Hidden Prey

is Chick Daniels?”
    “Reporter for the News Tribune. ”
    “Mmm.” Lucas looked at one of the photos and then held it up to the detective. “Is this the way she looked? Is that neck right?”
    “That’s the way she looked. Almost cut her head off.”
    “I’ve never seen that before,” Lucas said. “The cut goes all the way around.”
    “Sliced right through the whole front half of her neck, arteries, veins, and all.”
    “Maybe you got a nut,” Lucas said.
    The two detectives regarded Lucas for a moment, then the no-name detective said, “That’s what I’m afraid of. We got a nut and he’s gonna do it again.” Pause. “Fuck.”
     
    N ADYA WOUND UP Xeroxing a half dozen sheets from the Oleshev murder file, then she and Lucas headed for the port. Reasons opted to go home: “I already talked to the guy three times. If you get anything new, call me up.”
    Nadya settled into the Acura, lifted an eyebrow at the video screen on the dashboard, but left it without comment; Lucas followed the on-screen map through the maze of streets around I-35, and made it down to Garfield Avenue. At the TDX terminal, they found the entrance, a tiny white door in the otherwise faceless tower. Inside, they found a small two-man office, everything with a patina of dust. A man sat with his back to them, typing on a manual typewriter that sat on a government-style gray metal desk with a broken leg set on a two-by-four block. Lucas hadn’t seen a typewriter like it in twenty years. The man didn’t turn when they came in. He said, “Chris called, he wants you to call back.”
    “Wrong guys,” Lucas said.
    Then man turned from the typewriter: “Ah . . . you must be the state police guy.”
    Lucas nodded, introduced himself and Nadya. “Are you Harry Kellogg?”
    “No, no, Harry doesn’t work here, he works for the port. He’s supposed to be here to meet you . . .” They heard a truck outside and the guy said, “That’s probably him.”
    They went back outside, and found a portly, red-faced man in ayellow hard hat, just climbed out of his red-and-black GMC pickup. He shook hands with Lucas, and nodded at Nadya.
    “I didn’t see much. I just finished filling the number-two hold and I walked out to the bow to have a cigarette—can’t have one right by the hold because there’s dust in the air, and you could have an explosion,” Kellogg said. “So I light up and I look over the bow. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, because . . . I don’t know, I haven’t seen that many dead people, and I didn’t expect to see one there. I mean, it took a few seconds. Then I saw this other guy, not exactly running, but he was in a hurry, moving off into the dark. Into the weeds way back there . . . and I realized the guy on the ground was probably dead, or maybe unconscious. I yelled and the one guy started running away, and that’s the last I saw of him. The dead guy was just layin’ there. I ran down to the gangway and down to my truck and got my baseball bat and ran down to the dead guy. I used my cell phone and I called the ambulance . . .”
    “The guy who ran away . . . you didn’t see him shoot the dead man, you didn’t see a gun?”
    “No. And the thing is, I never even heard the shots, even though we were on deck not more than a couple of hundred feet away. There was some noise, you know, but it’s not loud, the hold filling up. The cops, the police, said there were a bunch of shots, but I didn’t hear a thing. Neither did the crew.”
    “So then what?”
    “So then nothin’. The cops came and looked all over the place, and picked up the dead guy, and took a statement from me. Looked around in the weeds.”
    “You didn’t see anybody in the weeds.”
    “No, I never did. The thing is, I had a couple of cigarettes—I had one about fifteen minutes before, and I went up to the bow and there was nobody in sight. The whole thing happened in that fifteen minutes. Then . . .” He glanced at Nadya and colored a bit.
    “What?” Lucas asked.
    “The Russian guys . . . this was years ago, mostly, we don’t see many Russians anymore. The thing is, it used to be that every time a Russian boat came in, you’d see carloads of girls coming out here. They’d go on the boat and you know, take care of the guys. Sometimes, when we were loading, and there was a lot of dust and guys banging around, they’d get a blanket and go out in the weeds. I don’t think there were any women aboard,