Stolen Prey

minute?”
    “Yeah, I’m just riding around with Roger Morris. He’s wearing a hot-pink short-sleeved dress shirt.”
    “Tell him he looks fabulous,” Flowers said.
    Lucas passed the word, then said, “Roger gives you the sign of the horns, and knowing your second ex-wife, he’s probably right. Anyhow…”
    “I found out that there are roughly a million riding stables out here, or people with horses, anyway,” Flowers said. “Using my quick intellect, I called up everybody I knew, and I’m starting to get some serious vibes from the Waseca area. Horse people there have seen them. Hauling horse shit on an old Ford flatbed.”
    “Man, that’s terrific,” Lucas said. “What’s next?”
    “I’m going over there, talk to the various sheriffs, the county agents, anybody else. I don’t have anything definite, though—I’m basically checking in. Wanted you to know I’m not out fishing, even though it is Saturday, and my day off.”
    “Hey, Virgil—find them for me. Honest to God, I’ll introduce you to one of my old girlfriends.”
    “Thanks anyway,” Flowers said. “But she’d be too old for me. I’ll call you tonight or tomorrow, soon as I get anything.”
    “Too old? What the hell…” Flowers was gone.
    “What’s that?” Morris said, when Lucas rang off.
    “Best news I’ve had all summer,” Lucas said, as they turned into Zapp’s parking lot.
    Z APP’S PIZZA was a tightly run ship, with good pizza and bread, a bunch of red-vinyl booths in the back, along with a half dozen tables, and, this early in the morning, an empty salad bar. The owner, John Sappolini, was not happy about the napkin, but had no trouble talking to police. “Half the cops in St. Paul eat here,” he said.
    He’d once told Lucas that he called the place Zapp’s because his Wells Fargo small-business counselor suggested he not call it Sapp’s.
    Sappolini had two crews working eight-hour shifts, from ten o’clock in the morning until two o’clock in the morning, with the restaurant open from eleven o’clock until one. After the call from Morris, he’d called both crews in. He had the first ones brew up a few gallons of coffee, and Lucas and Morris sat at one of the tables and everybody pulled chairs around to talk about the situation; Rivera and Martínez sat out on the edge.
    They’d been talking for fifteen minutes, with late-arriving members of the crew straggling in as they talked. One of the last ones in was a short, wide-shouldered man who listened for one minute and then said, “There was a short Mexican kid in here yesterday afternoon with a gun in his belt. I think.”
    Lucas looked at him and asked, “You think?”
    “Couldn’t see it because he was wearing an iguana shirt,” the man said.
    “Guayabera,” Morris said.
    The guy shook his head. “No, iguana. It’s like a golf shirt, but instead of like that polo pony, you know, it had an iguana on it.”
    “Yes, they sell them in Mexico, on the coast,” Rivera said.
    The pizza guy said, “See?”
    “
Sí
,” Rivera said.
    “So what else about him?” Lucas asked.
    “He was just a kid, and he was looking for a place to pray while he waited for the pizzas, so I sent him down to the cathedral. He went, or at least he said he went, and he said he saw the big windows, and Jesus spoke to him.”
    “Spoke to him,” Lucas repeated.
    “Yeah, he said Jesus spoke to him, and Jesus told him he was going to die soon.”
    Morris looked at Lucas, and they simultaneously shrugged. From the back, Rivera asked, “How many pizzas did he buy?”
    “Two. Extra large.”
    Rivera said, “Enough for three or four.”
    The pizza guy didn’t know whether the kid had arrived on foot or had come by car, but had the impression that he’d been on foot. “I don’t know why, it’s just an impression.”
    Morris: “Is a cold-blooded killer going to church? I don’t think so.”
    “But you’d be wrong,” Rivera said. “Some of these bangers, they go to church every Sunday and pray for their souls. And because their mothers make them go.”
    “Then, if he is one of the guys, they’d be holed up around here somewhere,” Morris said. They all looked out the window.
    “I’ll tell you what,” Lucas said, when they looked back. “We’ve probably got DNA on these guys, we probably have at least onefingerprint and maybe more, they’ve committed at least five torture-murders of the worst kind. If we catch them, they’re going away forever, so