kinda don’t believe it. I want to find this Fell guy.”
    “Maybe you can work it some other time,” Del suggested.
    “I was thinking, tonight . . .”
    Del was shaking his head. “Look, Lucas . . . They’ve got a dead suspect, and they’ve got all kinds of evidence against him. If there was a little less evidence, or if he was a little less dead, then maybe they’d let you look for Fell. But now that Scrape is dead, they need him to be the bad guy.”
    “The girls—”
    “The girls are gone,” Del said. “Everybody knows it. That was blood on the blouse . . . man, they can’t afford to have Scrape be innocent. That’d open a huge can of worms. They’d have shot an innocent guy, and screwed up the investigation. What I’m telling you is, I guess, it’s done.”
    “Doesn’t seem right,” Lucas said.
    “I’m just sayin’. Not sayin’ it’s right.” Del shook his head. “It happens, and I can smell it coming.”
    “What do you think ?” Lucas asked.
    “I’d like to find Fell,” Del said. “I’d really like to find him. But there’s a lot of evidence against Scrape. So, I don’t know. I just don’t.”
    Lucas ran his hands through his hair. “I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna find the guy. I don’t give a shit what anybody says. I’m tracking his ass down.”
    Del shrugged. “Good. Nice to have a hobby. C’mon. Let’s go get a Coke. You gotta tell me about this whole Ronald Rice thing. I just got the story from Roy Patterson. You were gonna bring it up?” Del started laughing. “You broke a murder case in your spare time, and you were gonna bring it up ?”
    Lucas got the feeling that he’d done something unusual.
     
     
    THERE WAS a press conference later that day, Lucas standing in the back of the crowd, in which a mournful chief of police said, “We know we got the killer, and there’s every sign that the little girls are gone. Have been killed. We haven’t found them yet, and will press on with every available man. We will find them. . . .”
     
     
    BUT THEY NEVER DID.
     
     
     
    THAT NIGHT, Daniel took Lucas aside and said, “I talked to the chief. You’ll be temporarily assigned to Intelligence, but you’ll be working with me. Can’t promote you yet, we don’t have the slot, but you’re the next guy up—you’ll have it in six months, max, and you’ll be working in plainclothes until then. You’re gonna be a goddamned fantastic detective, Lucas. You broke this case, and you took the Rice case and stuffed it. Un-fuckin’-believable. I’ve never seen anybody do it better, and you’re a rook.”
    “I never found my guy,” Lucas said, with some bitterness riding on his voice. “I never found Fell.”
    “You need to evaluate,”