Certain Prey

process harder for her to stop. And maybe she’ll be a little more tired this way. She went to work when? Seven this morning?”
    Another cop drifted by, a uniform guy on his day off. He was wearing grass-stained shorts and a t-shirt with a moose on the front. He smiled at Sherrill: “Hey, Marcy.”
    “Hey, Tobe,” Marcy said. “You look a little scuffed up.”
    He looked down at his shorts, nodded and said, “ Softball.”
    “Good, good,” she said, and her eyes drifted back to Franklin. After a moment, Tobe said, “Well, see ya,” and drifted away. Lucas glanced at Sherrill, who smiled, well-pleased.
    “She got there at seven o’clock,” said Franklin, who’d been working with the surveillance crew. “First light in her apartment was five forty-five.”
    “So we go into the office at three o’clock, and put a man on her apartment door at the same time,” Lucas said. “We stay at her office until about five, and then we move the act over to the apartment. I want both the office and the apartment taken apart. Everything in the computers, all records showing phone calls, money spent, safe-deposit numbers, everything.”
    “We’ll need a new warrant to get into the safe-deposit boxes,” Sloan said.
    “By that time—Monday—we’ll either be done with her, or completely fucked,” Lucas said. “Although we ought to get the warrant anyway. If there’s something in one of those boxes, it’ll put a little more pressure on her.”
    “You really think she’ll come after you?” Franklin asked. He didn’t know about the cartridge that Lucas had found; he knew only that Lucas would drop one, and pretend to find it.
    Lucas shrugged. “I think she’ll do something. If we do this right, she oughta feel pretty cornered by the time we’re done—and the only way out of the corner will be to get that shell back.”
    The waitress came back and they ordered. And when the waitress was gone, Franklin asked, “Has anybody here ever been on one of these things, when everything went just like you thought it would?”
    They all thought about it for a few seconds, then Lucas shook his head, and Sherrill said, “Never happen.”
    • • •

    A T THREE, the surveillance team put Carmel at her office. Lucas sent two men to camp out at her apartment door— “Nobody goes in without my say-so. And if there’s anybody inside when you get there, they don’t leave until I see them”—and led the rest of the group in a ragged line three blocks across downtown to Carmel’s office. Another two drove over, in a van, to carry any items seized as part of the search.
    Carmel was in the office of another partner when Lucas presented the search warrant to the secretary, and started feeding men into Carmel’s office. Lawyers started coming out of adjoining offices, and one of them yelled, “Hey, what are you assholes doing?”
    “A search,” Sherrill said, facing off.
    “You got a warrant?”
    “We’ve served it,” Sherrill said.
    “You’re assholes,” the lawyer shouted, and then another one started to boo, and five seconds later, the office was a raucous cacophony of boos, catcalls and hisses. A few seconds later, Carmel pushed her way through the crowd and faced off with Sherrill.
    “Out of the fuckin’way,” she said.
    “I’ll let you in, but you are not to touch anything or interfere in any way,” Sherrill said. “If you do, I’ll throw you out.”
    “Yeah?” Carmel pushed closer to her. They were chestto-chest, not quite touching.
    “Yeah,” Sherrill said. She didn’t budge. “And if you touch me, I’ll knock you on your ass and haul you downtown on an assault charge.”
    Carmel almost faltered: “Never stick,” she said.
    “Tell that to your teeth when you’re digging them out of the back of your throat,” Sherrill said. She waited another beat, then stepped aside. “Don’t touch, don’t interfere.”
    Carmel stepped past her, and a few of the lawyers in the hall started cheering: “Go, Carmel.” Inside her office, Carmel spotted Lucas, who was standing, hands in pockets, watching a computer technician slip copy software into the floppy slot on Carmel’s computer.
    “What is this?” she hissed.
    “We’re searching your office, looking for any information or physical articles concerning your involvement in the murders of Hale Allen and others. When things are under control here, we’re moving over to your apartment.”
    “My apartment?” Her hand went to her