Certain Prey

to softly pick up the dust with a piece of Magic Mending tape. Ashler sprayed dust on the smallest, least-clear print, then squatted next to the bar of soap. “Tape.”
    Somebody handed her the roll of Magic Mending tape. She gently lowered a loop of the tape across the first print, let it rest on the carbon particles for a moment, then lifted it.
    “Shoot,” she said, squinting at the tape. She picked up a magnifying glass and looked again.
    “What happened?”
    “No print,” she said. She looked back at the soap. “It just sorta pulled little tiny pieces of the soap away . . . it’s totally wrecked.”
    “All right, stop,” Lucas said. “Let’s get it back in the fridge, and talk to the Feebs again. Maybe we ought to do some experiments on another bar of soap with our own fingerprints before we try again.”
    Ashler nodded. “That’d be best—but I thought we needed it in a hurry.”
    “Maybe not, if Harry’s genius kid came through.”

    H ARRY’S GENIUS KID came through. Sloan had personally taken him to the Rosedale store, because Sloan liked to drive fast in city cars with lights and sirens, and they were back in less than an hour. “Four of them are pretty good,” the kid said. “If Mr. Sloan can take me back to my place, I’ll scan them in and we can ship them over to the FBI.”
    Lucas was looking at the slides, holding them up to a fluorescent light. They didn’t look like much, but they looked better than other prints he’d seen. They looked better than what he’d been able to see with the naked eye. “Harry,” he said to the kid’s father, “your kid is a fuckin’ genius.” R INKER GOT to Des Moines a little after five o’clock in the afternoon, checked into a Holiday Inn and called Carmel on the cell phone.
    “More bad news,” Carmel said. “My guy in the police department says they’ve got your fingerprints.”
    “I wiped everything,” Rinker said, but she could feel the uncertainty in her own voice.
    “He says they took them off a bar of soap they found in a room at the Regency-White,” Carmel said. “Davenport’s guys.”
    “A bar of soap?”
    “Yeah. He said they were sending them to the FBI.”
    “I’ll call you back,” Rinker said. She remembered picking up the soap. She hadn’t thought to wipe it. She rang off before Carmel could protest, and sat quietly on the bed, pulling herself together for a moment. Despite her self-control, a tear trickled down her cheek: that fuckin’ Davenport.She took three deep breaths, exhaled, then punched nine numbers into the phone. “This is Rinker,” she said when the man answered. “I gotta pull the plug.”
    After a long silence, the man said, “You’re sure?”
    “It’s the Minneapolis deal. They’ve been to my place, even if they don’t know it; but they’re sniffing around Wichita. They’ve got a bad picture of me, but it’s a picture, one of those computer deals. Now I think they might have my fingerprints.”
    “How could this happen?” Disbelief in his voice.
    “You wouldn’t believe it. But you tell Wooden Head to get out to Wichita with the money. I’m gonna clean out the bank there, go to my bottom-line ID—I’m shredding everything else—and I’ll leave him the papers. He can take the bar and find a new manager; but my prints’ll be all over the place. He should try to wipe everything he can, but I don’t think he’ll get everything.”
    “What about your apartment?”
    “I’m gonna try to get in and out, quick,” she said. “I’ll check the place first.”
    “I didn’t think anybody had your prints.”
    “They don’t. I’ve never been printed. That’s the good news. But they’ve been getting too close, and sooner or later, they just might put things together. I can’t take the chance.”
    “All right. Jeez, Clara . . .”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll get back in touch, when I can.”
    “Where are you now?”
    “Minneapolis. I’ll be leaving here in a couple of hours, I’ve got some cleaning up to do. But if I drive straight through the night, I ought to be in Wichita by the time the banks open.” W HEN SHE FINISHED, she called Carmel back: “I’m closing down my life,” she said. “I’ll just be a figment of your imagination by this time tomorrow.”
    “You mean you’re . . . giving up the bar?”
    “Everything,” Rinker said. “Now listen: do you still think we go for Plan B?”
    “Well, if you got caught, or if there’s something more on me . . .