Night Prey

not have been much of a rape,’ and you know what I’m talking about. I mean, there must not have been a lot of obvious violence with the rape, or they would have given him more time. Our killer is ripping these women. He might be smoking a cigarette while he’s doing it. He’s a fuckin’ monster. If he rapes somebody, he’s not gonna be subtle about it. I don’t know the details of this rape, but twenty-three months doesn’t sound like our man.”
    “You just don’t want it to be that easy,” Connell said.
    “Bullshit.”
    “I’m serious. I keep getting the feeling you’re playing some kind of weird game, looking for this guy. I’m not. I want to nail the asshole any way I can. If it’s easy, that’s good. If it’s hard, that’s okay too, as long as we put him in a cage.”
    “Fine. But stay out of my face, huh?”
     
     
     
    DEL WAS SITTING on the City Hall steps, elbows on his knees, smoking a Lucky Strike. He was watching red ants crawl out of a crack in the sidewalk. His hair was too long and plastered down with something that might have been lard. He wore an olive-drab army shirt with faded spots on the sleeves where sergeant’s stripes had been removed, and a fading name tag over the right pocket that said “Halprin,” which wasn’t his name. The army shirt was missing its buttons, and was worn open, showing a giveaway rock-station T-shirt that said “KQ Sucks.” Tattered khaki pants with dirt on the knees and black canvas sneakers completed his outfit. The sneaks had a hole near the base of his right big toe, and through the hole, the visible skin was as grimy as the shoes.
    “Dude,” he said, his head bobbing as Lucas and Connell came up. He had the nervous submissiveness of somebody who has eaten out of garbage cans for too many years.
    Connell walked past him with a glance. When Lucas stopped, she said, “C’mon.”
    Lucas, hands in his pockets, nodded at Del. “What’re you doing?”
    “Watchin’ ants,” Del said.
    “What else?”
    Connell, who’d gotten as far as the door, drifted back toward them.
    “Asshole’s getting out in a few minutes. I want to see who picks him up.” Del snapped the cigarette into the street and looked up at Lucas. “Who’s the chick?”
    “Meagan Connell. Investigator with the state,” Lucas said.
    Connell said, “Lucas, we’re in a hurry, remember?”
    Lucas said, “Meagan. Meet Del Capslock.”
    She looked down, and Del looked up and said, “How do.”
    “You’re a . . .” She couldn’t find the right word.
    “A police officer, yes, ma’am, but there’s been some bureaucratic foul-up and I ain’t been paid the last few years.”
    “You gotta see this asshole?” Lucas asked him.
    “Don’t gotta.”
    “Then come on inside. We’re doing this thing. . . .”
    “Yeah?”
    “The Seeds came up.”
     
     
     
    DEL HAD A database on the Seeds known to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois police agencies. Joe Hillerod came in for twenty lines. “His brother Bob is heavily involved,” Del said, scanning a computer file. “He transported drugs out of the port, down here and over to Chicago and maybe St. Louis, for some medium-time dealers. He didn’t retail himself, not at the time, although he might be now. Then he had some hookers working all the big truck stops around Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Joe . . . the information says he mostly drove for his older brother but wasn’t much of a businessman. Apparently he’s a wild one; likes women and good times. And he seems to be the enforcer when they need one.”
    “What’re they doing now?” Connell asked.
    “Small-time retailing coke and crank through the roadhouses up there. And they’ve got a salvage yard outside of Two Horse.”
    “Any chance that they were involved with those fifty-cals you found?” Lucas asked.
    Del shook his head doubtfully. “The Seeds have a bunch of little splinter groups. The fifty-cal guys are into this weird right-wing white-supremacy Christian-Nazi shit. And they’re mostly holdup guys and armored car guys. The Hillerods are a different splinter, mostly based around the old biker gang the Bad Seeds. They’re dope and women. A couple of them supply women to the massage parlors over in Milwaukee and here in the Cities. One of them has a porno store in Milwaukee.”
    Lucas scratched his head and looked at Connell, who’d been peering over Del’s shoulder. “I guess the only way we’re gonna find out is go up there and