Certain Prey

WALKED the subpoena over to the phone company, presented it to the correct vice-president, emphasized the need for confidentiality and the criminal penalties for any breaches of it. The vice-president responded with the correct pieties, and they both walked down to a technical center where the information was printed out. Lucas asked the vice-president to note the date and time on the printout and sign it.
    “Hope this doesn’t get me into trouble,” the vice-president said.
    “We’re trying to nail a Mafia hit man,” Lucas said.
    “Pretty funny,” the VP said as he signed. B ACK A T C ITY HALL, Lucas thought about the pros and cons of asking a favor from the FBI. His stomach growled once, then again, and he answered: he walked down to the cafeteria and got a sandwich, ate it and read the paper, then walked back to his office and dug Mallard’s card out of his desk drawer.
    One problem with the FBI was that once they signed on to a case, its agents tended to get a little overenthusiastic: laser-sighted submachine guns, helicopters, computerized psychological profiles. A further problem was that they also tended to be underexperienced. A guy who came out of college, went into the FBI, and then spent twenty years working as an agent had about as much experience with actual criminals as a patrol cop a year out of tech school. So you’d look at a slightly graying forty-five-year-old—somebody about Lucas’s age—and you might think, hmm, not too bad. Then you’d find out that in cop years, he was about twenty-five.
    On the other hand, the experience that they had tended to be with heavy hitters . . .
    After another moment’s hesitation, he thought about Mallard’s attitude during their meeting: Mallard was one of the brighter ones, Lucas thought. M ALLARD PICKED UP his phone on the first ring. “Yes.”
    “I have an intuition,” Lucas said after he identified himself.
    “I’d be inclined to listen to an intuition,” Mallard said. “Our Minneapolis guys are strangely impressed by you. Or scared, or something.”
    “Thank them for me, the next time you see them.”
    “I didn’t say they liked you,” Mallard said. “They say you refer to us as the Feebs.”
    “Well, that’s, uh, the old rivalry.”
    “Sure,” Mallard said. “So what’s your intuition?”
    “We have a possible suspect. Not for the shooter, but for the woman who hired her. To be honest with you, I’m not going to identify her because she’s a hot potato, and if I’m wrong, she’d nail me to the wall. I could be looking for a job somewhere way out-state.”
    “So much for the preface,” Mallard said. “What’s the intuition?”
    “We, uh, acquired a number of telephone contacts our suspect made about the time of the killing. One of them was in Washington—right where you are . . .”
    “Not the state.”
    “. . . and when I checked it, I got Tennex Messenger Service. Nobody home. It’s an answering service. And I was pretty much told that there’s never anybody home. And just yesterday I was talking to a friend about target shooting, and he told me about this young Iowa guy we’ve got, who just shot a round where he not only kept everything in the ten ring, but also inside the X ring.”
    “Ten-X Messenger Service,” Mallard said. “That’s a pretty far-out intuition.”
    “That’s what I thought.”
    “The odds are about twenty to one against it being anything.”
    “I was thinking fifty to one,” Lucas said.
    “That’s the best odds I’ve ever had on this woman,” Mallard said. “I’d jump at a thousand to one.”
    “You gotta go easy with this,” Lucas said. “None of that laser-sighted submachine gun shit. Or black helicopters.”
    “Nobody’ll ever know,” Mallard said. “Until we want them to. Where can I call you direct?”
    Lucas gave him a number and Mallard said, “Call you tomorrow morning.”
    Lucas hung up, leaned back and looked at the phone. Mallard, the dust-dry but thick-necked economics professor, had shown a glimmer of genuine excitement. As though he shared the intuition . . . S HERRILL WALKED IN without knocking, sat down without asking, and said, morosely, “My problem is, I’m a cop.”
    “Good-looking cop,” Lucas said, rolling with it. “And ya got a big gun.”
    “I’m not being playful, here,” Sherrill said. “It’s suddenly become a problem.”
    Lucas frowned, recognizing the serious set to her face: “What happened?”
    “The slug you gave me,”