Night Prey

to people, you know, that’s half of homicide.”
    “I got the bullshit. It’s the other part I ain’t got,” Greave said gloomily. “Listen, you wanna stop at my mystery apartment on the way back?”
    “No.”
    “C’mon, man.”
    “We’ve got too much going on,” Lucas said. “Maybe we’ll catch some time later.”
    “They’re wearing me out in homicide,” Greave said. “I get these notes. They say, ‘Any progress?’ Fuck ’em.”
     
     
     
    GREAVE WENT ON to homicide to check in, while Lucas walked down to Roux’s office and stuck his head in.
    “We picked up Junky Doog. He’s clear, almost for sure.”
    He explained, and told her how Junky had mutilated himself. Roux, nibbling her lip, said, “What happens if I feed him to the Strib ?”
    “Depends on how you do it,” Lucas said, leaning against the door, crossing his arms. “If you did it deep off-the-record, gave them just the bare information . . . it might take some heat off. Or at least get them running in a different direction. In either case, it’d be sorta cynical.”
    “Fuck cynical. His prior arrests were here in Hennepin, right?”
    “Most of them, I think. He was committed from here. If you tipped them early enough, they could get across the street and pull his files.”
    “Even if it’s bullshit, it’s an exclusive. It’s a lead story,” Roux said. She rubbed her eyes. “Lucas, I hate to do it. But I’m taking some serious damage now. I figure I’ve got a couple of weeks of grace. After that, I might not be able to save myself.”
     
     
     
    BACK AT HIS office, a message was waiting on voice mail: “This is Connell. I got something. Beep me.”
    Lucas dialed her beeper number, let it beep, and hung up. Junky had been a waste of time, although he might be a bone they could throw the media. Not much of a bone. . . .
    With nothing else to do, he began paging through Connell’s report again, trying to absorb as much of the detail as he could.
    There were several threads that tied all the killings together, but the thread that worried him most was the simplicity of them. The killer picked up a woman, killed her, dumped her. They weren’t all found right away—Connell suggested he might have kept one or two of them for several hours, or even overnight—but in one case, in South Dakota, the body was found forty-five minutes after the woman had been seen alive. He wasn’t pressing his luck by keeping the woman around; they wouldn’t get a break that way.
    He didn’t leave anything behind, either. The actual death scenes might have been in his vehicle—Connell suggested that it was probably a van or a truck, although he might have used a motel if he’d been careful in his choices.
    In one case, in Thunder Bay, there may have been some semen on a dress, but the stain, whatever it was, had been destroyed in a failed effort to extract a blood type. A note from a cop said that it might have been salad dressing. DNA testing had not yet been available.
    Vaginal and anal examinations had come up negative, but there was oral bruising that suggested that some of the women had been orally raped. Stomach contents were negative, which meant that he didn’t ejaculate, ejaculated outside their mouth, or they lived long enough for stomach fluids to destroy the evidence.
    Hair was a different problem. Foreign-hair samples had been collected from several of the bodies, but in most cases where hair was collected, several varieties were found. There was no way to tell that any particular hair came from the killer—or, indeed, that any of the hair was his. Connell had tried to get the existing hair samples cross-matched, but some of it had been either destroyed or lost, or the bureaucratic tangles were so intense that nothing had yet been done. Lucas made a note to search for hair crosses on Wannemaker and Joan Smits. All were relatively recent, with autopsies done by first-rate medical examiners.
    Closing the file, Lucas got out of his chair and wandered around to stare sightlessly out the window, working it through his head. The man never left anything unique. Hair, so far, was the only possibility: they needed a match, and needed it badly. They had nothing else that would tie a specific man to a specific body. Nothing at all.
    The phone rang. “This is Meagan. I’ve got somebody who remembers the killer. . . .”

8
    LATE IN THE afternoon, sun warm on the city sidewalks. Greave didn’t want to go. “Look, I’m not