Night Prey

mom.”
    A woman rolled right through the police line, and when a cop reached out toward her, she turned around and snapped something that stopped him short, and she came on.
    “What’re you doing here?” she demanded.
    “Talking to your son,” Carrigan said, facing her. “He’s a witness to a crime.”
    “He’s never been in no trouble,” the woman said.
    “He’s not in any trouble now,” Connell said. “He might’ve seen a killer—a white man. He’s just trying to remember what else he might’ve seen.”
    “He’s not in no trouble?” She was suspicious.
    Connell shook her head. “He’s helping out.”
    “Momma, you oughta see that girl,” Dex said, swallowing. He looked back toward the bush. The girl’s hip was just visible from where they were standing. He looked back at Carrigan. “The truck had those steps on the sides, you know, what do they call them?”
    “Running boards?” Lucas suggested.
    Dex nodded. “That’s it. Silver running boards.”
    “Chevy, Ford?”
    “Shoot, man, they all look the same to me. Wouldn’t have one, myself. . . .”
    “What color was the camper?”
    The kid had to think about it. “Dark,” he said finally.
    “What else?”
    He scratched behind one ear, looked at his mother, then shook his head. “Just some white dude dumping garbage, is what I thought.”
    “Were you alone when you saw him?” Lucas asked.
    He swallowed again and glanced at his mother. His mother saw it and slapped his back, hard. “You tell.”
    “I saw a guy named Lawrence was up here,” he said.
    His mother put her hands on her hips. “You with Lawrence?”
    “I wasn’t with Lawrence, Momma. I just saw him up here, is all. I wasn’t with him.”
    “You goddamn better not be with him or I throw your butt outa the house. You know what I told you,” his mother said, angry. She looked at Carrigan and said, “Lawrence a pusher.”
    “Lawrence his first name or his last name?” Carrigan asked.
    “Lawrence Wright.”
    “Lawrence Wright? I know him,” Carrigan said. “ ’Bout twenty-two or -three, tall skinny guy, used to wear a sailor hat all the time?”
    “That’s him,” the woman said. “Trash. He comes from a long line of trash. Got a trashy mother and all his brothers are trash,” she said. She smacked the kid on the back again. “You hanging around with that trash?”
    “Where’d he go?” Lucas asked. “Lawrence?”
    “He was around here until they found the body,” Dex said, looking around as if he might see the missing man. “Then he left.”
    “Did he see the white guy?” Connell asked.
    Dex shrugged. “I wasn’t with him. But he was closer than me. He was walking up this way when the white dude went out of the park. I saw the white dude lookin’ at him.”
    Lucas looked at Carrigan. “We need to get to this Lawrence right now.”
    “Does he smoke?” Carrigan asked Dex.
    Dex shrugged, but his mother said, “He smokes. He’s all the time walking around with his head up in the sky with that crack shit.”
    “We gotta get him,” Lucas said again.
    “I don’t know where he hangs out, I just knew him from the neighborhood when I was working dope five years ago,” Carrigan said uncertainly. “I could call a guy, Alex Drucker, works dope up here.”
    “Get him,” Lucas said.
    Carrigan glanced at his watch and chuckled. “Four-thirty. Drucker’s been in bed about two hours now. He’ll like this.”
    As Carrigan went back to his car, one of the crime-scene crew came over and said, “No cigarettes from tonight, just old bits and pieces.”
    “Forget it,” Lucas said. “We’re told she was dumped an hour ago. Might check the street from here back to . . . Nah, fuck it. We know who did it.”
    “We’ll check,” the crime-scene guy said. “Camels. . . .”
    “Unfiltered,” Lucas said. He turned to the mother. “We need to send Dex downtown with an officer to make a statement, and maybe get him to describe this guy for an artist. We’ll bring him back. Or, if you want, you can ride along.”
    “Ride along?”
    “If you want.”
    “I better do that,” she said. “He’s not in trouble?”
    “He’s not in trouble.”
     
     
     
    CARRIGAN CAME BACK. “Nobody at Drucker’s place. No answer.”
    “The guy’s known around here—why don’t we walk down to the corner and ask?”
    Carrigan looked down to the corner, then back to Lucas and Connell. “You two are pretty white to be askin’ favors from them.”
    Lucas