Broken Prey

huge guy: he has smaller feet, maybe size ten.”
    “Okay. That’s good.”
    “Crime Scene is coming, maybe they’ll find more.”
     
    LATER THAT DAY , the co-op got another batch of files from Cale—all the contract people who had substantial contact with the Big Three. Too much paper; too much. Too many little facts crawling around Lucas’s head. At the end of the day, he was more confused than when he started.
     
    HE HAD TWO CALLS the next morning. “Hey. Closing in?” Weather asked.
    “Not exactly.” He yawned, and rubbed the stubble on his cheek. He told her about the warrants idea.
    “As long as you won’t get in trouble . . .”
    “Ah, I’ve been in trouble. They keep giving me better jobs.”
    “So I had another thought . . .”
    “What?”
    “Lynyrd Skynyrd, ‘Gimme Three Steps.’ The perfect cop song.”
    “How would you know about Lynyrd Skynyrd?” Lucas asked.
    “They were playing it in the operating room this morning . . .” Weather operated a lot, sometimes two or three times a day, two hundred and fifty times a year. Most of the operations were small—scar revisions, excisions of various undesirable lumps and bumps—and some were enormously complicated, done only after weeks or months of study.
    “I thought you guys listened to Mozart,” Lucas said.
    “Not when the rock ’n’ roll surgeon’s working . . . So everything’s okay there? With you personally?”
    “Sure. Why?”
    “Things are a little tense here,” Weather said. “We’ve just heard that France has raised its terror-alert level. They think something’s going on.”
    “Really?” Something else to worry about.
    “Yes. They’ve gone from Run to Hide  . . .”
    The joke was so unexpected that Lucas snorted, and hurt his nose again. He said, “Oh, Jesus, don’t make me laugh . . .”
    “The only two higher levels are Surrender and Collaborate ,” Weather said.
    “You’re killing my nose, goddamnit,” Lucas said. “Davenport’s a French name, by the way . . .”
     
    THE SECOND CALL came a few minutes after nine o’clock as Lucas stood naked in front of his chest of drawers, digging around, certain that there was one more pair of clean shorts. He’d seen them the day before . . .
    He ran the washer according to a severely logical schedule based on need: he had, he thought, perhaps twenty pairs of shorts. Why wash after only five or ten pairs have been used, as Weather would, thus putting all that extra water down the drain and through the sewage plant, when you could wait the whole twenty days and only have to wash once? Of course, if you miscalculated . . .
    He had just found the pair of shorts when the phone rang; he stepped over to the table and took it.
    Dr. Cale, from St. John’s. “We’ve, uh, had what is sort of an anomalous situation out here. I really feel stupid for calling you, but I decided it was best not to put it off.”
    “What?” Lucas asked; he felt a tingle.
    “Well, uh, after you left here, uh, the word that you were looking at staff members got around pretty quick. Not from Jansen. Apparently, somebody in the security booth overheard enough to understand what you were looking at, and the gossip got started . . .”
    “What? What happened?”
    “Sam O’Donnell didn’t show up for work this morning,” Cale said. “He’s an hour and a half late. Nobody knows where he is—he’s not at home, we checked. At least, he doesn’t answer when we knock. Doesn’t answer pages or his phone. Nobody’s seen him.”
    “Okay, okay—this is something. I’m coming down there,” Lucas said. “If he shows up, call me on my cell phone. I’ll be there in an hour.”
     
    HE AND SLOAN did the running hookup, taking the Porsche back through the bean- and cornfields, past the truck gardens and river-bottom fields; there’d been a bug hatch of some kind, and they started picking up serious splatter every time they crossed a bridge. On the way down, they called Nordwall, the Blue Earth County sheriff, and arranged for a search warrant.
    The sheriff called back: “Thought you’d want to know. He drives a gray Acura MDX.”
    “Excellent!” Lucas said.
     
    SLOAN HAD A LAPTOP with him. He called Cale, got O’Donnell’s address, plugged it into a Microsoft map program, and took them through St. John’s into an exurban neighborhood between St. John’s and Mankato. They cleared the top of a hill, where Lucas expected to find the house, but then