"Unless we get a big fuckin' break," Lucas said. "And I don't see a break coming."
Jan Reed came by Lucas's office after the press conference, and they ambled through the Skyways to a restaurant in the Pillsbury Building. Since she was new to Minnesota, they chatted about the weather, about the lakes, about the Guthrie Theater, and about the other places she'd worked: Detroit, Miami, Cleveland. They found a table not too close to anyone else, Reed with her back to the door-"I get pestered sometimes"-and ordered coffee and croissants.
"How was the press conference?" Lucas asked, peeling open one of the croissants.
Reed opened her notebook and looked at it. "Maybe not domestic," she said. "The guy's name is Evan Hart. His girlfriend's been divorced for seven years. Her ex lives out on the West Coast and he was there this morning. Besides, she says he's a nice guy. That they broke up because he was too mellow. No alimony or anything. No kids. Sort of a hippie mistake. And she hasn't gone out with anybody else, seriously, for a couple of years."
"How about this Hart?" Lucas asked. "Has he got an ex? Is he bisexual? What does he do?"
"He's a widower," Reed said. She put the yellow pencil in her mouth and turned pages. A little clump of hair fell over her eyes and she brushed it back; Weather did that. "His wife was killed in a traffic accident. He's a lawyer for a stockbrokerage company, he has something to do with municipal bonds. He doesn't sell anything, so it's not that. He didn't ruin anybody."
"Doesn't sound like a fruitcake, though," Lucas said. "It sounds like the guy was mad about something."
"That's what it sounds like," she said. "But Jensen's really freaked out. That other attack happened right down below her apartment window."
"That's what I heard. Jensen's his girlfriend? She was actually there at the press conference?"
"Yeah. She was. Sara Jensen. Sharp. Good-looking, runs her own mutual fund, probably makes two hundred thousand a year," Reed said. "Dresses like it. She has just gorgeous clothes-she must go to New York. She was really angry. She wants the guy caught. Actually, it sounded like she wants the guy killed, like she was there to ask the cops to find him and kill him."
"Very strange," Lucas said. "The guys in homicide are having a hard time right now…"
The conversation rambled along, through new subjects, Lucas enjoying it, laughing. Reed was nice-looking, amusing, and had spent a little time on the streets. They had that in common. Then she said something about gangs. Gangs was a code word for blacks, and as she talked, the code word pecked away at the back of Lucas's mind. Reed, he thought after a bit, might have a fine ass and great eyes, but she was also a bit of a racist. Racism was becoming fashionable in the smart set, if done in a suitably subtle way. Was it immoral to jump a racist? How about if she didn't have a good time, but you did?
He was smiling and nodding and Reed was rambling on about something sexual but safe, the rumored affair between an anchorman and a cameraman, carried out in what she said was a TV van with bad springs.
"… So there they were on Summit Avenue outside the governor's mansion, and everybody's going in for the ball and this giant van with TV3 on the side is practically jumping up and down, and her husband is out on the sidewalk, pacing back and forth, looking for her." Reed was playing with her butter knife as she talked, and she twirled it in her fingers, a cheerleader's baton twirl.
Like Junky Doog, Lucas thought. What had Junky said when Greave had asked him why a man might start cutting on women? 'Cause a woman turns you on, that's why. Maybe you see a woman and she turns you on. Gets you by the pecker…
The Society of Jesus, SJ.
Or…
Lucas said, suddenly, sitting up, "What was the guy's wound like?"
"What?" She'd been in midsentence.
"This guy who was attacked this morning," Lucas said impatiently.
"Uh… well, he was stabbed in the stomach," Reed said, startled by the sudden roughness in his voice. "Two or three times. He was really messed up. I guess they're still trying to put him together in the operating room."
"With a switchblade. The kid from the Strib said it was a switchblade."
"A witness said that," Reed said. "Why?"
"I gotta go," Lucas said, looking at his watch. He threw a handful of dollars on the table. "I'm sorry, but I really got to run. I'm sorry…"
Now she looked distinctly startled, but he did run, once he was out of sight. His office was locked, nobody around. He went down the hall to homicide and found Anderson eating an egg-salad sandwich at his desk. "Have you seen Connell?"
"Uh, yeah, she just went into the women's can." He had a fleck of egg white on his lip.
Lucas went down to the women's can and pushed the door open. "Connell?" he shouted. "Meagan?"
After a moment, a reluctant, hollow, tile-walled "Yeah?"
"Come out here."
"Christ…" She took two minutes, Lucas walking up and down the hall, cooling off. Very unlikely, he thought. But the wound sounded right…
Connell came out, tucking her shirt into her skirt. "What?"
"The guy that was attacked this morning," Lucas said. "He was ripped in the stomach by a guy with a switchbladelike knife."
"Lucas, it was a guy, it was daylight, he doesn't fit anything…" She was puzzled.
"He'd spent the night with his girlfriend, Sara Jensen."
Still she looked puzzled.
Lucas said, "SJ."
CHAPTER
22
They found Sara Jensen at Hennepin General, distraught, pacing the surgical waiting room. A uniformed cop sat in a plastic chair reading Road amp; Track. They took Jensen to an examination room, shut the door, and sat her down.
"It's about goddamn time somebody started taking this seriously," Jensen said. "You had to wait until Evan got stabbed…" Her voice was contained, but with a thread of fear that suggested she was at the edge of her self-control. "It's the goddamn burglar. If you'd find him…"
"What burglar?" Lucas asked. The place smelled like medical alcohol and skin and adhesive tape.
"What burglar?" Her voice rose in anger, until she was nearly shouting. "What burglar? What burglar? The burglar at my place."
"We don't know anything about that," Connell said quickly. "We work homicide. We're looking for a man who has been killing women for years. The last two he's marked with the initials SJ -your initials. We're not sure it's you, but it might be. The attack on Mr. Hart resembles the technique he has used to kill the women. The weapon appears to be similar. He fits the descriptions we've had…"
"Oh, God," Jensen said, her hand going to her mouth. "I saw it on TV3, the man with the beard. The man who attacked Evan had a beard."
Lucas nodded. "That's him. Do you know anybody who looks like that? Somebody you've dated, somebody you have a relationship with? Maybe with some frustration? Or maybe somebody who just watches you, somebody you can feel in your office?"
"No." She thought about it again. "No. I know a couple of guys with beards, but I haven't dated them. And they seem to be ordinary enough… Besides, it's not them. It's the goddamn burglar. I think he's been coming back to my apartment."
"Tell us about the burglar," Lucas said.
She told them: the initial burglary, the loss of her jewelry and belt, the smell of saliva on her forehead. And she told them about the sense she had, that somebody had been in and out of her apartment since the burglary-and the feeling that it was the same man. "But I'm not sure," she said. "I thought I was going crazy. My friends thought it was stress from the burglary, that I was imagining it. But I don't think so: the place just didn't feel right, like there was something in the air. I think he sleeps in my bed." Then she laughed, a short, barely amused bark. "I sound like the Three Bears. Somebody's been eating my porridge. Somebody's been sleeping in my bed."
"So you say that when he came in the first time, he must've touched you-kissed you on the forehead."