Rules of Prey

to his car, sat in the driver’s seat, and pagedquickly through the paper. There was another story about the killings on page three, comparing them to a similar string of killings in Utah. Nothing more. He turned back to the front page.
    Hog farmer, it said.
    He would not permit it.

CHAPTER
17
    Daniel leaned far back in his chair, the eraser end of a yellow pencil pressed against his lower teeth, watching Sloan. Anderson and Lester slumped in adjacent chairs. Lucas paced.
    “What you’re saying is, we got nothing,” Daniel said when the detective finished.
    “Nothing we can use to bag the guy,” Sloan said. “When we find him, we’ve got information we can use to pin him down. We could even run him by Jefferson Sparks, see if he rings a bell. But we don’t have anything to point at him.”
    “What about driver’s licenses? Did we get that?”
    Anderson shook his head. “They don’t track incoming state licenses by individual names.”
    Lucas paced at the perimeter of the room. “What about those post offices?”
    “We’re getting some returns. Too many of them. We’ve had a hundred and thirty-six moves so far, covering the past two years, and we’ve only heard from post offices covering maybe a tenth of the population we’re looking at. If that rate holds up, we’ll get about fourteen hundred names. We’re also finding out that the most likely moves are young single males. Probably a third of them in that category. That’s something like five hundred suspects. And all of it rests on the idea that the guy’s maybe got an accent.”
    “And if he moved here three years ago, instead of in the last two, we’re fucked anyway,” said Daniel.
    “But it’s something,” Lucas insisted. “How many of the ones that you have so far are single males? Assuming that’s what we want to look at?”
    “Thirty-eight of the hundred and thirty-six. But some of those apparently moved here with women or moved in with a woman after they got here, or are old. We’ve had a couple of guys doing a quick scan of the names, and there are about twenty-two that fit all the basic criteria: young, single, male, unattached.”
    “White-collar?” asked Lucas.
    “All but two. People don’t move here for blue-collar jobs. There are more jobs in Texas, and less cold,” Anderson said.
    “So what are we talking about?” Daniel asked.
    “Well, we’re talking about checking these twenty-two. We should be able to eliminate half or better, just walking around. Then we’ll focus tighter on the rest of them. ’Course, we’ll have new names coming in all the time.”
    “Lucas? Anything else?”
    Lucas took another turn at the back of the room. He had talked to Daniel the night before about the phone call from the maddog, and told the others at the start of the meeting. He’d taped the call. He was taping all calls now. First thing in the morning, he’d taken a copy of the tape to the university and tracked down a couple of linguists to listen to it.
    They had called Daniel during the meeting: Texas, one of them said. The other was not quite so certain. Texas, or some other limited sections of the Southwest. The eastern corner of New Mexico, maybe, around White Sands. Oklahoma and Arkansas were out.
    “His accent has a strong overlay of the Midwest,” the second linguist said. “There’s this one line, ‘I’m going to go look at her now.’ If you listen closely, break it down, what he really says is ‘I’m-unna go look at her now.’ That’s a midwesternism. Upper Midwest, north central. So I think he’s been here awhile. Not so long that he’s completely lost his southwestern accent, but long enough to get an overlay.”
    “Ah,” Lucas said. The detectives were looking at him curiously. “Last night, I was watching Channel Eight. McGowan comes on and she has this piece about the pig farmer. So the maddog calls forty-five minutes later. I checked with the Pioneer Press and the Star-Tribune to seewhat time the first editions came out—they both carried follows on the McGowan story. None of them were out when the maddog called.”
    “So he saw it on TV,” Anderson said.
    “And I’ve been thinking about McGowan,” Lucas said. “She fits the type the maddog’s been going after . . .”
    “Ah, Jesus Christ,” Daniel blurted.
    “There was something about that call. There’s something special about this ‘chosen’ one he talks about. I feel it.”
    “You think he might go after