Certain Prey

anyway,” Sherrill concluded.
    “Give me a call,” Lucas said. “I’ll be around all afternoon.”
    • • •

    C ARMEL L OAN, wearing bloody-red lipstick, arrived at City Hall to find Hale Allen sitting in the Homicide office, across a gray metal desk from Black and Sherrill. The Homicide office looked like a movie set for a small-town newspaper.
    “Why are we here?” she asked, taking charge. She dropped her purse on Black’s desk, pushing aside some of his papers; a calculated move—she was the important one here. “I thought we covered everything on Friday. And when are you going to release Mrs. Allen? We need to make arrangements.”
    “We’ll release her as soon as the chemistry gets back, which should be this afternoon or tomorrow,” Black said. “We’re rushing it.”
    “You know the sensitivity of the issue,” Carmel said, leaning into him. She had an effect on most men. Black was a not-quite-out-of-the-closet gay, and the effect was blunted.
    “Of course,” Black said, with equanimity. “We’re doing everything we can.”
    “So why’re we here?” Carmel pulled a chair over from another desk, sat solidly in the middle of it, turned to Allen before Black or Sherrill could answer, and asked, “How’re you feeling?”
    He shrugged. “Not so good. I can’t catch my breath. We need to get something going on the funeral.” He was absolutely gorgeous, Carmel thought. The weariness around his eyes added a depth he hadn’t seemed to possess before, a certain fascinating sadness.
    “So,” she said, turning to Sherrill. “What?”
    Sherrill leaned across the desk and asked Allen, “Do you plan to marry Louise Clark?”
    Allen sat back as though he’d been slapped. Carmel took one look at him, instantly understood the question, fought down a surge of insane anger and blurted, “Whoa. No more questions. Hale—out in the hall.”
    When they were gone, Sherrill looked at Black and grinned: “He didn’t tell her.” C ARMEL L ITERALLY SAW RED, as though blood clots had drifted over her pupils. In the corridor outside Homicide, she grabbed Hale Allen by his coat lapel and shoved him against the wall. She was not a large woman, but she pushed hard, and Allen’s shoulder blades were pressed against the stone.
    “What the fuck are they telling me?” she hissed. “Who is Louise Clark?”
    “She’s a secretary,” Allen mumbled. “I’ve been . . . sleeping with her, I guess.”
    “You guess?” Carmel demanded. “You don’t know for sure?”
    “Yeah, I know, I should have told you,” Allen said. “But I didn’t think anybody would find out.”
    “Jesus H. Christ, how dumb are you? How dumb? What else didn’t you tell me? Are you fuckin’ anybody else?”
    “No, no, no. God, I hate that word. Fucking.” Carmel closed her eyes for a moment: she couldn’t believe this. She could believe that he was sleeping with another woman. She just couldn’t believe that an actual lawyer could be this damn dumb.
    “You have a law degree?” she asked, opening her eyes. “From an actual college?”
    “Carmel, I don’t . . .”
    “Ah, shut up,” she said. She turned away, took a couple of steps, then swung around to face him. “I oughta quit. If I weren’t a friend of yours and Barbara’s, I would quit.”
    “I’m sorry,” Allen stuttered. “I’ve told you everything else, honest to God.”
    Carmel let out a breath. “All right. I can yell at you later. And I will. Now tell me about this Louise Clark. Are you gonna marry her?”
    Allen shook his head: “No, no, it was never like that. It was physical. She’s really . . . into sex. She’s a goddamn sex machine—what can I tell you? She kept hitting on me and finally one day we had a closing on a motel over in Little Canada and one of the rooms was unlocked . . .”
    “Ah, man . . .” Carmel pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead.
    “What?”
    “You’ve heard the word motive, right? It’s a legal term, often used by lawyers?”
    “I didn’t know Barbara was gonna get murdered, for Christ’s sake,” Allen said, his voice rising. A little angry now, flushing, tousled hair falling down over his forehead.
    “All right, all right. Is it done with this woman?”
    “If you say so,” Allen said.
    “I say so,” Carmel said. “But I’ve gotta talk to her.”
    “All right. I’ll call her.”
    “We’ll have to talk to the cops about it, sooner or later, but not right now. Maybe tomorrow.”
    “How