Rules of Prey (21 page)

“She home?”

“Not yet. She does the ten-o’clock news, cleans up, usually goes out for something to eat. Then she comes home, unless she has a date. For the next couple of weeks, she’s coming straight home.”

Lucas sat down on the mattress. “I think—I’m not sure—but I think if he hits her, he’ll come after dark but before midnight. He’s careful. He won’t want to walk around at a time when people will notice him, but he’ll want the dark to hide his face. I expect he’ll try to get in the house while she’s gone and jump her when she comes back. That’s the way he did it with Ruiz. The other possibility would be to catch her right at the door as she’s going in. Sap her, push her right
inside. If he did it right, it would look like he was meeting her at the door.”

“We thought he might try some kind of con,” said one of the surveillance cops. “You know, go up to the door, say he’s a messenger from the station or something. Get her to open the door.”

“It’s a possibility,” Lucas said. “I still like the idea—”

“Here she comes,” said the cop at the window.

Lucas got up and half-crawled, half-walked to the window and looked out. A red Toyota sports car pulled up to the curb directly in front of McGowan’s house, and a moment later she got out, carrying a shopping bag. She self-consciously didn’t look around and marched stiffly up to the house, unlocked the door, and went inside.

“In,” said the first surveillance cop. The second shone a miniature flashlight on his wristwatch and counted. Thirty seconds. A minute. A minute and a half. A minute forty-five.

The phone rang and the first surveillance cop picked it up.

“Miss McGowan? Okay? Good. But keep the beeper on until you go to bed, okay? Have a good night.”

“You coming up every night?” Henley asked casually.

“Most nights, midweek. For three hours or so, nine to midnight or one o’clock, like that,” Lucas said.

“You do it for too long, you wind up brain dead.”

“And if the surveillance doesn’t do it, this fuckin’ elevator music will,” Lucas said. The easy-listening music still oozed from the boombox.

One of the surveillance cops grinned and nodded at his partner. “Compromise,” he said. “I like rock, he can’t stand it. He likes country and I won’t listen to all that hayseed hillbilly tub-thumping. So we compromised.”

“Could be worse,” Henley chipped in.

“Not possible,” Lucas said.

“Ever listen to New Age?”

“You win,” Lucas conceded. “It could be worse.”

• • •

“Oh, God damn, folks, she’s doing it again.”

“What?” Lucas crawled off the mattress toward the window.

“We thought maybe she didn’t realize there’s a crack in the curtains,” the cop said. His partner had his binoculars fixed on McGowan’s house and said, “C’mon, babee.” Lucas nudged the first cop away from the spotting scope and peered through it. The scope was focused on a space in the curtains on a second-story window. There was nothing to see at first, then McGowan walked through a shaft of light coming from what Lucas supposed was a bathroom. She was brushing her hair, her arms crossed behind her head. She was wearing a pair of white cotton underpants. Nothing else.

“Look at that,” whispered the cop with the binoculars.

“Give me the fuckin’ things,” said Henley, trying to wrench them away.

“Goddamn one-hundred-percent all-American TV-reporter pussy,” the surveillance cop said reverently, passing the binoculars to the vice cop. “You think she knows we’re watching?”

She knows, Lucas thought, watching her face. It was flushed. Annie McGowan was turned on. “Probably not,” he said aloud.

Five days of surveillance produced nothing. No suspicious cars checked her home, no approaches on the street. Nothing but falling leaves and cold winds rattling the tiles on the architect’s roof. The curtain never closed.

“Red Horse?” It was midday and Lucas was calling from his home.

“Yeah, Annie. This is no hot tip, but I was out in the neighborhoods and noticed something you might be interested in. One of the women’s business clubs is going to hear a lecture from a university shrink about—I’m reading this from a flier—‘the relationship between sexual-social inadequacy and antisocial activity, with comments about the serial
killer now terrorizing the Twin Cities.’ That sounds like it could be good. Maybe you’d want to get a camera over to see this guy before he gives his speech.”

“That sounds pretty relevant. What’s the name?”

“Lucas?” It was Jennifer, a little breathless.

“Jennifer. I was going to call. How are you feeling?”

“I’m getting a little queasy in the morning.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Jesus, Lucas, I’m okay. It’s only morning sickness. I just hope it doesn’t get much worse. I almost lost my breakfast.”

“With the breakfasts you eat, I believe it. You’ve got to get off that eggs-and-sausage and butter-toast bullshit. It’ll kill you even if it doesn’t give you morning sickness. Your cholesterol is probably six hundred and eight. Buy some oatmeal or some Malt-O-Meal. Get some vitamins. I can’t figure out why you don’t weigh two hundred pounds. For Christ’s sakes, will you—?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I didn’t call you for culinary advice. This is an official call. I’ve been hearing strange rumors. That something heavy is happening with the maddog. That you know who he is and that you’re watching him.”

“Absolutely wrong,” Lucas said flatly. “I can’t prove it, obviously, but it’s not true.”

“I won’t ask you for Boys Scout’s honor, because that’s personal and this is an official call.”

“Okay, listen, as the woman who is carrying my kid, I don’t want you to run around and get exhausted, okay? So on a purely personal basis, I tell you, Boy Scout’s honor, we’ve got no idea who he is.”

“But you’re doing something?”

“That’s an official question. I can start lying again.”

Jennifer laughed and Lucas felt cheered. “I read you like an open book,” she said. “I bet I find out what’s going on within, say, a week.”

“Good luck, fat lady.”

• • •

Anderson and Lucas were talking in Lucas’ office when Daniel edged in. He had never seen Lucas’ office before. “Not bad,” he said. “It’s almost as big as my closet.”

“There’s a trick wall and it opens into a full-size executive suite, but I only do it when I’m alone,” Lucas said. “Don’t want to make the peons jealous.”

“We were going over the case,” Anderson said, looking up at the chief. “It’s been ten days since the maddog’s last hit. If the shrinks are right, he should be coming up on another one. Probably next week.”

“Christ, we gotta do something,” Daniel said. He was wringing his hands and Lucas thought he had lost weight. His hair was uncharacteristically mussed, as though he had forgotten to brush it before he left home. The maddog was bearing him down.

“Nothing on the McGowan thing?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Lucas. Tell me something.”

“I don’t have anything specific. We might be able to cool the media. I’m thinking that we should release some information about him. Something that would make it harder for him to pick up his victims.”

Daniel paused. “Like what?”

“A flier listing the type of woman he goes after—dark hair, dark eyes, young to middle-aged, attractive. Then maybe a few hints about him. That he’s light-complected, dark-haired, a little heavy, maybe recently moved in from the Southwest. That he dressed like a farmer at least once, but that we believe him to be a white-collar worker. Appeal to women who fit the type, and who feel approaches from men like that, and ask them to call us.”

“Christ, you know how many calls we’d get?” Anderson asked.

“Can’t be helped,” Lucas said. “But we’re not getting anywhere, and if he takes another one next week . . . We’d be better off if the press thought we were doing something about it.”

Daniel pursed his lips, staring blankly at the pebbled
plaster on Lucas’ office wall. Eventually he nodded. “Yes. Let’s do it. At least we’re doing something.”

“And maybe call an alert for next week,” Lucas suggested. “Put a lot of extra cops on the street. Let the media know about it, but ask them not to publish. They won’t, and it’ll make them feel like they’re in on something.”

“Not bad,” Daniel admitted with a wintry smile. “And after it’s over, we can all go on television and debate media ethics, whether they should have cooperated with the cops.”

“You got it,” said Lucas. “They love that shit.”

Lucas called her from a street phone.

“Red Horse?”

“Listen, Annie, Daniel has ordered Anderson—you know, from robbery-homicide?—he’s ordered him to make up a list of characteristics for both the victims and the maddog killer and release it to the media. Probably sometime this afternoon. Some of them are already well-known, but some of them were confidential up to this time.”

“If I can get it in ten minutes, I can make the noon report.”

“I can’t give you all of it, but we think he’s fairly new to the area. We don’t think he’s been here more than a few years and that he moved in from the Southwest.”

“You mean like Worthington, Marshall, down there?”

“No, no, not southwest Minnesota, the southwestern United States. Texas, probably. Maybe New Mexico. Like that. Daniel will make it official that he was seen in farmer clothes, just like you had it. But now they think it might be a disguise and that he’s really white-collar.”

“Great. Really great, Red Horse. What else?”

“There’ll be more on the list, but that’s the best stuff. And listen, before you put it on the air, call Anderson and ask him about it. He’ll tell you. He’s in his office now.” He gave her Anderson’s direct line. “Thanks. I’ll see you on the air in fifteen minutes.”

• • •

Midafternoon. Lucas was suffering post-luncheon
tristesse,
and sluggishly picked up the phone.

“Lucas?”

“How’re you feeling, Jennifer?”

“What’s going on with McGowan?”

“Jennifer, goddammit—”

“No, no, no. I’m not asking you if you screwed her. You already gave me Boy Scout’s honor on that. What I want to know is, what’s going on with McGowan and the surveillance? Why are the cops watching her?”

Lucas hesitated before answering, and instantly knew he had made a mistake.

“Ah. You
are
watching her,” Jennifer crowed.

“Jennifer, remember when I asked you to talk to the chief before you did anything on Carla Ruiz? I’m asking you to talk to him again.”

Evening. The sun went down noticeably early now. The summer was gone. Lucas waited outside the door of Daniel’s office. He had been waiting fifteen minutes when Daniel came in from the outside.

“Come in,” he said. He pulled off his topcoat and tossed it on the couch. “I’m asking you straight out. Did you tip Jennifer Carey on the surveillance?”

“Absolutely not. She’s got her own sources. She called me and I sent her to you.”

Daniel poked a finger at him. “If I find out otherwise, I’ll kick your ass.”

“It wasn’t me. What happened when she called?”

“I called the station manager, got him with Carey in a meeting, and read them the riot act. Carey started on this media-ethics trip and the station manager told her to shut up. Said he wasn’t going to have his station blamed if a star from another station was murdered by the maddog.”

“So that’s it?”

“They wanted equal access with Channel Eight. They’re going to take a camera into her house over the weekend, when nothing’s happening, shoot some film of McGowan
ironing shirts or something. We’ll let them in the surveillance post for a few minutes. Just the once.”

“And they hold the film until we catch him?”

“That’s the deal.”

“Not a bad deal,” Lucas said approvingly. “What did Jennifer have to say about it?”

“She was unhappy, but she’ll go along. She’ll produce the McGowan interview. Some kid’s reporting it,” Daniel said. “To tell you the truth, I think she’s a little jealous. I think she wishes it were her, not McGowan.”

“Do you remember that awful poem you wrote to me when we first started going out? About having my baby?”

“That wasn’t so awful,” Lucas said, propping himself on one elbow. There was a little edge to his voice. “I thought it was rather intricate.”

“Intricate? It sounded like a bad teenage rock-’n’-roll song from 1959.”

“Look, I know you don’t particularly like my—”

“No, no, no. I loved it. I kept it. I have it taped to the pull-out typewriter tray on my desk, and about once a week I open it and read it. I just read it today, and I was thinking: Well, I really am having his baby.”

Lucas pressed his ear to Jennifer’s bare midriff.

“Am I supposed to be hearing anything yet?”

“Are you listening really closely?”

“Yeah.” He pressed down harder.

“Well, if you listen very closely . . .”

“Yeah?”

“You can probably hear that Budweiser I had before bed.”

Lucas arrived at the lake in time to watch the sun go down Saturday evening. Carla was gone on the bike, but arrived a half-hour later with a small bag of groceries and a bottle of red wine. Lucas spent Saturday night and Sunday, and most of Sunday night at the cabin. At two in the morning he kissed Carla on the lips and drove back to the Cities, hitting his own
bed a little after five. He was late for the project meeting again.

“Whatever happened to the list of people we got from the Rice woman?” Lucas asked. Monday morning in the chief’s office. Half the detectives looked out of focus, tired from another weekend’s overtime. “You know, when we were checking about the maddog’s gun and who bought it from her husband?”

“Well, we checked everybody she could remember,” said Sloan, who had done the Rice interview.

“Nothing?”

“We didn’t actually interview everybody. We checked them. If they were way off the profile, we let it go. You know, women, old men, boys, we let them go. We did interviews with everybody that might come close to the profile, and came up dry. We were going to go back to the rest, but everything slowed down when Jimmy Smithe started to look good. Everything got thrown on that.”