Certain Prey

him. She felt increasing concern as she drove out to Allen’s house. And once there, she called back to the firm to make sure he hadn’t shown up in the meantime. He hadn’t.
    Miller got out of the car and looked up the driveway. Remembered what had happened to Allen’s wife; started up the drive. The house felt occupied, but quiet: a bad vibration. She stopped in the driveway and said, “Oh, God,” and crossed herself.
    The front door was open an inch, and she called, “Hale? It’s Alice. Hale?”
    No answer. She stepped inside, and some atavistic cell deep in Alice Miller’s brain, a cell that had never before been called upon, triggered, and Alice Miller smelled human blood.
    Knew what it was, somehow, deep in the brain. Clutched her purse to her breasts and took three more steps into the house, leaned sideways, looked into the hall . . .
    At Hale Allen’s shattered skull.
    She may have screamed there, inside the house. Later, she couldn’t remember. For sure, she turned and ran toward the front door, still clutching her purse, turned just before she got to the door to look back, to see that Hale Allen’s corpse wasn’t following her, and ran straight into the doorjamb.
    The blow nearly knocked her down. She dropped the purse, dazed, struck out and pushed her hand through the glass window on the storm door. Now she did scream, a low wavering cry, and clutching her bleeding arm, she managed to get outside, where she ran down the driveway. A man was walking his dog along the curb, and she ran at him, whimpering, bleeding badly from the arm cuts.
    “Help me,” she cried. “Please please please . . .” T HE RESPONDING COPS thought Alice Miller probably had something to do with the shooting, as cut up as she was. But the patrol sergeant who was second at the scene took a moment to walk through the house, to note the drying blood on the floor and the fresh blood on the door. He listened to Alice as she sat on the grass next to the squad car, and finally said, “Call Davenport. And somebody ride this lady into the hospital.” S HERRILL AND B LACK got to Hale Allen’s house five minutes before Lucas. Black looked at Allen’s body and said, “Totally awesome. Somebody shot the shit out of him.”
    “Poor guy,” Sherrill said. Her lip trembled, and Black patted her on the back.
    “How long was Carmel loose last night?” Black asked. “You didn’t go back, did you?”
    “No, but John Hosta did. She came downstairs at one o’clock and went right home.”
    “This is a little different than the other ones,” Black said, looking closer at the gunshot pattern. “Not a twenty-two, for one thing. Bigger caliber. Still not huge, but bigger. And whoever shot him, really unloaded . . .”
    “Lovers’ quarrel,” Sherrill said.
    “Jesus, if we hadn’t been watching Carmel, she could be in trouble,” Black said.
    “I don’t know,” Sherrill said. “To tell you the truth, they were still running pretty hot. I don’t think they were at the shooting stage.”
    “Maybe he blew her off, maybe . . .”
    A cop at the door called in to them: “Davenport’s here.”
    “All right,” Sherrill said. “Let’s talk.” L UCAS WAS in a cold rage: he should have thought of this. He should have understood that Hale Allen might be in trouble. Had Allen discovered something? Had Carmel told him something in pillow talk? Something that led to accusations?
    Sherrill walked him through the house, watching him. “Take it easy,” she said, once. “You’re gonna have a goddamned heart attack.”
    “I’m not gonna have a goddamned heart attack,” Lucas grated.
    “Your blood pressure is about two hundred over two hundred. I know the signs, remember?”
    “Off my case,” he said. “And tell me about Carmel.” “She was loose for a while last night,” Sherrill said. “More than an hour.”
    “It’d take a hell of a coincidence,” Lucas said.
    “It’d take more than that,” Sherrill said. “She would have had to leave the minute we did, get over here, work herself into a rage, shoot him, get away without any neighbors hearing the shots . . . it’s bullshit.”
    “Maybe the other woman did it, the shooter,” Lucas said.
    “Look at the wounds,” she said. “That looks like somebody who was pissed off, not a cold-blooded professional killer.”
    “But look at the group in the forehead . . . that looks like a pro.” Lucas shook his head. “This is ludicrous,” he said. “I don’t even