Buried Prey

Lucas held up his badge: “We’re looking for two missing girls. I need information about a guy you know.”

“What guy?”

“His name is John. You guys hang out with him sometimes at Kenny’s. That’s all I know,” Lucas said.

The door opened another couple of inches. “Did he do it?”

“He was telling people that he knows who did,” Lucas said. He pushed the door with his fingertips, and she let it swing open a bit more. “So who is he?”

She looked back over her shoulder and shouted, “Sally.”

Lucas pushed on the door again, and she let it open. He took that as an invitation, and stepped into a ten-foot-long room with a Formica counter and yellowing white-plaster walls, like in a drycleaning shop. A couple of chairs sat against the window wall, with a low wooden table between them, holding an ashtray and a table lamp with a shade that had a burned spot on one side. A gumball machine sat in a corner, half empty, or half full, depending. Not a place that people would linger for long, Lucas thought.

A short dark-haired woman came out of the back, behind the counter, looked at Lucas and said, “I’m all done.”

“He’s a cop,” the blonde said. “He’s looking for this guy John . . . you know, John, the joker.”

Sally shook her head: “Why would I know where he is?”

The blonde said, “You’d know better than me. They’re looking for him about those two girls.”

Sally’s right hand went to her throat: “He took them?”

“He’s been talking about who might have,” Lucas said. “We need to talk to him.”

“I really don’t know him,” Sally said. “He’s come in a few times, I got him, you know, gave him a massage. He’s kinda funny, tells jokes and shit.”

“He ever say where he lives? Ask you to come over? Give you any hint . . .?”

She shook her head: “No, but I’ll tell you what. He charged the massage last time. I bet we got the slip.”

Lucas ticked a finger at her: “Thank you. Who do I see about the slip?”

“Me,” the blonde said. “But since we don’t know his last name, I don’t know how we figure out . . .”

Sally pressed her palms to her eyes and said, “Let me think,” and a minute later said, “Fourth of July. He was joking about fireworks, you know, when . . . never mind. Anyway, the night of the fourth. Don had a baseball game on the radio, so it couldn’t have been too late.”

The blonde went around the counter, took out a metal box, and began running through charge slips. Lucas said to Sally, “You said he’s okay. That means, what? He didn’t want anything peculiar?”

“Hey, it was a therapeutic massage.”

“I’m sure it was,” Lucas said. “Look, I don’t care what he wants, or what you do. I’m trying to figure out these girls and whether he might be weird. Can you tell me that? Is he weird?”

Sally shrugged: “He wants the Three—start with a hand job, end with a blow job. Is that weird? I dunno. A hundred and twenty bucks, plus tip. I don’t remember the tip, but it wasn’t . . .” She dug for a word, and came up with one: “Memorable.”

“So he’s got some money.”

“He’s got some, anyway,” the woman said. “But I ain’t going to Vegas on a tip I can’t remember.”

The blonde said, “I got a one-forty at eight forty-five Friday . . . that’s it, probably. Says his name is John . . .”

“That’s gotta be him,” Sally said.

Lucas took the slip and walked it to the table lamp. The ink imprint was shaky—the name was John Fell, Lucas thought, but the number was clear. Lucas took down the information, then asked, “You got a Xerox machine?”

“No . . .”

“I’m gonna take this,” he said, waggling the paper slip. “You need the information to make the charge?”

“We already made it,” the blonde said. “We send it in while you’re still in the room.”

“Okay.” Lucas flipped a page in his notebook: “I need both your names. I want to see driver’s licenses. I need to know how often he comes in.”

The blonde began, “You said . . .”

Lucas shook his head: “I’m not arresting anybody. If he turns out to be somebody, I need to know who I talked to.”

The blonde’s name was Lucy Landry, and Sally’s name was Dorcas Ryan. John Fell had come in at least once in the past ten days, had been cheerful, funny, even, had been satisfied with the service and paid cash. Ryan had seen him at Kenny’s afterward, and he’d bought her a drink.

“He bought you a drink, but he didn’t chat? Didn’t tell you about himself?”

Ryan frowned: “You know what? Almost all he does is tell jokes. Like, ‘You heard the one about the priest who caught the sonofabitch?’ That’s what he does. He’s got a million of them.”

Lucas used their telephone to call Daniel at home, who answered and, when Lucas identified himself, said, “This better be good.”

“The guy’s name is John Fell and I’ve got a credit card slip on him. How do I get an address off the credit card?”

There was a moment of silence, then Daniel said, “What I usually do is call Harmon Anderson, and he does something on the computer.”

“So we gotta wait until he comes in?”

“No, no, I’ll bust him out of bed,” Daniel said. “Where’re you?”

“Down at the massage place,” Lucas said.

“Go on downtown. I’ll have Anderson meet you there.”