Buried Prey

“Well, he was living under that tree. He likes it outdoors, and there are all kinds of little caves and nooks and holes where he could be, along the river. There are some sewer tunnels you can get into, and they cross through old caves and things. Some of the guys know those places; Scrape does. But most of them smell pretty bad, from sewage and gas, so they stay out. If he’s hiding in there, it’d be hell to get him out. I went down in one once, and you could walk right past him, and never know he’s there.”

“Where else?”

“Well, the other places—you’d never find him unless people see him coming or going. They go under houses, in old garages, anyplace that has a roof and they can’t be seen. Apartment neighborhoods, with old houses, like over by the university. You find gangs of guys under the main highway bridges; they’ll be camping out, hanging out together.”

“Where would you go, if you were Scrape and you thought the cops were after you?”

“Honestly, there’s no way to tell, exactly,” she said. “He could go to any of those places.”

“C’mon.”

She sighed. “I’d go with the river. That’s where he always lives, except when he can get a gig like this apartment. If you get set up in a cave, especially one with water, you can be safe, dry, hidden, and you can even keep yourself clean. Scrape likes to stay clean, when he can.”

Lucas said, “Huh. Where are these caves and sewer things?”

“All along the riverbank. Best thing to do is, find people who are living there now,” she said. “Ask them. They’ll know.”

“And if they don’t want to talk to me?”

She looked out the side window and said, “I hate telling you this stuff.”

“Why? The girls . . .”

“I feel terrible about the girls, which is why I’m talking to you at all. But talking to cops, if any of the guys see me, and figure I’m a snitch . . . it doesn’t help my work, and might even cause me trouble. Most of them are harmless, but some of them are crazy. Very crazy. If they thought I was working with the cops, I don’t know what they’d do.”

“Okay. I see that,” Lucas said. He waited a beat, and then said, “You were going to tell me something, that you didn’t want to.”

She turned back to him. “They hate going to jail. They don’t do well there, not well at all, because of their handicaps. If I were desperate to find somebody, and wanted to get information from these guys, I’d threaten them. You know—‘How’d you like to spend a couple weeks in jail?’ That kind of thing.”

“Good,” Lucas said. “Specifically, the riverbank . . .”

“I’d start at Hennepin Avenue, and work south. Like I said, he’s not stupid: I don’t think he’d go back to the part of the riverbank where he was before.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Where can I drop you?”

She popped the door. “Thanks anyway, I’ll just take the bus.”

TEN MINUTES LATER, Lucas stood on the edge of the Mississippi River, looking up and down the bluffs, and realized that the idea that he might search it himself was ridiculous. He also realized that if he were running from the cops, and needed to hide out for a couple of days, he’d head for the river.

And that’s what he told Daniel, at police headquarters.

“There are all those bridges, there’s two spans to each one of them, I could see at least one catwalk under a bridge, which means people could be living up there, right under the road deck. If we’re gonna do a search, we’re gonna need twenty guys, and it’s gonna take a couple of days, at least. We’ll probably need people from St. Paul—”

“I’ll have to talk to the chief,” Daniel said. “The problem is, the Strib is all over us. They know something happened. They know we picked somebody up and turned him loose again. I think the Joneses might be talking to them . . . so the shit’s about to hit the fan.”

“I could go back out alone . . .” Lucas yawned.

“No, no, I hear what you’re saying about the river,” Daniel said. “We got railroad security checking the rail yard, but the riverbank is just too big.”

“Maybe you ought to talk to the paper, call a press conference,” Lucas suggested. “Get yourself some airtime. We got a good mug of Scrape, put it out there. The more eyes the better.”

Daniel thought about it, then said, “That’s an idea. I’ll talk to the chief. You, go home. Get some sleep. You been up for two days.”

“I can handle it for a while.”

“Ah, you did pretty good. We’ll take it from here.”

Lucas saw himself back in uniform, searching the riverbank in a line of cops: “Wait a minute. I don’t want to quit this. We got this other possibility to think about, that Scrape didn’t do it. That the kids were picked up in a vehicle. I’ve got this guy I’m looking for. I got this feeling . . .”

Daniel was shaking his head. “We can cover that. This is turning into a snake hunt. When we find Scrape—”

Lucas leaned forward: “Listen, Chief, I’ll take vacation days. I’ll work free. Just back me up for a shot at this other guy.”