Certain Prey

carried under her arm.
    “All dressed up,” Lucas said.
    “A girl’s gotta do what she can, if she wants to catch a guy,” Sherrill said, batting her eyes at him.
    “Too early in the morning for bullshit,” Lucas muttered. He looked past her into the house, which had been ransacked. “What’s going on?”
    “Come look. You’ll like it.”
    “Too early,” Lucas said again. But he went to look.
    A St. Paul homicide cop named LeMaster showed him the body on the bed, chain around the neck, ankles and hands, pants pulled down around the thighs. “One of the neighborhood junkies found him. About two hours ago—he came by looking for a wake-me-up. The dead guy used to be a big-time dealer.”
    “No more?”
    LeMaster shook his head: “He got his nose in it. Lately, he’s been down to selling eight-balls.”
    “Ain’t that the way of the world,” Lucas said. “One day it’s kilos, the next day, it’s one toot at a time.” He kept his hands in his pockets as he squatted next to the bed: “Bunch of twenty-twos in the head.”
    “Yup. Could be your Barbara Allen killer. Or could be somebody who read about it in the paper and liked the sound of it.”
    Lucas nodded and stood up, scratched his nose and looked at the still-damp pools of blood around the body’s feet and knees. “What’s all the blood from? And what’s his name?”
    “Rolando D’Aquila was his name; everybody called him Rolo. And the blood comes from some drill holes in his kneecaps and his heels. And his leg was bleeding from what might be a gunshot wound . . .”
    “Drill holes in his heels?”
    “Yeah—look at this.” The drill was lying on the floor at the end of the bed, three inches of stainless-steel drill bit sticking out of the chuck. Dried blood mottled the steel bit.
    “Jesus Christ,” Lucas said. He looked back at the body. “They drilled him?”
    “Looks like. Gotta get his pants and socks off to know for sure, and the ME’s guy hasn’t been here yet . . . but that’s what it looks like.”
    “Bet that hurt,” Lucas said, looking at Rolo’s face. His face looked compressed, leathery, like a shrunken head Lucas had seen on television. He looked hurt.
    “See the pieces of duct tape on the floor? You can still see what look like chew marks on some of it. They probably taped up his mouth while they drilled him.”
    “And the house was all torn up, so they were probably looking for something,” Lucas said. “Like cocaine.”
    “Yeah, but, boy—the gunshots in the head, all together like that, just like in the Allen case. None of the neighbors heard anything—and there are a lot of windows open these hot nights. Just like nobody heard anything with Allen. And the way they tortured him, it all looks professional. They had the tape and the chains and the padlocks and the drill— they knew what they were gonna do before they got here. It looks professional; like Allen.”
    “You keep saying ‘they,’” Lucas said.
    “I can’t figure out how one guy could get him on the bed and get him all locked up like that. Had to be awkward. The way I see it, there had to be one to hold a gun on him, and at least one more to do the chains.”
    “Get the slugs to the lab—they need to do a metallurgical-analysis. If they’re like the slugs in the Allen shooting, they’ll be so bent up that they’re just about useless for trying to match by the land marks.”
    “We’ll push it through,” LeMaster cop said. “If they’re the same . . .”
    “Gonna be trouble,” Lucas said. S HERRILL WAS THUMBING through a men’s magazine when Lucas picked his way through the trashed living room. “What do you think?” he asked.
    “I think this magazine is gay,” she said. “It’s basically a gear catalog, overlaid with pictures of guys who are gay.”
    “You can tell from a picture?”
    “Sure. Look at this guy.” She showed him a photo of a slender, shirtless, sweat-covered biker with a shock of dark hair falling carefully over his moody black eyes. “He’s either gay, or he wants you to think he is. They’re all like that. Mountain climbers, canoeists . . . and look at the clothes. You see a guy walking along the street dressed like this and you say . . .”
    “I coulda looked like that when I was a kid,” Lucas said.
    She made a face, rolled her eyes up: “Lucas, believe me, you did not look like this. He looks like he’s been hurt by somebody. They all look like they’ve been hurt by somebody. Look at