Naked Prey

too much, I hope,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, I told them that part,” the deputy said. “That’s the best part. Uh, whatever happened to the girl? The girl that come up with you?”
    “Marcy Sherrill. She’s a lieutenant in Minneapolis, now. She runs the Intelligence unit.”
    “Really . . . jeez.” The deputy was impressed.
    “Gotta go,” Lucas said. “Nice talking to you again.”
    As he and Del went inside, he heard the deputy’s voice,“ . . . got a pair of knockers on her like muskmelons and . . . ”
    “You got groupies,” Del said.
    “Groupie with a good eye for knockers,” Lucas said, amused. “Muskmelons . . . those are cantaloupes, right?”
    T HE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT had a fast line out. Anderson and a dozen other cops were in the building when Lucas and Del arrived, and came out to meet them. “Something happen?”
    “We might have a name,” Lucas said. “We need to send some pictures to St. Paul, right now.”
    Anderson’s jaw dropped. He stood like that for a moment, looked at a deputy who’d trailed him in, and then said, “Well, Jiminy, who is it? You mean a name for the killer?”
    “Possibly. Know in a minute, if I can get an Internet connection on a computer with a CD drive.”
    “I got one in my office.”
    Lucas followed him back to a big wood-paneled office with a blue high-pile carpet, seven-foot mahogany desk and a wall full of photographs. The sheriff with local politicians, his wife, his children, other sheriffs, cops. A computer sat on a side-table with an Aeron chair in front of it. Lucas dropped into the chair, brought up the computer, slipped the CD into the CD tray, and called up a Qwest connection. Ten seconds later, the best of the stitched photos was on its way to St. Paul; a minute later, another was on its way. Six deputies were crowded into the office now, and Lucas thought about the other BCA crew. He punched in Dickerson’s number.
    “Dickerson . . . ”
    “This is Davenport. Where are you?”
    “Just outside of Armstrong. Thinking about heading home.”
    “We got a name. We’re down at the sheriff’s office. If the name is good, it ties together a lot of stuff. The money, the cell in the basement.”
    “What’s the name?”
    “Hale Sorrell.”
    Long pause. “Oh, shit.”
    “H ALE S ORRELL?” A NDERSON demanded when Lucas rang off. “You mean the Rochester guy?”
    Lucas nodded, leaned back in the chair, crossed his legs. “Daughter was kidnapped last month and never came back,” he said. “We’re not sure yet, but it’s a possibility.”
    “You got pictures of him?” one of the deputies asked.
    “We’ve got these pictures,” Lucas said, tapping a photograph on the monitor screen. “They’re not good, but they might be good enough. Once we get a solid maybe, and some DNA returns back from the medical examiner, then we’ll know.”
    “That means his kid is out at . . . might have been at . . . her . . . ”
    “She might still be out there, somewhere, at the house,” Lucas said.
    “Did you know Sorrell was from up here, originally?” one of the deputies asked. “I mean, not right here, but down to Red Lake Falls? His father still lives down there, somewhere. He’s in a nursing home or something.”
    Lucas said: “That’s interesting. Maybe somebody around here set him up?”
    “Could be, I guess.”
    Another deputy said, “Maybe he was fooling around with somebody. Red Lake Falls is pretty much known for its beautiful women.”
    “That’s always a useful piece of information.”
    L UCAS’S CELL PHONE rang and the governor was there. “Lucas. Neil brought me up to date on this Hale Sorrell thing. I know him pretty well, I looked at the pictures.”
    “What do you think?”
    “Neil and I agree. It sure looks like him. Not positive, but boy, it sure looks like him.”
    “We have a lot of DNA, sir. If we can get somebody to officially point the finger, we could get a warrant for some DNA samples and settle it.”
    “The devil’s gonna be in the details. We don’t want to be wrong. If we had to, is there any way you could hang this on the sheriff up there?”
    “The sheriff’s a pretty sharp guy, sir,” Lucas said, looking up at Anderson, who appeared confused, and mouthed at Lucas, Who is it? Lucas went back to the phone. “I think we could probably work something out, if we had to—but before we do anything official, I’d like to get some good photos of Sorrell, put them in a photo