Certain Prey

Wichita?”
    “They’ve got all kinds of ways of doing those things— statistics,” Carmel said. “I’d be willing to bet it’s something like that, especially if Davenport didn’t know who you were.”
    “He didn’t. I’m sure of that.”
    • • •

    T HEY WENT OVER IT several times, and finally Carmel said, “You know, we’re coming to the crunch here. If Davenport’s mining some kind of line of information, it might lead to you, or it might lead to me, or it might not. It’s hard to put a case together. I’d say it’s about fifty-fifty whether we should sit tight, or move somehow.”
    “What move?”
    “One possibility is, we could go talk to the kid, and the kid’s mother. We could find out what they told the cops. Then we’d know about that angle.”
    “What if it’s a trap?”
    “I don’t think it is. I don’t think any cop would put a kid in play, not when you’re talking about professional killers,” Carmel said. “If any cop would, it’d be Davenport—but I don’t think even he would.”
    “And you’re saying that after we talk to them, we kill them? The kid and her mom?”
    Carmel shrugged: “If we have to.”
    “We’d have to find some other way to do it. I’m not going to kill the kid—I’ve been thinking about it,” Rinker said. For the first time since they started meeting face-toface, Carmel picked up the warning edge in Rinker’s voice that she’d heard when they talked on the phone, when the problems began developing.
    “Okay. But if you really think you’re the finger of God, what’s the problem?”
    “I’m just not gonna kill that kid. Fuck the finger,” Rinker said.
    “So we find a way not to kill them—not unless we absolutely have to,” Carmel said. “You didn’t kill that Marker woman in Washington. We should be able to figure something out.”
    “You said going after the kid was one possibility. What’s the other?”
    “We could do something that would make it impossible for them to prosecute us, even if they figured out who we are,” Carmel said.
    “How would we do that?” Rinker asked.
    “I’ve been thinking about it, ever since you called,” Carmel said. “I call it Plan B.”
    Plan B took a while to explain; Rinker was not so much appalled as amazed. L UCAS GOT BACK to Minneapolis late the next afternoon, dropped the BMW at the Porsche dealership, sank into his own car with a sigh of relief and headed downtown. He’d told Sherrill and Black when to expect him, and they were waiting in the Homicide office.
    “Not so good?” Sherrill asked.
    Lucas shook his head: “He’s not the guy. He’s a small-time dope dealer.”
    “But they still think he’s the guy?”
    “Mallard still thinks there’s a chance. He’s got a smart assistant named Malone, and Malone was ready to go back to Washington and start over,” Lucas said.
    “Goddamnit,” Black said. “Did you hear about the sniper?”
    Lucas shook his head: “What sniper?”
    “Car got hit by rifle fire last night during rush hour. One car, one windshield, nobody hurt. Couldn’t find a shooter, and we thought maybe it was an accident. Then this afternoon, right at the start of the rush hour, a little after three, the guy came back. Two cars hit, a woman hit in the neck, she’s in surgery. Some guy coming down the road behind her stuffed a wad of newspaper in the hole in her neck, probably saved her life. But the media’s going batshit—the radio stations, all the drive-time guys. I mean, this is their audience being shot at.”
    “So everybody’s out?”
    “Well, you know Sloan’s working the Hmong thing and Swanson is still chasing down stuff on the Parker case; so people are making noises like taking us off Allen. They say just a few days, but you know what that might mean . . .”
    “I’ll talk to Rose Marie,” Lucas said. “But the question is, what’ve we got to do? What’s left that we haven’t done?”
    They all looked at each other, and finally, Sherrill shrugged. “We were waiting for you to tell us.”
    Lucas said, “What’re you doing tonight?”
    “Nothing,” Sherrill said.
    “Why don’t you hang around and see if Carmel’s going anywhere?” Lucas suggested.
    “If we’re gonna start tailing her, we’re gonna need more than two guys,” Black said. “They’re gonna be hard to come by. Given the sniper and all that.”
    “So we don’t have a full-time tail—we just have somebody hanging around. Maybe we get