Buried Prey

the park, and there was this place where bushes closed in—lilacs, I think—and he came out of them and grabbed me and waved the knife at me, and I saw the van and he was pulling at me and I was fighting him, and I broke out of his hand, and started backing up and he was trying to talk to me but he was slashing, too, and then he tried to grab me again and I yanked away and I ran. . . . He came after me a little but I ran faster and faster, and I looked back and I saw him going into the bushes and then I heard the van, and I got off the sidewalk because I was afraid he’d chase me, and I could see the street up ahead and I ran as hard as I could . . . but he never came after me.”
    “But you were right there: face-to-face.”
    “Oh, yeah,” she said. “He was talking and . . .” She put a hand to her face. “. . . spitting. He got some spit on me, he was so close.”
    “Do you remember what kind of knife?”
    She shuddered: “Do I ever. It was this long curved meat knife, like you use for cutting roasts or something. Not like a big heavy butcher knife, but a long curved knife.”
    “A kitchen knife, not a hunting knife or a jackknife.”
    “Definitely a kitchen knife. Like one of those Chicago Cutlery things, with the wooden handle.”
    “Then you ran and the Dunn guy came along. Did he get a look at the attacker?”
    “Oh, no—I had to run down this path, through the bushes. Mr. Dunn didn’t even see me until the last minute. He almost ran over me. And I went to the hospital,” Kelly said. “But I can tell you, when I was fighting the guy, I scratched him, and I had blood and skin under my fingernails, and the police took it away. And there was a hair—I remember the guy at the hospital took it out from under my fingernail and he said, ‘Got a black hair.’”
    “Ah—that could be important. Thank you,” Lucas said.
    “Can you still get, you know, DNA from stuff that old?” Todd asked.
    “If they’ve still got it, we can,” Lucas said. “The good thing is, people who do this kind of thing usually get caught, sooner or later, and we’ve got a DNA bank for sex criminals. So does the FBI. If he’s been arrested and convicted, he could be in the bank.”
    “That is so exceptionally excellent,” Kelly said.
    They talked for a few more minutes, but she had nothing more that really contributed to the case. Didn’t remember anything about a missing finger.
    The DNA possibility was interesting. DNA had been used to clear quite a few men improperly convicted of rape or murder, but had been used to nail just as many who thought they’d gotten away with it, only to have a long-ago crime snatch them right off the street.
    Barker also convinced Lucas that Fell, whatever his real name, was the killer, and that he’d continued operating after the Jones murders. If the Jones girls’ kidnapping was his first killing—and it might or might not have been—and Barker was another attempt, there’d be more.
    As he was leaving, Kelly Barker asked, “Listen, do you mind if my agent gets in touch with Channel Three, and they give you a call? I’m pretty sure they’d be interested.” She said it earnestly, one showbiz personality to another.
    “I can’t talk to them on the record, at least at this point,” Lucas said. “If you do talk to them, and they want to do some film, be sure you let me know. I mean, this guy might be watching. And there’s a woman at the Minneapolis Police Department, Marcy Sherrill, the head of Homicide—you should call her. She might have some ideas for you. Remember—you might be the only living person who could identify him.”
    “I think we can take care of ourselves,” Todd Barker said, with a square-chinned grin. “Look around—there are four guns in this room. I can get to one of them in two seconds, from the threatalert to trigger.”
    Lucas nodded: “Hope you have the two seconds.”
    “Two seconds is nothing,” Barker said.
    “Average high school kid, on a track, can run a hundred yards in twelve seconds or so,” Lucas said. “That’s about fifty feet in two seconds . . . from your front door to your backyard.”
    “You think I should get a shotgun?” Barker asked.
    “I think you should get good locks,” Lucas said.
     
     
    LUCAS WALKED BACK down the dark sidewalk to the Porsche, stood there for a minute, looking up at the sky, thinking. Gun nuts made him a little nervous. He always had the feeling that they were looking for something to