Chosen Prey

called and Lane answered, his voice thick with sleep. “I just got to bed. I wound up chasing that Lo Andrews guy all over the metro,” he said. “I finally caught up with him about the time the sun was coming up.”
    “He have anything?”
    “Yeah. He was carrying a little coke and we took him down to Ramsey county jail. He’s on hold until we get a statement. The bust is probably bad, though.”
    “Yeah, yeah. What happened?”
    “He says he was with Randy the night Suzanne Brister was killed and that Randy ran out of money and so they took him to an ATM and he maxed out his card. Then he ran out of that, so they went back to Randy’s place and they got a compact sound system and sold that on the street, and they ran out of that, so they dropped him at his place—but an hour later he was back with four hundred dollars that he said he took off some white dude.”
    “Yeah? You think it was Qatar?”
    “I used our warrant and went over to the bank and we looked at Qatar’s ATM use. He took four hundred dollars out of an ATM on Grand Avenue, about eight blocks from Randy’s, at 12:38 P . M . same night.”
    “Goddamnit, Lane.”
    “What can I tell you? I’m good,” Lane said.
    “You are good. You gonna nail this down?”
    “I’d like to get a little sleep first, but we’re gonna get with Lo Andrews’s attorney at three o’clock this afternoon. Probably drop the charges on the drug bust, and get the statement.”
    When Lucas got off the line, Marshall, who’d taken up residence at Lane’s desk, said, “Another brick?”
    “A decent one. We can put Qatar eight blocks from Randy’s house the night Suzanne Brister was killed. That’s not all. . . .”
    He explained the rest of it, and Marshall said, “That’s good, but you know what I’d do if I were Qatar’s attorneys? I’d make the case that Qatar smoked pot, maybe even a lot of pot, and maybe used a little cocaine. He’s an artist, right? So they say that’s how he knew Randy. And that Randy was attracted to Qatar by the people Qatar knew—and that’s how Randy met Neumann and Qatar’s mother and all those other people. That Randy was the killer. We’ve got a dead woman, strangled in the style of all the others, in Randy’s apartment, with his fingerprints all over the place, in blood, and he tried to shoot a cop when he busted out—”
    “He was too young for the first ones.”
    “Well, who knows?” Marshall said. “To get like he is now, he must have been a monster when he was young. He would have been, what, twelve or thirteen when Laura disappeared? How many twelve-year-old killers do you think are running around the Cities?”
    Lucas shrugged. “So you make a case. Do you believe it?”
    “Of course not. For one thing, the guy was supposed to be dating Laura.”
    “If that’s the guy who killed her,” Lucas said.
    “C’mon. We know who killed the girls. But I’m worried about a trial.”
    “Always worry about a trial,” Lucas said. “But we’re piling stuff up.”
    “Need a smoking gun, like your girlfriend says.” Marshall said. “With everything else, if we had the gun, I’d be satisfied.”
     
    Q ATAR’S PRELIMINARY HEARING had been set for the following Monday. Nothing more turned up. Lab techs searched the debris tray on the furnace at the St. Pat’s museum, found various bits and pieces of metal, but nothing that could be specifically identified as coming from clothing. Lane identified three cab trips from the general area of Qatar’s house to the general area of Barstad’s, but none of the drivers could identify Qatar as a passenger.
    Lo Andrews made his statement, but, as an assistant county attorney pointed out, it was a statement by another heavy doper. Thirty cops were recruited to look inside every trash can and behind every fence within a half-mile of Barstad’s. They found all kind of clothing and shoes, but none of it the kind that Qatar might have worn. It was all old and obviously abandoned, or was identified by the people who owned the trash cans.
    “What if Qatar didn’t do it?” Swanson asked.
    “He did,” Lucas said.
    “I think we’re in trouble,” Marshall said. Marshall had begun to brood. “I’m not sure we should have taken him when we did,” he said. “We could have thrown a net over him, done a full-court press. Sooner or later, he would have fucked up.”
    “By the time we might’ve done that, he’d already have spotted us,” Lucas said. “And the