The arraignment was the last of the morning. The maddog arrived early and slipped onto a back bench in the courtroom. The judge was looking down at a young girl in jeans and a white blouse.
“How old are you, Miss Brown?”
“Eighteen, judge.”
The judge sighed. “Miss Brown, if you are sixteen, I would be distinctly surprised.”
“No, sir, I’m eighteen, three weeks past—”
“Be quiet, Miss Brown.” The judge thumbed through the charge papers as the prosecuting and defense attorneys sat patiently behind their tables. The girl had large doe-eyes, very beautiful, but her face was touched with acne and her long brown hair hung limply around her narrow shoulders. Her eyes were her best point, the maddog decided. They were frightened but knowing. The maddog watched her as she stood shifting from foot to foot, casting sideways glances at her public defender.
The judge looked over at the prosecutor. “One prior, same deal?”
“Same deal, Your Honor. Eight months ago. She’s been home since then, but her mother threw her out again. The caseworker says her mom’s deep into the coke.”
“What are you going to do if I let you out, Miss Brown?” the judge asked.
“Well, I’ve made up with my mom and I think I’m going to earn some money so I can go to college next quarter. I want to major in physical therapy.”
The judge looked down at his papers and the maddog thought he might be trying to hide a smile. Eventually he lifted his head, sighed again, and looked at the public defender, who shrugged.
“Child protection?” the judge asked the prosecutor.
“They sent her to a foster home the last time, but the foster mother wouldn’t have her after a couple of days,” he said.
The judge shook his head and went back to reading the papers.
She was quite a sensual thing in her own way, the maddog decided, watching her nervously lick her lips. A natural victim, the kind who would trigger an attack by a wolf.
The judge at last decided that nothing could be done. He fined her one hundred and fifty dollars on a guilty plea to soliciting for prostitution.
Barin, the twit, showed up just as the case was being disposed. An hour later, when the maddog walked back to the clerk’s office, the Heather Brown file was in the return basket. He slipped it out and read through it, noted that she was picked up on South Hennepin. Heather Brown’s real name was Gloria Ammundsen. She had been on the street for a year or more. The maddog noted with interest in a narrative section that she had offered the arresting officer a variety of entertainments, including bondage and water sports.
The maddog took his extra work home, but couldn’t get anything done. He made a quick supper—sliced ham, fruit, a half-squash. Still agitated, he went out to his car and drove downtown, parked, and walked. Through Loring Park, where the gays cruised and broke and rebroke in their small groups. Over to Hennepin Avenue, and south, away from town. Punks on the street, watching him pass. One kid with a mohawk and dirty black jacket, unconscious on a pile of discarded carpet outside a drugstore. Skinheads with swastikas tattooed on their scalps. Suburban kids hanging out, trying to look tough with cigarettes and black makeup.
A few hookers. Not too obvious, not flagging down cars, but there along the streets for anyone who needed their services.
He looked at them carefully, walking by. All young. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, he thought. Fewer sixteen, even fewer eighteen. Very few older. The older ones were the quick-blow-job-in-the-doorway sort, dregs so battered by the street, so unable to get inside, to a sauna, a back room, that they were little more than wet, mindless warm spots in the night, open to any sort of abuse that happened along.
He spotted Heather Brown outside a fast-food restaurant. Most of the hookers were blonde, either natural or bottle. Heather, with her dark hair, reminded him of . . . Who? He didn’t know, though it seemed a shadow was back there in his memory. In the night, away from the fluorescent lights of the courtroom, she was prettier.
Except for her eyes. Her eyes had been alive in the courtroom. Out here they had the thousand-yard stare found in battle-fatigue cases. She wore a black blouse, a thigh-length black leather skirt, open-toed high heels, and carried an oversize black bag. Her body, her face, said something to him. Her look called to him.
“Whoa,” she said as he approached and slowed down.
“What’s happening?”
“Just out for a stroll,” he said pleasantly.
“Nice night for it, officer.” Her green eye shadow had been applied with a trowel.
The maddog smiled. “I’m not a cop. In fact, I won’t even try to pick you up. Who knows, you might be. A cop, I mean.”
“Oh, sure,” she said, cocking a hip so her short skirt rode up.
“Have a good one,” he said.
“Ships passing in the night,” she said, already looking down the street past him.
“But if I were to come back some night, do you usually go out for your walks around here?”
She turned and looked at him again, the spark of interest rekindled. “Sure,” she said. “This is kind of my territory.”
“You got a place where we could go?”
“What for?” she asked cautiously.
“Probably a half-’n’-half, if it doesn’t cost more than fifty. Or maybe you’d know something more exciting.”
She brightened up. He’d made the offer, mentioned a specific act and money, so he wasn’t a cop.
“No problem, honey. I know all kinds of ways to turn a boy on. I’m here most every night but Thursday, when my man takes me out. And Sunday, ’cause there’s no action.”
“Fine. Maybe in a night or two, huh? And you got a place we can go?”
“You got the cash, I got the crash,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
She had to think about it for a minute. “Heather,” she said finally.
• • •
“You are making a mistake,” the maddog said. He paced the living room. “It’s got to be a mistake.”
But it was tantalizing. He looked at the personnel directory on the table. Davenport, Lucas. The number. It would be a mistake, but how? Get him at home, late at night, he’d be off guard. No automatic tape to record the voice.
He thought about it and finally wrote the number on a piece of paper, went back out to the car, drove a mile to a phone booth, and dialed. The phone at the other end rang once. It was answered by a baritone voice, absolutely clear. No sleep in it.
“Detective Davenport?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“An informant. I saw the story on television last night, your dissent from the actions of your superiors, and I want you to know this: you’re absolutely right about the maddog killer. The gay man is not him. The gay is not him. Do you get that?”
“Who is this?”
“I’m not going to tell you that, obviously, but I know that you have arrested the wrong man. If you ask him about leaving the notes, he won’t know about them, will he? He won’t know that you should never kill anyone you know. Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. You should do something to remedy this miscarriage or I’m afraid that you will be severely embarrassed. The maddog will demonstrate this man’s innocence sometime in the near future. Did you get all that, lieutenant? I hope so, because it’s all I have to say. Good-bye.”
“Wait—”
The maddog hung up, hurried to his car, and drove away. In a block he started to giggle with the excitement of it. He hadn’t anticipated the surge of joy, but it was there, as though he’d survived a personal combat. And he had, in a way. He had touched the face of the enemy.
CHAPTER
12
Lucas was sitting at the drafting table, a printout of the rules for Everwhen on the tabletop. He rubbed his late-night beard, thinking. The notes. The guy knew the notes. And the accent was there, and it was right. Barely perceptible, but it was there. Texas. New Mexico.