Prey: Night Prey Part 20

"I doubt it," Lucas said, shaking his head. "This is a defendant's interview room. If they got caught, they'd be in deep s.h.i.+t."

Price looked around at the pale walls, as though trying to spot a microphone. "I gotta take the chance," he said.

"On what?" Lucas asked, letting the skepticism ride in his voice.

Price leaned toward him again, talking in a harsh whisper. "At my trial I said I saw another con in the bookstore. A guy with a beard and PPP on his hand. Prison tattoo, ballpoint ink and straight pin. n.o.body ever found him."

"That's why we're here," Lucas said. "We're trying to track the guy."

"Yeah, well, it wasn't PPP," Price said. He looked around at the walls again, then back to Lucas. He was literally sweating, his hammered forehead glistening in the lights. "Jesus Christ. You can't tell anybody."

"What?"

"I've seen the tattoo again. It wasn't PPP. I was looking at it upside down, and got it backwards. It was 666."

"Yeah? What is it-some kind of cult?"

"No, no," Price whispered. "It's the G.o.dd.a.m.n Seeds."

Now Lucas dropped his voice. "You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure. There are four or five of them in here right now. That's what's got me nervous. If they knew I was talking about them, I'd be a dead motherf.u.c.ker. The 666 comes from Bad Seeds; that used to be the bikers."

"Can you describe him?"

"I can do better than that. His name is Joe Hillerod."

"How'd you get that?" They were both talking in whispers now, and Lucas had picked up Price's habit of scanning the walls.

"They brought me up here, and after I got through orientation and went into the population, one of the first guys I see, s.h.i.+t, I thought it was him. They looked just f.u.c.kin' exactly alike. The guy even had the same tattoo."

"This is the Joe guy?"

"No, no, this is Bob. The guy in here was Bob Hillerod, Joe's brother."

"What?"

"See, I started lifting weights, just to get close to this guy. Bob. I find out he's been in for a while-from way before this chick gets killed. And I see he's older than the guy in the store. I couldn't figure it out. But then I hear, Bob's got a brother, six or seven years younger. It's got to be him. Got to be."

Lucas leaned back, his voice rising. "Sounds like bulls.h.i.+t."

"No, no, I swear to Christ. It's him. Joe Hillerod. And this Joe-he's been inside. For s.e.x." Price reached out and touched Lucas's hand. His eyes were wide, frightened.

"s.e.x?"

"Rape."

"Did you ask Bob . . . is it Bob in here?"

"Yeah, Bob was here, Joe was out. Joe is the guy. Bob is out now, but Joe is the guy."

"Did you ask Bob if Joe has the tattoo?"

Price leaned back. "f.u.c.k no. One thing you learn in here is, you don't ask about those f.u.c.kin' tattoos. You just pretend they're not there," he said. "But Joe was inside. He was one of the Seeds. He's got it, I bet. I bet anything."

WHEN CONNELL AND the escort returned, Lucas was taking notes. "Harry Roy Wayne and Gerry Gay Wayne," Price was saying, "They're brothers and they work at the Caterpillar place down there. They'll tell you."

"But that's all you got?" Lucas asked.

"You got everything else." D. Wayne slumped on the couch, smoking a second cigarette. He picked up the pack and put them in his pocket.

"I won't bulls.h.i.+t you," Lucas said. "I don't think that's enough."

"It will be if you catch the right guy," Price said.

"Yeah. If there is one," Lucas said. He stood up and said to Connell, "Unless you've got some more questions, we're outta here."

14.

"WHAT DO WE have?" Connell asked as they waited for the car. She was digging into a pack of chive-flavored potato chips, sixty cents from a machine.

"A h.e.l.l of a coincidence," Lucas said. He told her briefly about Price's nervous statement, and about Del's investigation at the fire, the dead deputy, and the .50-caliber tubes. "So the Seeds are in the Cities."

"And this Joe Hillerod was convicted of rape?"

"Price said s.e.x, so I don't know exactly what it was. If our guy is a member of the Seeds, it'd explain a lot," Lucas said. "Gimme a couple of chips."

She pa.s.sed the pack. "What does it explain?"

Lucas crunched: starch and fat. Excellent. "They've had years of ha.s.sles with the law, they've even got a lawyer on retainer. They know how we operate. They move around all the time, but mostly in the Midwest, the states we're talking about. The gaps in the killings-this Joe guy might have been inside."

"Huh." Connell took the chips back, finished them. "That sounds very good. G.o.d knows, they're crazy enough."

CONNELL MADE A long phone call from the airport, talked to a woman at her office, took some notes. Lucas stood around, looking at nothing, while the pilot avoided him.

"Hillerod lives up near Superior," Connell said when she got off the phone. "He was convicted of aggravated a.s.sault in Chippewa County in March of '86 and served thirteen months. He got out in April of '87. There was a killing in August of '87."

"That's neat. He didn't do any other time?"

"Yeah. A couple of short jail terms, and then in January of '90, he was convicted for s.e.xual a.s.sault and served twenty-three months, and got out a month before Gina Hoff was a.s.saulted in Thunder Bay."

"But wasn't the South Dakota case-"

"Yeah," she said. "It was in '91, while he was inside. But that was the weirdest of all the cases I found. That's where the woman was stabbed as much as ripped. Maybe that was somebody else."

"What's he done since he got out?" Lucas asked.

Connell flipped through her notes. "He was charged with a DWI in '92, but he beat it. And a speeding ticket this year. His last known address was somewhere up around Superior, a town called Two Horse. Current driver's license shows an address in a town called Stedman. My friend couldn't find it on a map, but she called the Carren County sheriff's department, and they say Stedman is a crossroads a couple of miles out of Two Horse."

"Did your friend ask them about the Hillerods?"

"No. I thought we ought to do that in person."

"Good. Let's get our a.s.s back to the Cities. I want to talk to Del before we start messing with the Seeds," Lucas said. He looked across the lounge at the pilot, who was sipping a cup of coffee. "a.s.suming that we make it back."

HALFWAY BACK, LUCAS, with his eyes closed and one hand tight around an overhead grip, said, "Twenty-three months. Couldn't have been much of a rape."

"A rape is a rape," Connell said, an edge in her voice.

"You know what I mean," Lucas said, opening his eyes.

"I know what men mean when they say that," Connell said.

"Kiss my a.s.s," Lucas said. The pilot winced-almost ducked-and Lucas closed his eyes again.

"I'm not interested in putting up with certain kinds of bulls.h.i.+t," Connell said levelly. "A male commentary on rape is one of them. I don't care if the guy back at Waupun calls me a girl, because he's stupid and out of touch. But you're not stupid, and when you imply-"

"I didn't imply jacks.h.i.+t," Lucas said. "But I've known women who were raped who had to think about it before they realized what happened. On the other hand, you get some woman who's been beaten with a bat, her teeth are broken out, her nose is smashed, her ribs are broken, she's gotta have surgery because her v.a.g.i.n.a is ripped open. She doesn't have to think about it. If it's gonna happen, which way would you want it?"

"I don't want it at all," Connell said.

"You don't want death and taxes, either," Lucas said.

"Rape isn't death and taxes."

"All of the big ones are death and taxes," Lucas said. "Murder, rape, robbery, a.s.sault. Death and taxes."

"I don't want to argue," Connell said. "We have to work together."

"No, we don't."

"What, you're gonna dump me because I argue with you?"

Lucas shook his head. "Meagan, I just don't like getting jumped when I say something like, 'It must 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 f.u.c.kin' 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.

"Bulls.h.i.+t."

"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 a.s.shole 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt was missing its b.u.t.tons, and was worn open, showing a giveaway rock-station T-s.h.i.+rt 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.

"a.s.shole'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 a.s.shole?" 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 c.o.ke 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-n.a.z.i s.h.i.+t. 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 ma.s.sage parlors over in Milwaukee and here in the Cities. One of them has a p.o.r.no 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 roust them."