Broken Prey by John Sandford Read Free Book Online Page A

after the tragedy last year . . .”
    “Tragedy? The police didn’t tell me about a tragedy.” A disapproving tone, as though secrets had been withheld.
    “His wife was killed in an awful, awful accident,” Rice said. “Adam was a widower and poor little Josh lost his mother . . .”
    “Did little Josh ever talk to you about her?”
    “You know, just last Christmas, he said that he would give up every gift he had if he could have Mommy back. He was so sweet, and smart! He was my only grandchild, I’ll never have a grandchild now.”
    She was rolling. Once you got an interviewee rolling, you tried not to interrupt. With an occasional prompt, or short sympathetic question, Ignace had pumped her dry in twenty minutes. He even had the detail about the tire swing hanging from the oak tree out on the lawn.
    “But they didn’t let you see them . . .”
    “Only their faces. The sheriff told me I didn’t want to, but they came out with him in that black bag and I marched right up and I said, ‘I want to see my grandson!’ I wouldn’t take ‘No.’ So they unzipped it and let me look at his face . . .”
    “What did you think when you saw his face? What was your reaction?”
    “Oh my God . . .” The bawling started again, and Ignace took it down in Gregg . . .

    HE WAS BUZZING when he hung up, Ruffe’s Radio: There you go, Ooo, the thing about Ignace is, he’s smarter than any reporter in the Twin Cities. You know he used to be an Olympic acrobat . . . Wait, do they have acrobats in the Olympics? Maybe it’s gymnastics. Some hot chick with the big boobs on ESPN: Tell me, Lord Ignace, how does it feel to be knighted by the queen . . . ?
    He was buzzing because he had the story. Whatever else might happen, he had the basic facts, he had the color. He didn’t even need the cops, but he’d have to call them anyway. Because Sloan thought he was an asshole, and Hubbard had warned him away from Davenport, he started with the sheriff.
    Nordwall didn’t want to talk, but Ignace said, “First of all, Sheriff, this is public record, the basic facts. You really do have an obligation to warn people about this guy.”
    That got him the basics. Then he said, “The stuff that I got from the survivors, let me just give it to you quick, just to make sure there isn’t anything terribly wrong. I want this to be accurate—you don’t even have to tell me anything else, but just if this is right.”
    He then gave Nordwall everything that Hubbard had given him, plus everything that Laurina Rice had given to him, plus some bullshit that he made up. That got the sheriff rolling, and when they were done, he had a front-page story nailed down.
    He talked to his team leader, who in olden says would have been called an assistant city editor, and she talked to the metro editor, and then the team leader came back and told him they would take everything he had, don’t worry about length.
    A photographer was dispatched to Mankato to get a shot of an empty tire swing, and a graphics artist starting pulling up Internet images of straight razors. Ignace spread his notes over his desk, marked some of them with a red felt-tip.
    Hubbard: he owed him. No question about it.

    HE COULDN’T FIND SLOAN. He had stolen an internal police department phone book, with home phone numbers for all the cops, but nobody answered when he called Sloan’s home. He left a message with the answering service, said briefly what he wanted, and hung up. He toyed with the idea of calling Davenport, thought about Hubbard’s warning, and decided against it.
    Besides, there was an old newspaper maxim that he was happy to honor: too many facts could ruin a perfectly good story. Nobody could complain that he hadn’t done the work—he’d talked to the principal law-enforcement officer of the county where the murder happened, he had talked earlier in the week to Sloan about the Angela Larson murder, he had comments from survivors. He didn’t