“Lucas? Anything else?”
Lucas took another turn at the back of the room. He had talked to Daniel the night before about the phone call from the maddog, and told the others at the start of the meeting. He’d taped the call. He was taping all calls now. First thing in the morning, he’d taken a copy of the tape to the university and tracked down a couple of linguists to listen to it.
They had called Daniel during the meeting: Texas, one of them said. The other was not quite so certain. Texas, or some other limited sections of the Southwest. The eastern corner of New Mexico, maybe, around White Sands. Oklahoma and Arkansas were out.
“His accent has a strong overlay of the Midwest,” the second linguist said. “There’s this one line, ‘I’m going to go look at her now.’ If you listen closely, break it down, what he really says is ‘I’m-unna go look at her now.’ That’s a midwesternism. Upper Midwest, north central. So I think he’s been here awhile. Not so long that he’s completely lost his southwestern accent, but long enough to get an overlay.”
“Ah,” Lucas said. The detectives were looking at him curiously. “Last night, I was watching Channel Eight. McGowan comes on and she has this piece about the pig farmer. So the maddog calls forty-five minutes later. I checked with the Pioneer Press and the Star-Tribune to see what time the first editions came out—they both carried follows on the McGowan story. None of them were out when the maddog called.”
“So he saw it on TV,” Anderson said.
“And I’ve been thinking about McGowan,” Lucas said. “She fits the type the maddog’s been going after . . .”
“Ah, Jesus Christ,” Daniel blurted.
“There was something about that call. There’s something special about this ‘chosen’ one he talks about. I feel it.”
“You think he might go after McGowan?”
“He’s watching her on TV. And physically, she fits his type. And she’s had all these weird stories. The guy seems to want the attention, but from his point of view, everything she’s been saying is negative. He talks about being the ‘one’ and she says he’s impotent and smells bad and farms pigs. Last night, he was pissed.”
“That’s it,” Daniel said, his face flushed. “I want a watch on McGowan, twenty-four hours.”
“Jesus, chief—” Anderson started.
“I don’t care how many guys it takes. Break some of them out of uniform if you have to. I want guys on her during the day and I want a watch on her house at night.”
“But delicately,” Lucas said.
“What?”
“She’s our chance to grab him,” Lucas said. He put up his hands to stop interruptions. “I know, I know, we’ve got to be careful. Not take any chances with her. I know all that. But she might be our best shot.”
“If you’re right, he might be looking at her right now,” Lester said. “Right this minute.”
“I don’t think he’ll try during the day. She’s always around people. If he tries, it’ll be at night. When she’s on her way home or at her home. He could break into her house during the day and wait for her. We should cover that possibility.”
“You’ve thought about this,” Daniel said, his eyes narrowing.
Lucas shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe I’ve got my head up my ass. But it seems like a chance, just like when you put a watch on me.”
“Okay,” Daniel said. He turned and pressed an intercom lever. “Linda, call Channel Eight and tell them I want to talk to the station manager urgently.” He let the intercom go and said, “Lucas, stay a minute. Everybody else, let’s get going on the basics. Start processing the list of guys who moved in. It won’t do any good if he’s really been here for a while, but we’ve got to check. Anderson, I want you to go back over every note we’ve got, see if we’re missing anything we should have covered.”
As the others drifted out of the room, Lucas slouched against a wall, staring at the rug.
“What?” Daniel said.
“This guy is nuts in a different way than I thought. He’s not a straight, cold killer. There’s something else wrong with his head. The way he was talking about the ‘one’ and the ‘chosen.’ ”
“What difference does it make?”
“I don’t know. Could make it harder to outguess him. He might not react like we expect him to.”
“Whatever,” Daniel said dismissively. “I wanted to ask you about something else. Where is McGowan getting this crap she’s putting on the air?”
Lucas shook his head. “Probably a uniform who’s just close enough to the investigation to pick up some stuff, but not close enough to get it right.”
“So you’re in Cedar Rapids yesterday and it’s the first time anybody said the word ‘farmer’ in the whole investigation. The next thing I know, she’s on the air saying the maddog is a farmer.”
“Saying pig farmer. There’s a difference. Whoever’s feeding her is cutting the killer up. Sparks doesn’t even think the maddog is a farmer. I don’t either. I stopped on the way back and called in what Sparks said, so Anderson could get it in the data base. After that? Who knows. There’s a leak, but it’s all twisted up.”
“Okay,” said Daniel. He was suspicious, Lucas thought. More than suspicious. He knew, and was talking for the record. “I’m not going to ask you anything else about this coincidence. But I would remark that if somebody is playing a game, it could be a dangerous one.”
“We’re already playing a dangerous game,” Lucas said. “The maddog’s not giving us any choice.”
Lucas spent the afternoon on the street, touching informants, friends, contacts, letting them know he was alive. A Colombian had been in town, supposedly to negotiate a four-way cocaine wholesaling net to cover the metro area. It would be run by three men and a woman, each with separate territories and responsibilities. If any of them tried to make a move on somebody else’s territory, the Colombian would cut off the troublemaker’s supply.
Lucas was interested. Most of the cocaine in the Twin Cities was in weights of three ounces or less, bought on the subwholesale level from Detroit and Chicago, and, to a lesser extent, Los Angeles. There had been rumors of direct Colombian connections before, but they never materialized. This had a different feel to it. He pushed his informants for names, promising money and immunity in return.
There were more rumors of gang activity, recruitments of local chapters out of Chicago and Los Angeles. Gang growth was slow in the Cities. Members were systematically harassed by the gang squads in both towns and were sent to prison so often, and for so long, that any kid with an IQ above ninety stayed away from them.
Indians on Franklin Avenue were talking about a woman who either jumped or was thrown off the Franklin Avenue bridge. No body had shown up. Lucas made a note to call the sheriff’s river patrol.
He was back at his desk late in the afternoon when McGowan called.
“Lucas? Isn’t it wonderful?” she bubbled.
“What?”
“You know about this thing with the maddog? They’re setting up surveillance around me?”
“Yeah, I knew the chief was going to get in touch.”
“Well, I agreed to the surveillance, but only if we could tape parts of it. You know, we’ll cooperate and everything, but once in a while, when it’s natural, we’ll get a camera in the house and get some tape of me cooking or sewing or something. They’re going to set up a surveillance post across the street and another one behind the house. They’ll let a camera come up and shoot the cops watching my house with their binoculars and stuff.” She was more than excited, Lucas thought. She was ecstatic.
“Jesus, Annie, this isn’t a sporting event. You’ll be covered, of course, but this guy is a maniac.”
“I don’t care,” she said firmly. “If he comes after me, the story will go network. I’ll be on every network news show in the country, and I’ll tell you what—if I get a chance like that and I handle it right, I’ll be out of here. I’ll be in New York in six weeks.”