Night Prey

"Yeah, yeah, let's go get it."

Greave, wearing jeans and T-shirt, caught up with them as they walked through the darkened hallways to Anderson's cubicle in homicide. Lucas explained to him as they walked along the hall. "So we'll look at everything Anderson can pump out of his databases. Looking for a cop, or anybody with a prison record, particularly for sex crimes or anything that resembles cat burglary."

At four o'clock in the morning, having found nothing at all, Lucas and Co

"How're you feeling?"

"A little better today. Yesterday wasn't so good."

"Huh." They watched the coffee dribble into a cup, and Lucas didn't know quite what to say. So he said, "There's a lot more paper than I thought there'd be. I hope we can get through it."

"We will," Co

Lucas thought of Weather's ass, gri

"You know, when I first saw you, I thought you were a suit. You know, a suit," she said. "Big guy, kind of neat-looking in a jockstrap way, buys good suits, gets along with the ladies, backslaps the good old boys, and he cruises to the top."

"Change your mind?"

"Partially," she said. She said it pensively, as though it were an academic question. "I still think there might be some of that-but now I think that, in some ways, you're smarter than I am. Not a suit."

Lucas was embarrassed. "I don't think I'm smarter than you are," he mumbled.

"Don't take the compliment too seriously," Co

At six o'clock in the morning, with the flat early light cutting sharp through the window like summer icicles, Greave looked up from a stack of paper, rubbed his reddened eyes, and said, "Here's something pretty interesting."

"Yeah?" Lucas looked up. They had seven possibilities, none particularly inspiring. One cop, one security guard.

"Guy named Robert Koop. He was a prison guard until six years ago. Drives a '92 Chevy S-10, red over white, no security agreement, net purchase price of $17,340."

"Sounds like a possibility," Co

"If he was a prison guard, he probably doesn't have the big bucks," Greave said, as though he were thinking aloud. "He says he works at a gym called Two Guy's…"

"I know the place," Lucas said.

"And he declares income of fifteen thousand a year since he left the prison. Where does he get off driving a new seventeen-thousand-dollar truck? And he paid cash, over a seven-thousand-dollar trade-in."

"Huh." Lucas came over to look at the printout, and Co

"One-fifty for a house and a seventeen-thousand-dollar truck is pretty good, on fifteen thousand a year."

"Probably skips lunch," Greave said.

"Several times a day," Lucas said. "Where's his license information?"

"Right here…" Greave folded over several sheets, found it.

"Five-eight, one-ninety," Lucas said. "Short and heavy."

"Maybe short and strong," Co

"What's his plate number?" Anderson called. His hands were playing across his keyboard. They had limited access to intelligence division's raw data files. Lucas read it off the title application, and Anderson punched it into the computer.

A second later he said, surprise in his voice, "Jesus, we got a hit."

"What?" This was the first they'd had. Lucas and Co

"High-level fence," Lucas said, reading between the lines of the intelligence report. "Somebody who would be moving jewelry, Rolexes, that kind of thing. No stereos or VCRs."

"Maybe he was buying a fireplace," Greave said.

"Couldn't afford one, after the truck," Lucas said. He took his phone book out of his coat pocket, thumbed through it. "Tommy Smythe, Tommy…" He picked up a telephone and dialed, and a moment later said, "Mrs. Smythe? This is Lucas Davenport, Mi

"Divorced," he said to Co

"Who is he?"

"Deputy warden at Stillwater. We went to school together… He's another suit." He dialed again, waited. "Tommy? Lucas Davenport. Yeah, I know what time it is, I've been up all night. Do you remember a guard out at Stillwater, six years ago, named Robert Koop? Resigned?"

Smythe, his voice rusty with sleep, remembered. "… never caught him, but there wasn't any doubt. He was snitched out by two different guys who didn't know each other. We told him we were ready to bring him up on charges; either that, or get out. He got. Our case wasn't strong enough to just to go ahead."

"Okay. Any rumors about sex problems?"

"Nothing that I know of."

"Any co

"Jeez, I can't remember all the details, but yeah. I think the main guy he was dealing to was Art McClatchey, who was a big-time burglar years ago. He fucked up and killed an old lady in one of his burglaries, got caught. That was down in Afton."

"Cat burglar?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Look, anything you can get from records, co

"Do I want to know why you're asking?" Smythe asked.

"Not yet."

"We're not go

"I don't see how," Lucas said. "If there's any chance, I'll give you a ring."

Lucas hung up and said to the others, "He was selling dope to the inmates. Cocaine and speed. One of his main contacts was an old cat burglar named McClatchey."

"Better and better," Co

"We finish the records, just in case we find another candidate. Then we talk to Roux. We want to take a close look at this Koop. But do it real easy."

They finished with eleven possibilities, but Robert Koop was the good one. They put together a file of information from the various state licensing bureaus-car registration, driver's license, an old Washington County carry permit-with what they could get from Department of Revenue and the perso

When he'd worked at Stillwater, Koop had lived in Lakeland. A check with the property tax department in Washington County showed the house where Koop lived was owned by a Lakeland couple; Koop was apparently a renter. A check on the Apple Valley house, through the Dakota County tax collector, suggested that the Apple Valley house was also rented. The current owner showed an address in California, and tax stamps showed a 1980 mortgage of $115,000.

"If the owner's carrying a mortgage of $115,000… let's see, I'm carrying $80,000. Jeez, I can't see that he could be renting it for less than fifteen hundred a month," Greave said. "Koop's income is coming up short."

"Nothing much from the NCIC," Anderson said. "He shows prints from Stillwater, and another set from the Army. I'm working on getting his Army records."

The phone rang and Lucas picked it up, listened, said, "Thanks," and put it back down.

"Roux," he said to Co

They got Sloan and Del to help out, and a panel truck with one-way windows, equipped with a set of scrambled radios from intelligence. Lucas and Co