"Nobody fucks with me like this," Roux was shouting at her press aide when Lucas left her office with Anderson. "Nobody fucks with me…"
Anderson grinned at Lucas and said, "Connell does."
Greave caught Lucas in the hall. "I read the file, but it was a waste of time. I could have gotten the executive summary on TV this morning." He was wearing a loose lavender suit with a blue silk tie.
"Yeah," Lucas grunted. He unlocked his office door and Greave followed him inside. Lucas checked his phone for voice mail, found a message, and poked in the retrieval code. Meagan Connell's voice, humble: "I saw the stories on TV this morning. Does this change anything?" Lucas grinned at the impertinence, and scribbled down the number she left.
"What're we doing?" Greave asked.
"Gonna see if we can find a guy down in Dakota County. Former sex psycho who liked knives." He'd been punching in Connell's number as he spoke. The phone rang once, and Connell picked up. "This is Davenport."
"Jeez," Connell said, "I've been watching TV…"
"Yeah, yeah. There're three guys in town don't know who the source is, and none of them are Roux. You better lay low today. She's smokin'. In the meantime, we're back on the case."
"Back on." She made it a statement, with an overtone of satisfaction. No denials. "Is there anything new?"
He told her about Anderson's information from the Wisconsin forensic lab.
"Ligatures? If he tied her up, he must've taken her somewhere. That's a first. I bet he took her to his home. He lives here-he didn't at the other crime scenes, so he couldn't take them… Hey, and if you read the Mercedes Bey file, I think she was missing awhile, too, before they found her."
"Could be something," Lucas agreed. "Greave and I are going after Junky Doog. I've got a line on him."
"I'd like to go."
"No. I don't want you around today," Lucas said. "It's best, believe me."
"How about if I make some calls?" she asked.
"To who?"
"The people on the bookstore list."
"St. Paul should be doing that," Lucas said.
"Not yet, they aren't. I'll get going right now."
"Talk to Lester first," Lucas said. "Get them to clear it with St. Paul. That part of the investigation really does belong to them."
"Are you gonna listen to my story?" Greave asked as they walked out to the Porsche.
"Do I gotta?"
"Unless you want to listen to me whine for a couple hours."
"Talk," Lucas said.
A schoolteacher named Charmagne Carter had been found dead in her bed, Greave said. Her apartment was locked from the inside. The apartment was covered by a security system that used motion and infrared detectors with direct dial-out to an alarm-monitoring company.
"Completely locked?"
"Sealed tight."
"Why do you think she was murdered?"
"Her death was very convenient for some bad people."
"Say a name."
"The Joyce brothers, John and George," Greave said. "Know them?"
Lucas smiled. "Excellent," he said.
"What?"
"I played hockey against them when I was a kid," he said. "They were assholes then, they're assholes now."
The Joyces had almost been rich, Greave said. They'd started by leasing slum housing from the owners-mostly defense attorneys, it seemed-and renting out the apartments. When they'd accumulated enough cash, they bought a couple of flophouses. When housing the homeless became fashionable, they brought the flops up to minimum standards and unloaded them on a charitable foundation.
"The foundation director came into a large BMW shortly thereafter," Greave said.
"Skipped his lunches and saved the money," Lucas said.
"No doubt," Greave said. "So the Joyces took the money and started pyramiding apartments. I'm told they controlled like five to six million bucks at one point. Then the economy fell on its ass. Especially apartments."
"Aww."
"Anyway, the Joyces saved what they could from the pyramid, and put every buck into this old apartment building on the Southeast Side. Forty units. Wide hallways."
"Wide hallways?"
"Yeah. Wide. The idea was, they'd throw in some new drywall and a bunch of spackling compound and paint, cut down the cupboards, stick in some new low-rider stoves and refrigerators, and sell the place to the city as public housing for the handicapped. They had somebody juiced: the city council was hot to go. The Joyces figured to turn a million and a half on the deal. But there was a fly in the ointment."
The teacher, Charmagne Carter, and a dozen other older tenants had been given long-term leases on their apartments by the last manager of the building before the Joyces bought it, Greave said. The manager knew he'd lose his job in the sale, and apparently made the leases as a quirky kind of revenge. The city wouldn't take the building with the long-term leases in effect. The Joyces bought out a few of the leases, and sued the people who wouldn't sell. The district court upheld the leases.
"The leases are $500 a month for fifteen years plus a two-percent rent increase per year, and that's that. They're great apartments for the price, and the price doesn't even keep up with inflation," Greave said. "That's why these people didn't want to leave. But they might've anyway, because the Joyces gave them a lot of shit. But this old lady wasn't intimidated, and she held them all together. Then she turned up dead."
"Ah."
"Last week, she doesn't make it to school," Greave continued. "The principal calls, no answer. A cop goes by for a look, can't get the door open-it's locked from the inside and there's no answer on the phone. They finally take the door down, the alarms go off, and there she is, dead in her bed. George Joyce is dabbing the tears out of his eyes and looking like the cat that ate the canary. We figured they killed her."
"Autopsy?"
"Yup. Not a mark on her. The toxicology reports showed just enough sedative for a couple of sleeping pills, which she had a prescription for. There was a beer bottle and a glass on her nightstand, but she'd apparently metabolized the alcohol because there wasn't any in her blood. Her daughter said she had long-term insomnia, and she'd wash down a couple of sleeping pills with a beer, read until she got sleepy, and then take a leak and go to bed. And that's exactly what it looks like she did. The docs say her heart stopped. Period. End of story."
Lucas shrugged. "It happens."
"No history of heart problems in her family. Cleared a physical in February, no problems except the insomnia and she's too thin-but being underweight goes against the heart thing."
"Still, it happens," Lucas said. "People drop dead."
Grave shook his head. "When the Joyces were running the flops, they had a guy whose job it was to keep things orderly. They brought him over to run the apartments. Old friend of yours; you busted him three or four times, according to the NCIC. Remember Ray Cherry?"
"Cherry? Jesus. He is an asshole. Used to box Golden Gloves when he was a kid…" Lucas scratched the side of his jaw, thinking. "That's a nasty bunch you got there. Jeez."
"So what do I do? I got nothing."
"Get a cattle prod and a dark basement. Cherry'd talk after a while." Lucas grinned through his teeth, and Greave almost visibly shrank from him.
"You're not serious."
"Mmm. I guess not," Lucas said. Then, brightening: "Maybe she was stabbed with an icicle."