In a quick survey of the first floor he found a utility room with the water heater, washer and dryer, and a small built-in workbench with a drawer half-full of inexpensive tools. A door in the utility room led out to the garage. He opened it, turned on the light, and looked around. A small snow-blower, a couple of snow shovels, and a stack of newspapers packaged for disposal in brown shopping bags. If he had time, he would stop back and go through the papers. With luck, he might find one that had been cut to make the messages left on the maddog’s victims’ bodies. There was nothing else of interest.
He shut the garage door, walked through the tiny kitchen, opening and closing cabinet doors as he passed through, poked his head into the living room, checked a small half-bath and a slightly larger office space with an IBM computer and a few lawbooks.
The second floor was divided between two bedrooms and a large bathroom. One of the bedrooms was furnished; the other was used as storage space. In the storage room he found the maddog’s luggage, empty, an electronic keyboard which looked practically unused, and an inexpensive weight bench with a set of amateur weights. He checked the edges of the weights. Like the keyboard, they appeared practically untouched. Vullion was a man with unconsummated interests . . .
A battered couch sat in one corner, along with three boxes full of magazines, a Playboy collection that appeared to go back a dozen years or more. He left the storeroom and walked to the other bedroom.
In the ceiling of the hallway between the two bedrooms was an entry panel for the attic, with a steel handle attached to it. Lucas pulled down on the handle, and a lightweight ladder folded down into the hallway. He walked up a few steps, stuck his head into the attic, and flashed the light around. The attic was divided among the four apartments with thin sheets of plywood. Vullion’s space was empty. He backed out, pushed the ladder with its attached door back into place, and took out the handset.
“Where is he?”
“Still in the store.”
Time to work.
Lucas put the radio back in his pocket, took a miniature tape recorder from the other, thumbed it on, and went into the bedroom.
“Bedroom,” he said. “Closet. Sport coat, forty-two regular. Suit, forty-two regular. Pants, waist thirty-six. Shoes. Nike Airs, blue, bubble along outer sole. No Reeboks . . . .
“Bedroom dresser . . . lubricated Trojan prophylactics, box of twelve, seven missing . . . .
“Office,” he said. “Bill from University of Minnesota Law Alumni Association. Federal tax returns, eight years. Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Texas, Texas, Texas. Shows address in Houston, Texas, under name Louis Vullion.
“Computer files, all law stuff and correspondence, opening correspondence, all business . . . .
“Kitchen. Under sink. Bag of onions, no potatoes . . .”
Lucas went methodically through the apartment looking for anything that would directly associate Vullion with the killings. Except for the Nike Airs, there was nothing. But the indirect evidence piled up: the life in Texas before the year at the University of Minnesota law school, the clothes that said his size was right, the prophylactics . . .
“Where is he?”
“Looking at shoes.”
The lack of direct evidence was infuriating. If Vullion had kept souvenirs of the kills, if Lucas had found a box of surgeon’s gloves in association with a box of Kotex, with a roll of tape next to them . . . or if the kitchen table had been littered with the shreds of a newspaper that one of his messages had been cut from . . .
If he had kept those things, they could find a way to get a warrant and take him. But there was none of it. Standing arms akimbo, Lucas looked around the unnaturally neat living room, and then realized: it was unnaturally neat.
“We scared the cocksucker and he cleaned the place out,” Lucas said aloud. If they had talked to Nester the previous week, before the incident at McGowan’s . . . No point in thinking about it. He started to turn out of the living room, when the videocassette recorder caught his eye. There were no tapes in evidence, but an empty tape carton sat beside the television. He reached down, turned the machine on, and punched the eject button. After a minute’s churning, the VCR produced a tape.
“Where is he?”
“Leaving the shoe store.”
Lucas turned on the television and started the tape. It was blank. He stopped it, backed it up, ran it again, and was startled when his own face popped up on the screen.
“God damn, the interview,” Lucas muttered to himself. The camera cut to Carla. He watched the interview through to the end, waited until the screen went blank, and turned off the recorder and the television.
What little doubt he had had disappeared with the video recording. He walked back to the bedroom, lifted the bedspread, and pushed his arm between the mattress and box springs. Nothing.
He dipped back in his jacket pocket and took out an envelope and shook out the pictures. Lewis, Brown, Wheatcroft, the others. Handling the photos by their edges, he pushed them under the mattress as far as he could reach. A thorough search would find them.
When it was done, he straightened the bedspread and began moving out of the apartment, working as methodically on his way out as he had on the way in. Everything in place. Everything checked. All lights out. He peered out at the sidewalk. Nobody there. He put the chain back on the front door and went into the garage. He took ten minutes to check the newspapers. None were shredded. He restacked the bundles as he’d found them, and let himself out through the garage door.
Back on the sidewalk, he walked briskly away. He had almost reached the Ford Escort when the monitor beeped.
“He’s out of the mall, headed toward his car. Three and five stay on the ground, lead cars saddle up now . . . .”
Lucas and Daniel sat alone in Daniel’s dimly lit office, looking at each other through a yellow pool of light cast by a desk lamp. “So even if we got in, we wouldn’t find anything,” Daniel concluded.
“I couldn’t swear to that, but it looks to me like he cleaned the place out. He may have hidden something—I didn’t have enough time to really tear the place apart,” Lucas said. “But I didn’t find anything conclusive. The Nikes are right, the rubbers are right, his size is right, the car is right. But you know and I know that we could find that combination in fifty people out there.”
“Fifty people who are also lawyers and hang around the courthouse and have a Texas accent and would get a gun from Rice?”
“But we’ve got no direct evidence that he got the gun from Rice. And all the other stuff is real thin. You’ve got to believe that he’d get the best attorney around, and a good attorney would cut us to pieces.”
“How about voice analysis on the tapes?”
“You know what the courts think of that.”
“But it’s another thing.”
“Yeah. I know. It’s tempting . . .”
“But?”
“But if we keep watching him, we should get him. He didn’t get his kill. He’s scared now, but if he’s compelled to kill, he’ll be going back out. Sooner or later. I’d bet in the next week. This time, we won’t lose him. We’ll get him entering some place and he’ll have all that shit with him, the Kotex and the potato and the gloves. We’ll have him cold.”
“I’ll talk to the county attorney. I’ll tell him what we have now and what we might get. See what he says. But basically, I think you’re right. It’s too thin to risk.”
Surveillance posts were set up in an apartment across the street from the maddog’s and one house down; and behind and two houses down.
“It was the best we could do, and it ain’t bad,” the surveillance chief said. “We can see both doors and all windows. With the freeway on the south, he can only get out of the neighborhood to the north, and we’re north of him. And he ain’t going to see us anyway.”
“What’s that glow? Is he reading in bed?”
“Night-light, we think,” the surveillance chief said.
Lucas nodded. He recalled seeing one in the bedroom but couldn’t say so. “He’s trying to keep away the nightmares,” he said instead.