Certain Prey

killers described one of the women in a way that you resemble. And you admitted to several people that you knew and represented Rolando D’Aquila, and not only that, that you were representing a man suspected of hiring somebody to kill his wife—a murder committed by the same person or persons who committed the D’Aquila killing. So far, you are the only connection we can find between the killing of Barbara Allen and the killing of the other three. And that’s why we took the photos around; and if you don’t like it . . .”
    “What?”
    “Tough shit.”
    They sat staring at each other for a few seconds, then Carmel smiled quickly and said, “All right. I wanted to know.” She stood up to leave. “I didn’t have anything to do with any of these killings. I’ve been trying to work out in my head how they could have happened, and I can’t come up with anything.”
    “I can’t ask you what connection Hale Allen has with D’Aquila, because you’re his attorney . . .”
    “And it would be absolutely unethical for me to tell you, if there were any. I’ll tell you this, just between you and me and the doorjamb—there isn’t any connection. My theory is, Barbara Allen was killed by accident, or mistake, when she got in the way of something else. Something involving drugs and these Latinos. Then the cop came along by accident and the whole affair went up in smoke. But my theory is, Barbara Allen had nothing to do with it—and what you really ought to be doing is looking for the other guy who ran from the Barbara Allen scene. The guy that Barbara Allen got killed for seeing, and the cop got there too late to see.”
    Lucas thought about it for a few seconds, then said, “We’ve gone over all of that.”
    “And?”
    “It worries us.”
    “It should worry you, and you ought to go over it some more,” Carmel said. “And stop showing those fuckin’ pictures around.”
    “There was only one witness, Carmel,” Lucas said. “She gave you a clean slate. She didn’t even say, ‘Maybe.’ ”
    “Good.” And she was gone. L UCAS LEANED BACK in his chair, fighting back the little trickle of adrenaline. Carmel was a challenge. He picked up the Equality Report, and the Zen-hum began again, while his head worked through Carmel’s visit. If she hadn’t killed anyone, would she have made the visit when she heard about the photo spread? Absolutely. Would she have made it if she was guilty? He thought about it for three seconds. Absolutely, she would have. She had a fine, discriminating taste in the mannerisms of innocence. So he’d learned nothing.
    But the cartridge: the .22 he’d picked up in her apartment was a fact. Couldn’t use it in court, couldn’t even admit that it existed. But the slug in that .22 said Carmel was guilty. Guilty of something, anyway. Just for argument’s sake, say the bullet was usable in court. How would she defend against it? He turned it over in his mind: She’d say the bullet came from D’Aquila. That he’d stored a bag in her closet, or that he’d planted it for some reason . . .
    D’Aquila. Another image popped into the back of his brain. He leaned forward, let his chin drop on his chest, closed his eyes, concentrated. After a minute, he pushed himself out of his chair and half-jogged down the hall to Homicide. Neither Sherrill nor Black was in, but the D’Aquila file was in Sherrill’s work tray. He flipped through it, and found the coroner’s photo of the fingernail gouges that D’Aquila had scratched into the back of his hand before he was executed. Lucas looked at it, turned it over, and thought, if you simply separated out some of the lines . . . if you realized that D’Aquila, panicked, tortured, facing execution, was not exactly writing in a notebook, and couldn’t see what he was doing, then

might resolve itself out this way:
    C l o A N
    Begin with a C. The next letter was an L, just a straight up-and-down line without the bottom line. The next letter, he thought, was intended to be an O, but was confused by the bar across it. If the bar were moved over one place, it would make an A—leaving the final letter as an N. Just like that: C Loan. “G ODDAMNIT, C ARMEL, ” he said.
    The door opened behind him, and he turned to see Sherrill. “Looking through my desk?”
    “Looking through the D’Aquila photos,” Lucas said. “Look at this.”
    Sherrill was looking at him. “Jeez, you’re really pumped. What’ve you got?”
    He laid it out for