Buried Prey

“Like Madonna.”

She didn’t smile.

THEY FOUND MILLARD at a free store a half-mile off the river, a place run by a bunch of old hippies who’d drifted into charitable work. Millard was sitting on a stoop at one end of the store, next to a table full of used shoes. He had a stack of shoes on the steps next to him, and he was trying them on, one pair at a time. A battered backpack sat on the sidewalk next to him.

Lucas dropped Frazier a block away, out of sight, then went around the block, pulled up across the street from the store, hopped out of the car, and walked across the street.

“Hey, Millard,” he said.

Millard looked up, and then sideways, as if trying to figure out a place to run. Lucas said, “Don’t run. I’d catch you in thirty feet and then I’d have to take you downtown.”

“Cop,” Millard said. He was a tall man, emaciated, windburned, with a long gray beard, and pale blue eyes under white eyebrows. He wore a thirties-style gray felt fedora, crushed on his skull like an accordion bellows, and a gray cotton shirt under an ancient navy blue wool suit.

Lucas said, “Yeah,” and then, “Donny White saw you with Scrape this morning, over by the Hennepin Bridge,” he said.

Millard was confused. “I never . . . Who? White?”

“The newspaper guy,” Lucas said, inventing as he went along. “Said he saw you with Scrape. The fact is, my man, you’re going off to prison, if that’s true.”

“I didn’t . . . I wasn’t with Scrape,” Millard said.

“You were seen,” Lucas said.

“I wasn’t with him,” Millard said, his voice rising toward a shout. “I wasn’t . . .”

One of the old hippies came out of the store, a short, square man with a red beard, and he asked, “Is there a problem?”

“Minneapolis police,” Lucas said. “I’m talking to Millard, here. You can go on back inside.”

“Could I see some ID?”

“Sure.” Lucas pulled his ID, hung it in front of the hippie for a moment, then slipped it back in his pocket.

“Maybe I should call a lawyer.”

Lucas shrugged. “Do what you want; but right now, go away. This is an official investigation.”

The hippie said, “I’ll be back.”

Lucas turned back to Millard. “So, I’m probably gonna have to arrest you. At least you’ll get three squares a day.”

“Look . . . look . . . I might have seen him, but I wasn’t with him,” Millard said. “I might have seen him down the river from the bridge.”

“Where’d he go? If you can show me, I’ll cut you loose.”

Millard shuffled around in a half-circle, thinking about it, eyes averted, and then said, “I can show you. But no jail.”

“Put on your shoes,” Lucas said.

LUCAS WALKED HIM across the street, put him in the Jeep, threw his pack on the backseat. Millard hadn’t washed for a while, and Lucas dropped the windows. “How long you known Scrape?”

“I don’t know him,” Millard said. “I just know who he is.”

“You ever see him with a basketball?”

“Uh-huh. He’s had a basketball all year,” Millard said. “I don’t know where he got it. Pretty good ball, though.”

He took Lucas to the riverbank, and then south a couple hundred yards, farther than Lucas expected. “Right down there,” Millard said, pointing over the embankment. “There’s a cement thing that sticks out of the hill. That’s where I seen him.”

“I want you to sit right here, on the Jeep,” Lucas said. “If you run, I’ll catch you, and then you will go to jail. We ain’t fooling around here, Millard. You help me out, you’ll be okay. You fuck with me, you’re going to jail. Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You sure you got it?”

“Yeah, I’ll sit here on the Jeep.”

Lucas skidded down the embankment, through brush and broken glass, holding on to weeds to keep his balance. Two-thirds of the way down, he found what looked like the end of an old concrete storm sewer set into the riverbank. A barrier made of steel bars had been bolted to the concrete, but had rusted over the years, and one side of it had been broken free. The drain was dark, but Lucas could see trash from food wrappings inside the mouth of it, as well as the remains of campfires. If it no longer functioned as a drain, it’d be dry and safe, or at least easily defensible, with the iron bars over the entrance.

The floor was covered with a layer of sand, and what appeared to be new footprints were going in and out. He called, “Scrape? Scrape? Come out of there.”

He saw nothing in the dark, but a minute after he called, he heard a scuttling sound. Somebody was headed farther back into the tunnel.

“Scrape? I can hear you. Don’t make me come get you.”

Nothing but dark.

Lucas climbed back to the top of the riverbank, half expecting Millard to be gone; but he was still sitting on the Jeep, looking worried. Lucas asked, “Where are you staying? And don’t lie.”

“Mission,” he said.

“All right. You hang out here, in case I need to talk to you again. I don’t want to have to come find you, okay? If I have to come find you, I’ll pick you up and put you in jail, so I can find you when I need you. Okay? You hide or run, you go to jail. You understand?”

“Yeah . . . Was he in there?”

“Somebody is,” Lucas said.

“It’s him. He goes all over in there.”