Chosen Prey (40 page)

"Well, uh, I'm not having a heart attack or anything, but my blood pressure's probably nine hundred over nine hundred. I want to drag that sonofabitch out of that schoolroom. . . . He's a goddamn teacher, Lucas. A teacher ."

"Teachers . . . They're about as messed up as anybody. We've had a few of them over here."

Marshall sat staring out the window, his lips moving, as though he were saying a silent prayer, but he'd heard Lucas, and suddenly smiled and seemed to unwind a notch. "Yeah, you're right. Did I ever tell you about this weird old white-haired teacher from River Falls? I got a friend who's a deputy in the county next door, and he swears it's a true story. . . . Did I tell you this, the story about the guy and the llama and the golf club? No? Anyway . . ."

He had Lucas laughing in two minutes. But Lucas, glancing sideways, could see what seemed like despair hanging in his eyes over the storytelling smile.

THE ARREST HAPPENED almost exactly as Qatar had seen it in his nightmares, give or take a snap-brimmed fedora. He was in his office, and heard the voice and footsteps in the hall--the bustle of people moving, a voice that was hushed. He turned his head, sat up straight, listening. A second later, the door opened and a dark-haired, dark-complected man in a gorgeous charcoal suit opened the door and asked, "James Qatar?"

Behind the man in the suit were two other men, and Burns Goodwin, the college president.

Qatar stood up and tried to look puzzled. "Yes?"

"HE SORTA FREAKED," Lucas told Marcy. "He denied it all and then he started crying--I mean, really weeping. Sobbing. I think it bummed Marshall out. He wanted resistance, and all he got was this mud puddle."

"Where is he? Marshall?"

"Still over at the jail talking with the county attorneys about Wisconsin stuff. If we find anything in the house, there may be a Wisconsin claim."

"What difference does it make? He's gonna get thirty years."

"If we get him. If we don't, but if we have something from Wisconsin, that could be another trial."

After talking to Marcy, Lucas walked down to tell Rose Marie about the arrest.

"Another notch," she said.

"If we get him. Towson is worried that Randy's identification might be a little shaky."

"Ah, we got him," she said. "With Randy and the jewelry, with Qatar's access to all the victims, with the Wisconsin school record . . . we've got him."

He went back to Marcy. "I'm gonna go over to Qatar's house, see what's going on there," he told her. "Then I'm gonna go home and take a nap. Fuck around the with car. Let me know."

The phone rang, and she held up a finger, picked it up, listened, and said, "Just a moment. I'll see if he's in." She pushed the hold button and asked, "It's that Culver guy. He says he really needs to talk to you."

"Let me have that." He took the phone and said, "Lucas Davenport."

"Chief Davenport, listen, did you take Ellen somewhere? I mean, do you know where she is?"

"No--she was at her place the last time I saw her. What's going on?"

"I haven't seen her. Usually she comes over for a cup of coffee or I go over to her place, but it's all locked up. Now a bunch of women are milling around outside. They were supposed to have a quilting class, and they say whenever she's had to cancel a class she's called them. She doesn't answer her phone. I can't see inside very well because of the one-way stuff, but I can see a little, and it looks like some stuff has been tipped over or thrown around."

"Stay right there," Lucas said. "I'm on my way." He dropped the phone, looked around for Del, a little wild-eyed, said "Fuck," and headed for the door.

"What? What?" Marcy yelled after him. "Where're you going?"

"Call the dispatcher and tell them I want a squad, right now, out front. . . . Right now," he shouted back. He was running down the hallway when he saw Marshall carrying a carton of yogurt and a cup of coffee.

"Terry, c'mon, Terry . . ." He kept running, and Marshall ran carefully after him, calling, "What happened, what happened?"

A squad was cutting across the street toward the front entrance, the driver waving at Lucas. Lucas caught the front door and Marshall piled in the back. Lucas said, "Go that way, across the Hennepin Bridge, lights and siren." The driver nodded, and they took off, slicing through the traffic like a shark. When they were moving, he turned to look at Marshall in the backseat and said, "Nobody can find Ellen Barstad. The Culver guy from next door says it looks like the place is a little torn up inside."

"No, no." Marshall was shocked. "Not that girl--we've been following him, he couldn't have."

"Maybe it's nothing."

Lucas began giving directions to the driver as they made the turn onto Hennepin, and then Marshall said, "But this feels really bad. This feels bad."

"She's from outstate somewhere. Maybe she got freaked and went home."

"No, I don't think so. This has got that bad feeling about it."

Lucas nodded. "Yeah, it does."

THEY WERE HALFWAY there when Del called: "What the hell's going on?"

Lucas told him in three sentences, and Del said, "I'll see you there."

THEY PULLED INTO the parking lot in front of Culver's shop ten minutes after Lucas and Culver spoke on the phone. Lucas hopped out, spotted Culver talking to two elderly women, and walked over, Marshall a step behind. "Is there a landlord? Who has the keys?"

"There's a manager, but he goes around between buildings. I've got a cell phone."

"Call him and see where he's at," Lucas said.

Culver hurried into his shop. Marshall was already pressing his face to the silvered glass on the door. "He's right, it looks like some stuff is turned over," he said.

Lucas pressed his face to the door and cupped his hands around his eyes. One of the quilt frames had been knocked onto the floor. "Goddamnit." He stepped back, and over to the door of Culver's place. Culver was walking toward him with a cell phone to his ear. He was saying, "Where're you at? We need to get in."

Lucas asked, "Where?"

Culver said, "He's in Hopkins. He can be here in twenty minutes."

"Fuck that," Lucas said. "Have you got something we can break the glass with?"

"Here," Marshall said. He reached under his jacket and produced a large-frame .357 Magnum. He pointed the weapon to one side, as though he'd done this before, stood close to the glass, and punched it with the butt of the gun. The punch knocked a dollar-size hole in the glass. He gave it another light whack and a piece of glass broke out. Marshall carefully reached through the hole and flipped the inside lock.

Lucas led the way in. The frame was on the floor and . . .

"Step easy," he said sharply. He pointed at the track of blood.

"Ah, no, ah, man . . ." Marshall turned to the door, where Culver was standing, and said, "Stay out of here. Keep everybody out."

They walked carefully through the blood spots--"Looks like an impact spray," Lucas muttered--to the door of the living quarters. Lucas put one finger high on the door, muttered "Don't touch" to Marshall, and pushed it open.

ELLEN BARSTAD WAS lying by the sink. She was fully clothed and she was dead. No strangulation, this: Her head lay in a puddle of congealed blood, with patches of dried blood around it. The back of her head appeared to be torn off. Lucas said, "All right, let's get some people on the way." He glanced at Marshall. Marshall's eyes were closed and he had one hand pressed against the middle of his face, the heel of his hand under his chin, the fingers pressed against his forehead. "Terry?"

"Yeah, yeah . . . Goddamnit, Lucas, I think we did this to her."

Lucas swallowed once, trying to get rid of the sour taste in his throat, shook his head. Looked down the length of the kitchen and saw a hammer. "Weapon," he said.

Marshall took his hands away from his face. "Had to be something like that to do the damage." He was closer, and stepped over next to it. "It looks like it's been wiped. I can see streaks, like . . . paper towel."

"Let's get out of here before we fuck something up," Lucas said. "Get the lab guys going."

Del arrived five minutes later and saw them outside, duct-taping a piece of cardboard over the hole in the glass door. They were just finishing as he came up, and he looked from Marshall to Lucas and said, "Don't tell me."

"She's gone," Lucas said. Del stepped toward the door and Lucas said, "Watch the blood in the work area. Don't touch the door going into the back."

Del disappeared inside, came back a minute later. His face carried the same expression as Marshall's.

"When did he do it?"

"Looks like last night," Lucas said. "The blood puddles had started to dry out. Maybe we can get a temperature and tell that way. We taped over the door to try to keep the ambient the same inside."

"Christ, he looks like he freaked out," Del said. "Looks like he chased her from the front door, maybe picked up that hammer off the frame--"

Lucas interrupted. "Sure it was hers?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure--I saw it sitting there the other day, and the one I saw isn't there anymore. Picked it up, took a swing, cut her, but she made it into the back."

"Hope the motherfucker pushed that door open with his hand," Lucas said. "That's the way you'd do it--run right in there and push it back with your hand."

"Problem is, he's been here," Marshall said. "We got movies of it. If he hit the door with his hand, he could say he did it some other time."

"Yeah, but if there one's big brand-new print on the door, it'll be a brick. Goddamnit to hell, why didn't we get her out of the way? Why didn't we get her out?"

"Why'd he do it? This isn't anything like he did the others."

"It's like he did Neumann," Lucas said.

"If he did Neumann. That could be hard to prove by itself," Del said.

"Hey, who the fuck's side are you on?" Lucas asked, the anger surging up.

"I'm on your fuckin' side, but I'm thinking about the trial," Del snapped. "That's what I'm worried about. We've got Randy the coke freak, and we've got these unconnected killings at St. Pat's that are all close to him, but none of them are in the style of the gravedigger's, and what's worse . . ."

"What's worse?" Lucas snapped back.

"What's worse is, we had a guy watching him when he had to be over here killing her," Del said, jabbing a finger at Lucas. "How'd he do that, smart guy? What's gonna happen when they get that into court, with a second-man theory? If you take Randy out of the equation, we ain't got squat, and Randy has a good reason to tell us anything we want him to. You think Qatar's lawyer won't make a big deal out of that?"

"Ah, Jesus," Lucas said.

"That is what the lawyers will say," Marshall said. "We can't lose this guy. There's no way."

"We won't. Gonna hang the motherfucker," Lucas said.

THEY ALL STAYED, all the way through the crime-scene work, through the removal of the body, snarling at each other from time to time, all of them in dark moods. Lucas talked to Rose Marie twice, by phone, keeping her up to date, and to Marcy. When it seemed as if nothing new would be found at Barstad's, Lucas asked Del, "You got a car, right? Didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Let's go on over to Qatar's house. They oughta still be working on it. Let's see what they got."

"I'll tell you one thing--he maybe cleaned up after himself pretty good over here, but he had blood on him when he left," Marshall said. "Bloody coat, bloody pants, bloody shoes--there's gotta be something."

ON THE WAY to Qatar's, Marshall seemed to shrink in the back. "You all right?" Lucas asked.

Marshall started talking, rambling. "My old lady died the second year we were married. She was pregnant at the time. Hit a bridge one day, there was some snow on the road, just a little bit. She was racing my sister to see which one was gonna have a kid first; they both got pregnant at the same time, and it was neck and neck . . . 'cept my old lady never got to the finish line."

"Never remarried?" Del asked.

"Never had the heart for it," he said. "I still talk to June every night before I go to bed. When Laura was growing up, she was just like a daughter to me; I was over there just about every day. When she got taken off, there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it. Big cop in town, knew everything about everything, couldn't find my own goddamn daughter. . . ."

He went on for a while, and Lucas felt Del glance at him just as he looked at Del. Unspoken thought here, as they listened to Marshall ramble: Whoa.

QATAR'S HOUSE WAS neat and beautifully decorated. A crime-scene specialist named Greg Webster was running the crew who were looking at the house, and when he saw Lucas, Marshall, and Del on the walk leading to the porch, he stopped outside and said, "I heard."

"You got anything useful?"

"Not much. We did find a set of women's earrings in his chest of drawers. They look pretty good, so they might be a possibility. We have to check with all the victims we've identified so far. . . . Have you talked to Sandy MacMillan? I heard she got something up at his office."