Certain Prey

on one or another of her killings. The only thing they don’t have is the shooter. If we wanted to release her to those states for trial, sooner or later she’d wind up in the electric chair or the gas chamber or strapped down to a gurney. With that kind of leverage, we could squeeze her pretty hard. We could put some pretty big holes in the St. Louis mob with her information.”
    “And that’s what you want.”
    “Of course,” she said. “If we get this Guy, the guy who probably ran her . . . he knows everything. If she was willing to pin the tail on him, we could show him the same set of electric chairs and gas chambers. If he talked, two years from now, St. Louis would be cleaner than . . . I don’t know—Seattle.”
    “Seattle has Microsoft.”
    “Okay.” She showed the tiniest of smiles. “Than Minneapolis.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Anyway, the mob guys in St. Louis know this as well as we do. It wouldn’t be too farfetched to think they might send a couple of shooters to fix the problem.”
    “She might be too smart for that,” Lucas said. “I got the impression of smartness from the lady. So we know the mob could send a couple of guys, and the mob knows it could send a couple of guys, and she knows it. And if everybody knows it, do they send a couple of guys?”
    “I don’t know,” Malone said. “I do know one thing that’s pretty unique.”
    “Yeah?”
    “You’re the only guy I know who’s literally danced with the devil.” L UCAS SAW the big window the minute he walked in the apartment door.
    He had an advantage over Malone and the other FBI agents—when they’d first arrived, they were looking for Rinker herself, and didn’t know about the blood on the floor. One of the FBI crime-scene techs pointed him around the apartment, and finally he asked, “Did you check the outside window ledge on that big window?”
    The agent looked at the window, and thinking fast, said, “Not yet,” as if it were next on the list.
    “Would it be all right to lift it up?”
    “Let me get one of the guys to do it,” the agent said.
    “What’re you thinking?” Malone asked.
    “I think carrying any body out of this place would take a fruitcake,” Lucas said. “But throwing them out the window, if it’s nighttime . . .” He peered out: “They’d land right behind the garbage Dumpster. You could back a car right up to them.”
    One of the technicians came over, looked skeptically at the window, and said, “Let me get this.”
    Lucas stepped back and the tech unlocked the inner window, and lifted it easily. The outer window was a convertible aluminum glass-and-screen affair; the glass had been pushed up, and the screen was in place. “Screen’s a little loose,” the tech said. He was working awkwardly through surgeon’s gloves. “Let me.”
    He used a small pocketknife to slip the screen up an inch, which allowed him to pull it out of the frame. He leaned it against the wall, and they all looked at the bottom end of the screen, and the brick wall outside.
    “Huh.” The tech grunted and got down close to the brick, leaning out through the window.
    “What?” asked Malone, glancing quickly at Lucas.
    “You know any reason why a brick would wear tweed?” W OODEN H EAD was being interrogated by a team of specialists from Washington. Lucas and Malone watched for a few minutes, then left. If the team missed anything, Lucas wasn’t smart enough to figure out what it would be—the team was taking Wooden Head apart inch by inch, and they were good.
    “I’d suggest we get a bite at the Rink, but somebody would probably spit in the hamburger,” Malone said.
    “So let’s get something someplace else. Then maybe I can rent a car and get back home.”
    “Really? You’d drive back instead of fly?”
    “Really,” Lucas said.
    “We’ve got a car going up later today, a couple of guys from the crime-scene crew to review the work at the last two killing scenes . . . you could ride along. I think they’re leaving around three, and plan to drive straight through.”
    “Sign me up,” Lucas said. T HEY STOPPED at a downtown diner, got a tippy table, and Lucas looked at one of the legs and told Malone, sitting opposite, “See that lever on the end of the leg? There’s a lever sticking up.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Push the lever toward me, with your foot.”
    “What’s that for?”
    “It levels the table,” Lucas said.
    Malone pushed the lever with her foot, and the table stopped tipping.