Night Prey

except for the one in Thunder Bay, they all disappeared within ten minutes of an interstate that runs through the Cities. And the one in Thunder Bay was off Highway 61. So maybe he went out to L.A.—but it doesn’t feel right.”
    “I understand that you think it could be a cop.”
    She leaned forward again, the intensity returning. “There are still a couple of things we need to look at. The cop thing is the only hard clue we have: that one woman talking to her daughter. . . .”
    “I read your file on it,” Lucas said.
    “Okay. And you saw the thing about the PPP?”
    “Mmm. No. I don’t remember.”
    “It’s in an early police interview with a guy named Price, who was convicted of killing the Madison woman.”
    “Oh, yeah, I saw the transcript. I haven’t had time to read it.”
    “He says he didn’t do it. I believe him. I’m planning to go over and talk to him if nothing else comes up. He was in the bookstore where the victim was picked up, and he says there was a bearded man with PPP tattooed on his hand. Right on the web between his index finger and thumb.”
    “So we’re looking for a cop with PPP on his hand?”
    “I don’t know. Nobody else saw the tattoo, and they never found anybody with PPP on his hand. A computer search doesn’t show PPP as an identifying mark anywhere. But the thing is, Price had been in jail, and he said the tattoo was a prison tattoo. You know, like they make with ballpoint ink and pins.”
    “Well,” Lucas said. “It’s something.”
    Connell was discouraged. “But not much.”
    “Not unless we find the killer—then it might help confirm the ID,” Lucas said. He picked up the file and paged through it until he found the list of murders and dates. “Do you have any theories about why the killings are so scattered around?”
    “I’ve been looking for patterns,” she said. “I don’t know. . . .”
    “Until the body you found last winter, he never had two killings in the same state. And the last one here was almost nine years ago.”
    “Yes. That’s right.”
    Lucas closed the file and tossed it back on his desk. “Yeah. That means different reporting jurisdictions. Iowa doesn’t know what we’re doing, and Wisconsin doesn’t know what Iowa’s doing, and nobody knows what South Dakota’s doing. And Canada sure as hell is out of it.”
    “You’re saying he’s figured on that,” Connell said. “So it is a cop.”
    “Maybe,” said Lucas. “But maybe it’s an ex-con. A smart guy. Maybe the reason for the two gaps is, he was inside. Some small-timer who gets slammed for drugs or burglary, and he’s out of circulation.”
    Connell leaned back, regarding him gravely. “When you crawled into the Dumpster this morning, you were cold. I couldn’t be that cold; I never would have seen that tobacco on her.”
    “I’m used to it,” Lucas said.
    “No, no, it was . . . impressive,” she said. “I need that kind of distance. When I said we only had one fact about him, the cop thing, I was wrong. You came up with a bunch of them: he was strong, he smokes—”
    “Unfiltered Camels,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah? Well, it’s interesting. And now these ideas . . . I haven’t had anybody bouncing ideas off me. Are you gonna let me work with you?”
    He nodded. “If you want.”
    “Will we get along?”
    “Maybe. Maybe not,” he said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
    She regarded him without humor. “Exactly my attitude,” she said. “So. What are we doing?”
    “We’re checking bookstores.”
    Connell looked down at herself. “I’ve got to change clothes. I’ve got them in my car. . . .”
     
     
     
    WHILE CONNELL WENT to change, Lucas called Anderson for a reading on homicide’s preliminary work on the Wannemaker killing. “We just got started,” Anderson said. “Skoorag called in a few minutes ago. He said a friend of Wannemaker’s definitely thinks she was going to a bookstore. But if you look at the file when she was reported missing, somebody else said she might have been going to the galleries over on First Avenue.”
    “We’re hitting the bookstores. Maybe your guys could take the galleries.”
    “If we’ve got time. Lester’s got people running around like rats,” Anderson said. “Oh—that Junky Doog guy. I got lots of hits, but the last one was three years ago. He was living in a flop on Franklin Avenue. Chances of him being there are slim and none, and slim is outa town.”
    “Give me the