“How about the in-service?”
“Checks out. That’s the clincher, because there isn’t any question about it. As soon as we asked the question, word was all over welfare that we fucked up. It’ll be all over the courthouse by tonight.”
“And?”
“We’ve got a meeting with the prosecutor and the public defender at two o’clock,” Daniel said. “We’re going to recommend that all charges be dismissed. We’ll have a press conference this evening.”
“He’s going to sue our butts,” Anderson said.
“We’ll ask for a waiver,” Daniel said.
“No chance,” said Lucas. “The guy is freaked.” He looked at the chief. “I don’t think I ought to show at the press conference.”
“That might be best.”
“If anybody asks, you can tell them I’m on vacation. I’m going to take a couple of days off and go up north.”
Lucas left City Hall at three and wandered down to the detention center, stopping only to pick up a box of popcorn. Annie McGowan and a cameraman were outside the center, waiting. Lucas sat on a bus bench a block away, and a half-hour later saw McCarthy walk out of the center with Smithe right behind. They were with two older people, a man and a woman, whom Lucas recognized as Smithe’s parents from the photos in his house. McGowan was on them in a flash, and after a bit of milling around, they apparently agreed to a brief on-camera interview. Lucas balled up the empty popcorn bag, tossed it under the bench, and smiled.
• • •
“Press conference at seven,” Anderson said, spotting Lucas in the hall.
“I’ve got something going tonight,” Lucas said. “And I’m trying to hide out for a while.”
Before leaving, he made arrangements for backup with the patrol division and headed home in time for the six-o’clock news. McGowan looked wonderful as she delivered her scoop. After two minutes of videotaped interview outside the detention center, the cameras cut back to McGowan in the studio.
“Now Report Eight has also learned that police believe the real killer is sexually impotent and the women may actually have been raped using some kind of blunt object because he is incapable of raping them himself.”
She turned to the anchorman and smiled. “Fred?”
“Thanks for that exclusive report, Annie . . .”
Lucas turned to Channel Four. The last story of the broadcast was a recap of McGowan’s, obviously stolen: “We have just learned that Jimmy Smithe, who was arrested in the investigation of the multiple murders of three Twin Cities women, has been released and that police apparently now believe him to be innocent of the crimes . . .”
Jennifer was on the phone five minutes later.
“Lucas, did you feed her that?”
“Feed who what?” Lucas asked innocently.
“Feed McGowan the Smithe release?”
“Has he been released?”
“You jerk, you better be wearing your steel jockstrap the next time I’m over, because I’m bringing a knife.”
Late that evening, he cruised Lake Street in an unmarked departmental pool car, watching the night walkers, the drinkers, the hookers, looking for any one of a dozen faces. He found one just before ten.
“Harold. Get in the car.”
“Aw, lieutenant . . .”
“Get in the fuckin’ car, Harold.” Harold, a dealer in free-market pharmaceuticals, got in the car.
“Harold, you owe me,” Lucas said. Harold weighed a hundred and thirty pounds and was lost in his olive-drab field jacket.
“What do y’ want, man?” he whined. “I haven’t been talking to anybody . . .”
“What I want is for you to go into Frankie’s and do some light drinking. On me. But light. Wine, beer. I don’t want you hammered.”
“What’s the bad part?” Harold asked, suddenly looking perkier.
“They’re going to put some young puss up on the bar. Real young. When they do, I want you to walk out and tell me. I’ll be up the block. You come out as soon as she starts, hear? Not two minutes later, just as soon as she starts.” He handed Harold a ten.
“Ten? You want me to stay in there drinkin’ on ten?” he complained.
Lucas gripped the front of Harold’s field jacket and shook him once. “Listen, Harold, you’re lucky I don’t charge you for the privilege, okay? Now, get your lame ass in there or I’m going to rip your fuckin’ face off.”
“Jesus, lieutenant . . .” Harold got out, and Lucas slumped in the seat, watching the passersby. Most were drinking or already drunk. A few drug cases walked by. A pimp and one of his string; Lucas knew him, and put his head down further, his hand up to block a view of his face. The pimp never looked toward him. A pusher, a pusher, a fat-faced boy who might just have come in from the country, and a drunk salesman. He watched the parade for a half-hour before Harold eased up to the car.
“There’s one on and she’s real young,” he whispered.
“Okay. Take off.” Harold vanished. Lucas used the radio to make a prearranged call for patrol backup, pulled on a tweed shooting hat and a pair of windowpane glasses, got out of the car, locked it, and headed down the street to Frankie’s.
Frankie’s smelled of old beer and cheap wine. The front room, next to the street, was empty except for two unhappy-looking women sitting across from each other in a red leatherette booth. The bartender was wiping glasses and casually watched Lucas pick his way through the empty tables to the entry arch into the back room.
The back room was jammed, thirty or forty men and a half-dozen women in a cloud of cigarette smoke, clapping to the rock music that poured out of a jukebox. The girl was dancing on the bar, stripped down to a tiny brassiere and a pair of translucent blue underpants. Lucas shouldered his way through the crowd and spotted Frankie himself behind the bar, pushing out plastic glasses of beer as fast as the tap would pour them. Lucas tilted his head up at the girl. Eleven? Twelve? She did a bump and reached behind her back with one hand, her teeth biting her lower lip in a semiprofessional grin. She was feeding off the crowd’s enthusiasm. With another bump, she popped the brassiere and slowly peeled it off, carefully covering her tiny breasts with her forearms as she did it. After a few more bumps she tossed the brassiere behind the bar and switched into a new dance, her exposed breasts bobbling in the flashing ceiling lights.
“Bottoms, bottoms, bottoms,” the crowd was chanting, and the girl hooked her thumbs in the top of the pants and after coyly pulling them down an inch here and an inch there, turning, bending, peering out between her legs, she stood and slid them off, her back to the audience, and then turned to finish the dance.
And the bartender from the front screamed, “There’re cops outside.”
“Take off,” yelled Frankie. As the crowd broke for the two doors, he reached up and grabbed the nude girl by the ankle. Lucas lurched forward and got his gun out, his elbows on the bar, and poked the muzzle of the weapon into Frankie’s cheek.
“Don’t make me have an accident, Frank,” he said. “This weapon has a very light trigger pull.” Frankie froze. Three uniformed cops ran in from the front, pressing customers to the wall as they passed. A dozen Zip loc bags of cocaine and crack hit the floor. Lucas looked up at the girl. “Get down,” he said.
She leaned over and carefully spat in his face.
• • •
“So what happened to her?” Carla asked.
They sat on the edge of the dock, their feet hanging over the water. It was an hour before sunset and they had just walked down to the dock from the firing range in the woods. The afternoon was cool and quiet, the violet hue of the sky reflected in the water. Three hundred feet out, a musky fisherman was working a surface lure around the edges of a submerged island. The water was as flat as a tabletop and they could hear the paddle-wheel chop-chop-chop of the lure as the fisherman retrieved it.
“We dropped her off with child protection,” Lucas said.
“They’ll try to figure out who her parents are, get her back there. Two weeks from now she’ll run away again and start hooking or dancing or whatever. At her age, it’s the only kind of job she can get.”