Buried Prey

guarded condition tonight, and Todd Barker is in critical condition at Fairview-Southdale Hospital in Edina. . . .”
    The killer watched with dulled interest as the reporter recounted the shooting, and then interviewed a police spokesman, who said, “We believe Officer Hill wounded the gunman in the exchange of gunfire. We found traces of blood along what we presume to be the route the gunman took away from the house. The blood has been picked up by our crime-scene crews and will be taken to the BCA where we will . . .”
    And then the police spokesman said the word that the killer hadn’t thought about, but knew quite well. The thing that had, really, pushed him to Thailand.
    The officer said, “. . . process it for DNA. When we find him, we’ll then know that we have him for sure, and we think that finding him is now only a matter of time.”
    The killer knew all about DNA. DNA seemed like a cloud, something that contaminated everything you touched. He’d been afraid that if he simply continued taking girls, that someday he’d be tagged by DNA. Now he sat up, staring at the TV, felt like screaming at it. Felt like throwing one of the Indian clubs through it, to shatter the screen, but didn’t.
    Just stared, the chant going through his head: DNA, DNA, DNA . . .
    Had to get out of here, he thought, looking around the house. Had to get away from the smell, the blinking lights on the porn servers, the junk that was scattered all over the place. Had to get away from this piece-of-shit life, had to find a den, had to get well. Had to heal.
    Had to put a pillow over his head, shut out the world.
    Hide.

19
    Minneapolis police headquarters was full of pissed-off people the next morning, buzzing like a nest of killer bees. Lucas slipped through the swarm around Homicide, found the room he was looking for, used for training—and on the walls, photos of every academy graduating class.
    At the time of the Jones killings, everybody he’d interviewed about Fell agreed that he was in his mid to late twenties. If he were a young-looking thirty, just to pad the age range a bit, he could hardly have gotten out of the academy before the mid to late seventies—couldn’t have been a cop for more than ten years, at the most.
    Lucas went through ten years of classes, noting the names of the prospective cops who looked more or less like the Barkers’ description. There weren’t many. The killer was heavily built, almost square, she’d said. She emphasized the darkness of his hair, almost Mediterranean in tone, but said that his complexion was fair.
    In ten years of photographs, there were nine possibilities. After noting down the names, he walked down to the office of Deputy Chief Marilyn Barin. Barin ran the Professional Standards Bureau, which included Internal Affairs. She was Lucas’s age, but had come up through patrol. They’d been friendly enough over the years, but not good friends; she’d been a casual friend of Marcy’s.
    She looked up when Lucas knocked on her door frame. “Lucas. Thought you might come around today. This is brutal.”
    Lucas took a chair and said, “A long time ago, I worked the Jones girls’ killing, and thought I had a lead on the killer. That was wiped out when we pinned it on a street guy. Turns out we were wrong about that—the guy who shot Marcy is the same guy who killed the Jones girls, and probably a few more over the years.”
    Barin nodded. “I heard a couple people talking about your theory . . . and you’re a smart guy.”
    He said, “I am a smart guy, and it’s way more than a theory, now. I wouldn’t bullshit you on something like this. The thing is . . .”
    He explained the sequence of the original investigation, and the 911 calls that had led them down the path to Scrape. “It looks like—this is a leap—like the shooter might have had a contact inside the department, or might even have been a cop. The shooter yesterday used a Glock, according to Buster Hill. Bottom line is, I have a list of names of cops and probably ex-cops or never-were cops, and I’d like somebody to pull some personnel folders and some IA files and tell me if I’m barking up the wrong tree. Or the right one.”
    Barin contemplated him for a moment, then swiveled in her chair and looked at a bulletin board above a bookcase, then swiveled back and said, “I gotta talk to the chief. I’ll tell him that we’ve got to go with the request. But I’ve got to clear it with him.”
    “How long