Part 16 (1/2)

”I really can't recall. The name's not familiar,” Porter said, but his eyes drifted deliberately toward the hall. A door had a hand-lettered sign that said Men.

”Well, we'll get out of your way, then,” Carrigan said. ”I'll just take a leak, if you don't mind.”

Lucas had moved until his back was to a Grain Belt clock and where he could still block the door. His pistol was clipped to his back belt line, and he put one hand on his hip, as if impatient about waiting for Carrigan. A voice said, ”Cops out back,” and another voice asked, ”What's that mean?”

Carrigan stepped down the hall, went past the door, then stepped back and pulled it open.

And smiled. ”Hey,” he called to Lucas, smiling, surprised. ”Guess what? Lawrence is right here. Sittin' on the potty.”

A whine came out of the room: ”Shut that door, man. I'm doing my business. Please?”

The voice sounded like something from a bad sitcom. After a moment of silence, somebody in the living room laughed, a single, throaty, feminine laugh, and suddenly the entire bar fell out, the patrons roaring. Even Porter put his forehead down on his bar, laughing. Lucas laughed a little, not too much, and relaxed.

LAWRENCE WAS THIN, almost emaciated. At twenty, he'd lost his front teeth, both upper and lower, and he made wet slurping sounds when he spoke: ”. . . I don't know, slurp, it was dark. Blue and white, I think, slurp. And he had a beard. s.h.i.+tkicker wheels on the truck.”

”Real big?”

”Yeah, real big. Somebody say he had running boards? Slurp. I don't think he had running boards. Maybe he did, but I didn't see any. He was a white guy, but he had a beard. Dark beard.”

”Beard,” Connell said.

”How come you're sure he was a white guy?” Lawrence frowned, as if working out a puzzle, then brightened. ”Because I saw his hands. He was takin' a pinch, man. He was tootin', that's why I looked at him.”

”c.o.ke?”

”Gotta be,” Lawrence said. ”Ain't nothing else looks like that, you know, when you're trying to toot while you're walkin' or doin' something else. Slurp. You just get a pinch and you put it up there. That's what he was doin'. And I saw his hands.”

”Long hair, short?” Connell asked.

”Couldn't tell.”

”b.u.mper stickers, license plates, anything?” asked Lucas.

Lawrence c.o.c.ked his head, lips pursed. ”Nooo, didn't notice anything like that, slurp.”

”Didn't see much, did you?” said Carrigan.

”I told you he was tootin',” Lawrence said defensively. ”I told you he was white.”

”Big f.u.c.kin' deal. That's Minneapolis outside, if you ain't noticed,” Carrigan said. ”There are approximately two point five million white people walking around.”

”Ain't my fault,” Lawrence said.

Red-and-white truck, or maybe blue-and-white, maybe with silver running boards, but then again, maybe not. c.o.kehead. White. A beard.

”Let's send him downtown and take him through the whole thing,” Lucas said to Carrigan. ”Get him on tape.”

THEY WENT BACK to the scene, but nothing had changed except that the sun had come up and the world had a pale, frosted look. Crime scene was videotaping the area, and trucks from TV3 and Channel 8 hung down the block.

”Your pals from TV3,” Lucas said, poking Connell with an elbow.

”c.o.c.kroaches,” she said.

”C' mon.” He looked back at the truck. A dark-haired woman waved. He waved back.

”They make entertainment out of murder, rape, p.o.r.nography, pain, disease,” Connell said. ”There's nothing bad that happens to humans that they can't make a cartoon out of.”

”You didn't hesitate to go to them.”

”Of course not,” she said calmly. ”They're c.o.c.kroaches, but they're a fact of life, and they do have their uses.”

11.

CONNELL WANTED TO hear the interview with Lawrence, and to press the medical examiner on the Marcy Lane autopsy. Lucas let her go, looked at his watch. Weather would be leaving home in fifteen minutes; he couldn't make it before she left. He drove back to the Perkins where they'd met the squad, bought a paper, and ordered pancakes and coffee.

Junky Doog dominated the Strib's front page: two stories, a feature and a harder piece. The hard story began, ”A leading suspect in a series of midwestern s.e.x slay ings was arrested in Dakota County yesterday. . . .” The feature said, ”Junky Doog lived under a tree at a Dakota County landfill, and one by one cut off the fingers of his left hand, and the toes. . . .”

”Good story.” A pair of legs-nice legs-stopped by the table. Lucas looked up. A celebrity smiled down at him. He recognized her but couldn't immediately place her. ”Jan Reed,” she said. ”With TV3? Could I join you for a cup?”

”Sure. . . .” He waved at the seat opposite. ”I can't tell you much.”

”The camera guys said you were pretty good about us,” Reed said.

Reed was older than most TV reporters, probably in her middle thirties, Lucas thought. Like all of the latest crop of on-camera newswomen, she was strikingly attractive, with large dark eyes, auburn hair falling to her shoulders, and just a hint of the fas.h.i.+onable overbite. Lucas had suggested to Weather that a surgeon was making a fortune somewhere, turning out TV anchors with bee-stung lips and overbites. Weather told him that would be unethical; the next day, though, she said she'd been watching, and there were far too many overbites on local television to be accounted for by simple jaw problems.

”Why is that?” she'd asked. She seemed really interested.

Lucas said, ”You don't know?”

”No. I don't,” she said. She looked at him skeptically. ”You're gonna tell me it's something dirty?”

”It's because it makes guys think about b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs,” Lucas said.

”You're lying to me,” Weather said, one hand on her hip.

”Honest to G.o.d,” Lucas said. ”That's what it is.”

”This society is out of luck,” Weather said. ”I'm sorry, but we're going down the tubes. b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs.”

JAN REED SIPPED her coffee and said, ”One of our sources says it's the serial killer. We saw Officer Connell there, of course, so it's a reasonable presumption. Will you confirm it?”

Lucas thought about it, then said, ”Listen, I hate talking on the record. It gets me in trouble. I'll give you a little information, if you just lay it off on an unnamed source.”

”Done,” she said, and she stuck her hand out. Lucas shook it: her hand was soft, warm. She smiled, and that made him feel even warmer. She was attractive.

Lucas gave her two pieces of information: that the victim was female and white, and that investigators believed it was the work of the same man who killed Wannemaker.