CHAPTER 23
A thunderstorm was rolling across Minneapolis when Lucas left his house, lightning crackling through the clouds, storm-front winds lashing the elm branches overhead. He went north, up Highway 280, the lights of downtown Minneapolis to the west, barely visible through the advancing rain. The storm caught him just before he turned east, a few drops splatting off the windshield, and then a torrent, a waterfall, hailstones pecking on the roof, small white beads of ice bouncing off the road in his headlights. He turned east on I-694 and the rain slackened, then quit altogether as he outran the storm front.
From the highway, the mall was screened by an intervening block of buildings, but he could see red emergency lights flashing off window glass. The White Bear Avenue exit was jammed. He put the Porsche on the shoulder and worked his way to the front. A Minnesota highway patrolman ran toward him, and Lucas hung his badge case out the window.
'Davenport,' the patrolman said, leaning in the window. 'Stay behind me and I'll make a hole in this line.'
The patrolman jogged along the shoulder, leading the Porsche to a roadblock. The street was a nightmare tangle of shoppers trying to get out of the mall, gawkers trying to drive past the murder scene, and the normal traffic on and off the interstate. The patrolmen had given up trying to control the crush and had settled for getting as many people out of the mall as possible. At the roadblock, the patrolman leading Lucas said something to the others, and they stopped traffic, directed a car out of the way and let Lucas slip through to the parking lot.
'Thanks,' Lucas yelled as he went through. 'I came through that storm-it's a bad one, with hail. If you got rain gear…'
The patrolman nodded and waved him on.
Television vans and reporters' cars were lined up on the perimeter of the lot, a hundred yards from a battered brown Chevy. All four doors on the car were open and emergency lights bathed it in a brilliant showroom illumination. Lucas left his Porsche in a pod of squad cars and walked toward the Chevy.
'Davenport, over here.' A cop in a short blue jacket, who'd been talking to another cop in a sweater, called to him, and Lucas walked over.
'John Barber, Maplewood,' said the cop in the jacket. He had pale blue eyes and a long lantern jaw. 'And this is Howie Berkson… Howie, go on over and tell that TV bunch it'll be another twenty minutes, okay?'
As Berkson walked away, Barber said, 'C'mon.'
'Any question whether it's the same guy?' Lucas asked.
Barber shrugged. 'I guess not. One of your people is running around out here… Shearson? He says the technique is the same. Wait'll you see her face.'
Lucas went and looked, and turned away, and they started a circle around the car. 'Looks like him,' he said sourly. 'A copycat couldn't get up that much enthusiasm for it…'
'That's what Shearson said…'
'Where is he, by the way?' Lucas asked, looking around the lot.
Barber grinned. 'He said it looked like we had it under control. I heard he's looking at shirts over in the mall.'
'Asshole,' Lucas said.
'That's the feeling we got. By the way, we found a kid who saw the guy.'
'What?' Lucas stopped short. 'Saw him?'
'Don't get your hopes up,' Barber said. 'He was a hundred yards away and wasn't paying too much attention. Saw the guy's car, too, but doesn't have any idea about make or model or even color… Didn't get anything. Says the killer looked like a guy from some comic-book movie.'
'Then how do you know he saw…'
'Because he saw the woman walking out toward her car. He wasn't paying any attention to her, just hanging out, but a minute later, he saw a man by her car, it looked like he was helping her inside. Then, a couple of minutes later, he really doesn't know how long it was, he sees the guy walking away. And the woman never backs the car out. So the kid thinks-he told us before his mother got here-he thinks this woman is a hooker maybe, doing blow jobs in her car, or maybe she's dealing dope. That's the way his head works. And he kind of casually strolls by to take a look…'
'So he saw the guy for sure.'
'Seems like it,' Barber said.
'Let me talk to him.'
The kid was a slender, ragged teenager with skateboard pads on his knees, fingerless gloves, dirty blond shoulder-length hair and a complexion that was going bad. He wore a long-billed hat with the bill turned down and to the side, covering one ear. His mother hovered over him, throwing severe looks alternately at the kid and the police.
'You got a minute?' Lucas asked the kid, when Barber walked him up.
'I guess so, they won't let me go nowhere,' the kid answered. He brushed his hair out of his eyes, the same gesture Cassie used, half defense, half necessity.
'We would like to go home sometime,' his mother said, spotting Lucas as an authority. 'It's not like…'
'This is pretty important,' Lucas said mildly. To the kid, he said, 'Why don't we take a walk down the mall…'
'Can I come?' asked the kid's mother.
'Sure,' Lucas said reluctantly. 'But let your boy tell the story, okay? Any help you give him… isn't help.'
'Okay.' Her head bobbed: she understood that.
'So what does this guy feel like?' Lucas asked, as they started down the length of the mall.
The kid's forehead wrinkled. 'Feel like?'
'What kind of vibrations did he give off? The Maplewood cop, Barber, says you couldn't see him too clearly, but you must've gotten some vibrations. Barber said you thought he looked like some comic-book guy…'
'Not a comic-book guy, a comic-book movie guy,' the kid said. 'Did you ever see the movie Darkman?'
'No, I haven't.'
'You oughta. It's a great movie…'
'His favorite,' his mother clucked. 'These kids…'
Lucas put his index finger on his lips and she shut up, her face reddening.
'See, there's this guy Darkman, who gets his face all fuck… uh, messed up by these hoods,' the kid said, glancing at his mother. 'He tries to put his face back together with this skin that he makes-'
'Whoa, whoa,' Lucas said. 'There was something wrong with his face? The guy in the parking lot?'
'I couldn't see that much, he had this hat. But he moved like Darkman… You gotta see the movie,' the kid said with wide-eyed seriousness. 'Darkman moves like… I don't know. You gotta see it. This guy moved like that. Like, I couldn't see if there was anything wrong with his face, but he moved like there was. With his face kind of always turned away.'
'Did you see him jump the woman?'
'No. I saw her walking out, then I was looking at something else, then I saw him. Then he got in her car, and then he got out, and then he moved away like Darkman. Kind of glided. With that hat.'
'Glided?'
'Yeah. You know, like, most guys just walk. This guy kind of glided. Like Darkman. You gotta see the movie.'
'All right. Anything else? Anything? Did you see him talk to anybody, did he do a little dance, did he do anything…?'
'No, not that I saw. I just saw him walking… Oh yeah, he was juggling his keys, that's all.'
'Juggling his keys?'
'Yeah. Toss them up, then go like this…' The kid mimed a man throwing his keys up, made a quick little double step, snagged them with his off hand.
'Jesus,' Lucas said. 'Just once?'
