Free Phantom Prey by John Sandford Page A

like a nice person. No electricity, though. Between us, I mean.”
    “Did she have anything going on with anybody ?”
    Lageson hesitated and Lucas saw it. He said, "C’mon. You didn’t tell us about the fairy girl. You owe us.”
    “I just don’t like . . .”
    “Cops?”
    “Not that,” he said. He pushed a saltshaker around with his index finger. “I don’t like to feel like a rat. Get somebody in trouble when I have no idea of whether they deserve it.”
    “We’re trying to catch a cold-blooded killer,” Lucas said, snaffling another piece of bread off the plate between them. “I wouldn’t hang that on anyone who’s not guilty. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want you to throw a red herring out there, either—piss on somebody you don’t like by siccing me on them.”
    Lageson watched Lucas butter the bread, then said, “I wouldn’t do that.”
    “Good. So what do you got?” Lucas asked. “You got something.”
    “I saw her and Denise Robinson running around a lot together—in a busy way, like they were up to something. Denise’s boyfriend was in there, too. Mark McGuire. I don’t know what they were up to, but they were hanging out.”
    “Thank you,” Lucas said. Lageson had given him a red linen napkin, and he dabbed his lips with it, wiping away the butter. “You don’t know what it was?”
    “No idea. Maybe nothing. But they were hanging out.”
    “In a busy way.”
    Lageson, lucas decided, as he was leaving, was a pretty good guy, though he might have smoked too much dope; Lucas met a surprising number of good guys while he was running around chasing crooks. They usually weren’t as interesting as the assholes, he thought.
    PATRICIA SHOCKLEY.
    He spotted the address and found a parking space two blocks away, strolled back. The night was getting cool, and he walked with his head down, hands in his pockets. Up ahead, the pale faces of a young couple bobbing toward him, the woman prodding her escort, and they crossed the street before Lucas got to them. Jesus, he looked like a thug? In the dark, with the jeans and the black leather jacket . . . Maybe.
    Patricia Shockley’s apartment was in another of the converted houses, bigger than the house that Carter lived in, and better kept. The front door was locked, and he pushed a doorbell with a label that said Shockley/Price. A woman’s voice from a doorside speaker: “Who is it?”
    “Lucas Davenport, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” he said. “I’m a state investigator, looking into the Ford and Austin murders. I need to talk to Patricia Shockley.”
    After a moment’s hesitation, “Where did you get my name?”
    “Alyssa Austin. It was also in the state file, from an interview with Agent Benson.”
    “I’ll buzz you in.”
    The lock buzzed and slipped, and Lucas pushed through the door into the hallway. A Persian carpet covered the wooden floor inside, and a wide oaken staircase twisted up to the second floor. Like a sorority house, he thought. A woman came to the landing and said, “Up here.”
    Patricia Shockley was in full Goth: black leggings, black blouse, black-dyed hair, badly chewed black nails. Late twenties. She led him down the hallway to her apartment. Another Goth woman, this one wearing a sixties-style black sheath over black leggings, perched on a stool at a dinner bar off the kitchen, legs crossed.
    Shockley said, “My roommate. Leigh Price.”
    Price smiled and licked a knife with peanut butter on it. “Cop,” she said. Price was a fairy, if he understood the concept: short, slight, dark, pretty. Maybe thirty. Shockley was thicker, wider; a University of Minnesota basketball player.
    “You always work at night?” Shockley asked.
    “I’m looking for a guy,” Lucas said. “Do either of you know Roy Carter?”
    The two women glanced at each other, then they both looked back at Lucas and shook their heads. Price said, “Nooo . . . I don’t think so. Who is he?”
    “He works at Mike’s liquors? Hangs