Buried Prey

something. Ding Dongs.”
    “Ho Hos.”
    “Sno Balls.”
    “Moon pies.”
    “Eight balls?”
    “Not eight balls,” Del said. Eight balls were one-eighth-ounce Saran-Wrapped cocaine favors.
    After another moment, Del said, “Half of what you think is internally contradictory.”
    “Does that bother you?” Lucas asked.
    “No, but it does highlight the fact that half of what you think is, ipso facto , bullshit.”
    “ Quid pro quo .”
    “ Nolo contendere .”
    “ Post hoc Ergo propter hoc .”
    “Bullshit,” Del said. “There’s no such thing as that.”
    “Sure there is. Logic one-oh-one. After this therefore because of this. Look it up,” Lucas said.
    “Fuck that. I’d rather get my balls busted than waste time looking it up.”
     
     
    DEL LEFT LUCAS on the street looking at his watch. One-thirty in the morning. He should be ready for bed, but the afternoon nap, and his normal night-shift life, had him awake. He could hit a couple clubs, or find a party at the university; on the other hand . . .
    He went back to the XTC, found the phone, and dialed a number from memory. Catherine Brown answered: “Library.”
    He asked, “So you clipping the papers?”
    “That’s what I’m doing. And it’s very cold and lonely up here.”
    “Bet it’s boring, too,” he said.
    “But they depend on me,” she said. “What would happen if the reporters actually had to file their own stories, instead of having me clip them for them?”
    “I can’t begin to contemplate the awfulness of it,” Lucas said. “You like mushrooms?”
    “Love mushrooms—and pepperoni. I’m starving. But I don’t get off for another hour and a half.”
    “I can get four slices and be there in an hour,” Lucas said.
    “I’ll be down by the door at exactly three o’clock.”
    He had an hour to kill, not much to do: he could pick up the pizza anytime, at Red’s, an all-night pizza place on Hennepin Avenue. He looked at his watch, then pulled the notebook from his pocket. Red house, corner of Cornwall and Eighteenth. He headed back across town, farther south and a bit west of where he and Del had been working. Traffic was light, and he was cruising Cornwall in fifteen minutes: the big red house showed a light. Just one, but that, he thought, was enough for a knock on the door.
    He parked at the curb in front of the house, looked up and down the street, then crossed the lawn, climbed the porch steps and knocked on the door; he could hear a radio or a stereo playing inside, and then he heard somebody say something, and he knocked again, louder.
    A pretty woman came to the door, pulled back the curtain that covered the glass inserts, looked at him, turned on the yellow bug light, looked at him again, obviously puzzled that a guy who looked like Lucas would be knocking on her door at two in the morning, and she asked, through the glass, “What?”
    Lucas held up his badge and said, “I need to talk to Delia White. That you?”
    “What do you want to talk to Delia for?”
    “She might be able to help me with an investigation,” Lucas said.
    “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
    Lucas looked at his watch, frowned, and said, “Jeez, I must have lost track of time.”
    A smile flicked across her face and she turned and called back into the house, “Mom!”
    Another woman came out, the first one turned away and met her a few steps from the door. Lucas couldn’t see them anymore because of the curtain, but he could hear them talking, and then the second woman pulled the curtain back, looked at him, and snapped, “What do you want?”
    “I’m a police officer. I need to talk to Delia.”
    “About what?”
    Lucas wanted to get inside, but didn’t really know how, so he just said it: “I understand Delia saw L. Ron Parker stab Ronald Rice. I need to talk to her about it.”
    The curtain slid back across the glass, and he could hear the women talking, but couldn’t make out the words. Then the curtain slid back again, and the older woman, Mom, gave him a long look, then unlatched the door.
    Once inside, sitting on the front room couch, Lucas reapologized for running so late, but told them about the Jones investigation, and said, “So I was talking to a guy and he said that Miz White might be able to help me with this L. Ron Parker thing.”
    “If El-Ron thought I was talking to the police, he’d stick me,” the pretty woman said, and Lucas understood that she was Delia.
    “That doesn’t happen much,”