Certain Prey

backhoe.”
    “Speaking of backhoes . . .” “What?”
    “You never told me that Special Agent Malone of the FBI was a woman. And a woman with a sexy voice who wants to dance with you.”
    “Didn’t seem relevant,” Lucas grunted. “Our relationship is purely professional.”
    “She wants you to call her, inWichita. I’ve got a number.” M ALONE PICKED UP the phone on the first ring. “Hello, Lucas Davenport,” she said. “I’m told you’re off rusticating.”
    “Fishing,” Lucas said.
    “I wanted you to know that I’m moving up to Minneapolis-with my group, and Mallard is coming in from Washington. We’re very interested in this Louise Clark. Very interested.”
    “There’s something wrong with the whole thing. Did Sherrill tell you about the semen?”
    “No, nothing . . .”
    Lucas summarized his conversation with Sherrill and Malone said, “If the semen checks out, if the DNA checks out . . . that’s it.”
    “Makes me feel weird,” Lucas said. “It’s not right. This Clark isn’t a pro killer, not unless she was doing it for the fun of it. Because she didn’t have any goddamn money.”
    “Could have had it hidden away.” “Bullshit,” Lucas said. “She kills people, but hides it all away? The inside of her house looked like a cut-rate motel. She had a TV set that couldn’t have been worth more than a couple hundred bucks, new. Everything in the place said she was a secretary, and struggling to keep her head above water.”
    “All right. Well, I’m coming in tomorrow. Maybe, when you get back, you can take me out for a nice little fox-trot somewhere—someplace where you won’t spend all of your time dancing with the waitress.” L UCAS CARRIED the sack of beer next door to the Markses’ place. Lucy Marks was snipping the heads off played-out coneflowers as her husband maneuvered the Kubota in and out of a shed. The shed showed splintered wood at the side of one of the doors, evidence of a recent impact.
    “Role tells me you’re gonna learn how to run the tractor,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m glad I bought the quart-size bottle of peroxide.”
    “Hey . . .”
    “Lucas, you gotta encourage him to be careful. I’m afraid he’ll roll it over on himself. He’s like a kid.”
    “He’ll be all right,” Lucas said.
    “That wouldn’t be beer in that sack, would it?”
    “Couple Leinies,” he said, guiltily.
    “Yeah, well, I’ll take the Leinies, you go figure out the tractor. When you get back, we’ll fry some crappies and we can have the beer then.”
    “Well . . .” She gave him a look and he handed her the bag. T HE K UBOTA WAS . . . different. Running wasn’t a problem, but maneuvering the joystick for the backhoe took a little practice. “I’ll have you buttering your bread with this thing before we’re finished,” Marks said, enthusiastically. “I figure with a few hours’ practice, I could do all the driveways for this whole area, come winter.”
    “Jesus Christ, Role, you make what, a half-million dollars a year selling stock? And now you’re gonna pick up an extra two hundred dollars a month doing driveways?” W HEN L UCAS WAS checked out, Marks showed him where he was going to hide the key in his shed. “Anytime I’m not up here, you’re welcome to use it.”
    “Maybe I could help you brush out a couple of those trails,” Lucas said; he liked the backhoe.
    “Terrific.” Then, as they walked back up toward the cabin, “You gettin’ any?”
    Lucas could see Lucy Marks on the lake side of the house, cleaning up the grill.
    “Overtime? I don’t get overtime anymore . . .”
    “Pussy,” Marks said. “Crumbcake. You know? It sorta looks like . . .”
    “Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, I just took a call from a nice-looking forty-ish FBI lady who’s coming to Minneapolis and wants me to take her out to fox-trot.”
    “Fox-trot? Fox-trot my ass. If it was me, I’d drop about nine inches of the old French-Canadian bratwurst on her,” said Marks, who talked big but was the most faithful man on earth. As they came around the corner of the house, he hollered at his wife: “Lucas is gonna jump an FBI agent.”
    “A female, I hope,” Lucy Marks said. She was spraying something on the grill, turning her face away from the coals.
    “She wants to fox-trot with him,” Marks said. “She called him up.”
    “Sounds promising,” Lucy Marks said. “How’d this happen?”
    “I was down in Wichita, and we were in this bar