Night Prey

“. . . never caught him, but there wasn’t any doubt. He was snitched out by two different guys who didn’t know each other. We told him we were ready to bring him up on charges; either that, or get out. He got. Our case wasn’t strong enough to just go ahead.”
    “Okay. Any rumors about sex problems?”
    “Nothing that I know of.”
    “Any connection with burglars?”
    “Jeez, I can’t remember all the details, but yeah. I think the main guy he was dealing to was Art McClatchey, who was a big-time burglar years ago. He fucked up and killed an old lady in one of his burglaries, got caught. That was down in Afton.”
    “Cat burglar?” Lucas asked.
    “Yeah. Why?”
    “Look, anything you can get from records, connecting the two of them, we’d appreciate. Don’t go out in the population, though. Don’t ask any questions. We’re trying to keep all this tight.”
    “Do I want to know why you’re asking?” Smythe asked.
    “Not yet.”
    “We’re not gonna get burned, are we?”
    “I don’t see how,” Lucas said. “If there’s any chance, I’ll give you a ring.”
    Lucas hung up and said to the others, “He was selling dope to the inmates. Cocaine and speed. One of his main contacts was an old cat burglar named McClatchey.”
    “Better and better,” Connell said. “Now what?”
    “We finish the records, just in case we find another candidate. Then we talk to Roux. We want to take a close look at this Koop. But do it real easy.”
     
     
     
    THEY FINISHED WITH eleven possibilities, but Robert Koop was the good one. They put together a file of information from the various state licensing bureaus—car registration, driver’s license, an old Washington County carry permit—with what they could get from the Department of Revenue and the personnel section of the Department of Revenue.
    When he’d worked at Stillwater, Koop had lived in Lakeland. A check with the property tax department in Washington County showed the house where Koop lived was owned by a Lakeland couple; Koop was apparently a renter. A check on the Apple Valley house, through the Dakota County tax collector, suggested that the Apple Valley house was also rented. The current owner showed an address in California, and tax stamps showed a 1980 mortgage of $115,000.
    “If the owner’s carrying a mortgage of $115,000 . . . let’s see, I’m carrying $80,000. Jeez, I can’t see that he could be renting it for less than fifteen hundred a month,” Greave said. “Koop’s income is coming up short.”
    “Nothing much from the NCIC,” Anderson said. “He shows prints from Stillwater, and another set from the Army. I’m working on getting his Army records.”
    The phone rang and Lucas picked it up, listened, said, “Thanks,” and put it back down.
    “Roux,” he said to Connell. “She’s in. Let’s go talk.”
     
     
     
    THEY GOT SLOAN and Del to help out, and a panel truck with one-way windows, equipped with a set of scrambled radios from intelligence. Lucas and Connell rode together in her car; Sloan and Del took their own cars. Greave and O’Brien drove the truck. They met at a Target store parking lot and picked out a restaurant where they could wait.
    “Connell and I’ll take the first shift,” Lucas said. “We can rotate out every couple of hours; somebody can cruise it while we’re moving the truck to make the change . . . Let’s give him a call now, see if he’s around.”
    Connell called, got an answer, and asked for Mr. Clark in the paint department. “He’s home,” she said when she’d rung off the cellular phone. “He sounded sleepy.”
    “Let’s go,” Lucas said.

    THEY CRUISED PAST Koop’s house, a notably unexceptional place in a subdivision of carefully differentiated houses. They parked two blocks away and slightly above it. The lawn was neat but not perfect, with an artificially green look that suggested a lawn service. There was a single-door, two-car garage. The windows were covered with wooden blinds. There was no newspaper, either on the lawn or porch.
    Lucas parked the truck and crawled between seats into the back, where there were two captain’s chairs, an empty cooler, and a radio they wouldn’t use. Connell was examining the house with binoculars.
    “It looks awful normal,” she said.
    “He’s not gonna have a billboard out front,” Lucas said. “I had a guy, a few years ago, lived in a quadruplex. Everybody said he was a great neighbor. He probably was, except when