Buried Prey

egg and grease off his fingers, shook his head, and when she’d finished, went off to lie down and think about it.
     
     
    LUCAS GOT BACK to his office at five minutes to twelve. He turned on the TV, to Channel Three, for the Midday Report . Del wandered in as he was waiting for the show to come on: “I talked to a security guy at Wells Fargo,” he said. “They have a file of three cards they issued at different times, and they think they might all be linked to the same guy. John Fell was the first one. The others were a Ronald James Hubbard and a Tom Piper.”
    “Nursery rhyme names,” Lucas said. “Mother Hubbard and Tom the piper’s son.”
    “Yeah, the Wells Fargo guy picked that up, too. He wasn’t working with them, then, Norwest Bank issued the cards before it took over Wells Fargo, but the old Norwest file had all three guys already pulled out. No idea who he was, but he did the same thing with all three of them: had an address to start it, had it linked to a checking account he’d opened a couple of years earlier, changed the address to a post office box, emptied out the account, and skipped on the last credit-card bill. The first two final bills were small change, but the last one, he skipped on four thousand dollars. He worked it as a con, that last time.”
    “Checks?” Lucas asked.
    Del shook his head: “It’s all electronic. We can get facsimiles, but not the originals. They’ve all been recycled.”
    “But we know what he was paying for . . .”
    “Yeah, we got that. But it’s all pretty obscure. Small amounts, scattered all over the place. Maybe porn, like we were thinking. Could be books or records. That kind of money. Except that last one, toward the end, he bought a lot of stereo and TV stuff—stuff he could sell, I think.”
    “But why would he hide books or money on a fake account?”
    “That’s why I’m thinking porn, or something like it. Sex toys or something. I can’t find any of the account names at their address, so they were small-time, whatever they were. I’ll keep looking.”
    The news came up on Channel Three, and Lucas used his remote to push the volume. After a story about a woman who cleaned out the accounts of a local charity to support her Vegas habit, Barker came up, sitting on a couch, talking to Jennifer Carey, the woman with whom Lucas shared a daughter.
    “She’s on some kind of anti-aging sauce,” Del said. “She looks terrific.”
    “Got the cheekbones,” Lucas agreed.
    Barker said, “. . . came as a complete surprise. I agreed to cooperate, of course, so I went to the BCA office in St. Paul, and talked to an imaging expert named John Retrief, who helped me put together the image of the man who attacked me.”
    The image of Fell flashed up full-screen, stuck for a moment, then pulled back, and down, to reveal the two women again.
    “And this man they’re looking for, this John Fell—he matches that image?” Carey asked.
    “He matches exactly, according to Agent Davenport,” Barker said, with a solemn turn of her lips and eyes.
    “Jesus, I didn’t say that,” Lucas said.
    Del said, “You did now.”
    She continued, “And if you read the Star Tribune this morning, there’s a story on the case, where a serial-murder expert says he almost certainly killed more girls.” The camera shot changed to catch her square in the face: “I’m probably the only survivor. . . .” She began to shake, and tears appeared on her cheeks, and she said, “And I’m permanently scarred . . .” and held up her hands.
    “She can do it,” Del said. “She’s only about an inch away from Oprah.”
    “She might get Oprah, if we find Fell and pin the Jones murders on him,” Lucas said.
    “Hope her alligator mouth don’t get her hummingbird ass in trouble,” Del said. “If Fell sees her . . .”
    “I thought about that,” Lucas said. “I didn’t do anything about it.”
    Jennifer Carey said, “If any of our viewers have any idea who this John Fell might possibly be, his real name, or his current name, notify the Minneapolis Police Department or BCA agent Lucas Davenport immediately, at the numbers on your screen. Do not attempt to apprehend . . .”
    After the Channel Three broadcast, the other four stations jumped on the Identi-Kit picture, and Barker did tape for both KSTP and KARE for the evening news, variations on Channel Three; KARE also ran tape of James Hayworth, the St. Paul cop interviewed by the Star Tribune . Hayworth repeated