Certain Prey

taking it around to hotels and motels and everything else, asking for anybody who fits the general description.”
    Rinker nodded at the phone. “All right, I’m outa here in fifteen minutes.”
    “Go on down to Iowa,” Carmel said. “Des Moines. They don’t get the Cities TV stations there, and you can be back here in three hours, if you need to be. Give me a call on this phone when you get there, give me a number.”
    “What’re we going to do?”
    “We have to go to Plan B. Somehow, he’s onto us. I don’t know how, but he’s working something.”
    “Ah, man, can you handle it?”
    “I can handle it,” Carmel said grimly. “Now get out of there.”
    “I’m gone.” T WO DETECTIVES, S WANSON and Franklin, responded to a tip from a bellhop at the Regency-White, and took the composite photograph to the manager, who shook his head. “I don’t know the lady, but I only see a fraction of the people who come through.”
    “Could we find out how many single women are in the hotel, and go from there?” Franklin suggested. “Then maybe we could talk to the room maids.”
    “Most’ve them have gone home already,” the manager said. He had a small mustache but otherwise, Franklin thought, looked a lot like Pee-Wee in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. “I can get the room service people, and the bellhops.”
    Between the available desk people, they narrowed it to four women: two who more or less fit the composite, and two whom nobody could remember seeing. The bellhop, whom everybody called Louis, didn’t know what room she was in, but swore she fit the picture. “That’s her,” he told Swanson. Swanson called Lucas and told him they had a possible ID.
    “Wait for me,” Lucas said.
    They waited, working through people on the restaurant staff: two of them had seen the woman, they thought, but then maybe not. The picture wasn’t that good, was it?
    Lucas arrived on the run, left the Porsche at the curb and said, “If a cop comes along, tell him it belongs to Chief Davenport,” he told the doorman.
    “Right, chief,” the doorman said, and saluted. Just like New York, or something.
    Franklin met him in the lobby and said, “We’re ready to go up.”
    “Any more IDs on her?” Lucas asked.
    “Couple of possibles—but they say they can’t quite tell from the photo.”
    “Yeah, but it’s the best we’ve got,” Lucas said. He studied the picture for a few seconds with the same strange feeling of déj‡ vu that he’d experienced when he’d first seen it. He felt that he knew the woman, because, he thought, she was a perfect type : a cheerleader. Cute, busty, athletic. He knew a hundred women just like her: hell, there were twenty just like her on the police force. Sherrill was just like her, take away the black hair . . .
    “Michelle Jones,” the manager muttered, tapping on a door.
    “Just a minute,” a woman’s voice called.
    The three cops took a step back, leaving the manager looking quizzically at them. Then he realized that the woman might come out shooting, and started to take a step back. Then the door opened, just two inches, and Michelle Jones looked out: she was black.
    “Sorry, wrong room,” Swanson said. “We’re checking a security problem.”
    There was no answer at the next room. Lucas nodded at the manager, who used his key and stepped hastily away. Swanson turned the doorknob and they went in.
    “Christ, it looks like somebody was beaten to death,” Franklin said. Clothing was strewn around the room and across the bed; two pairs of panty hose, apparently damp, hung from a door, and a wool sweater lay on the rug, drying on top of a bath towel. Two suitcases, both open on the floor, looked like they’d been rifled by a fast-moving thief.
    “Nah, it just look like my wife’s been here,” Swanson said. “This is just a fuckin’woman.”
    The manager crooked his head out from behind the protective bulk of Franklin: “I think the gentleman is right,” he said. “Single women . . . and you should see what they put in the toilets. Women’ll put anything in a toilet. We once had a woman whose dog died, and she tried to flush it down the toilet.”
    “Small dog?” Franklin asked.
    “Well, yeah.” The manager’s eyes seemed to cross. “I mean, nobody’d try to flush a German shepherd.”
    The third room was also empty: but very empty. No sign of a presence other than the disturbed covers on the bed.
    “You’re sure there’s supposed to be somebody in