Chosen Prey

don’t know. She oughta be okay,” Lucas said. They rode in silence for a minute or two, and then Lucas added, “I hope.”
    “Maybe we ought to put somebody with her.”
    “I’ll talk to Marcy. Maybe tonight . . . She is a little loose in the hinges, isn’t she?”
     
    W HEN THEY GOT back to the office, Lucas asked Marcy, “Hear anything from Lane?”
    “He said Qatar’s got a class. He’ll try to spot him, then figure out a photograph. If he can’t get him at the school, he’ll try to get him at his house.”
    “He can’t be seen,” Lucas said.
    “I told him that. He knows,” she said. “Towson called. He wants to talk to you. And Weather called.”
    “Towson’s got a problem?” Randall Towson was the county attorney.
    “I told him everything,” she said. “He’s a little worried about going with an identification by Randy. Randy’s pretty impeachable, he says.”
    “Sure, but we’ve got the hard evidence: We found the earrings in his apartment,” Lucas said.
    “Call him,” Marcy said.
    “I will—but I need you to check out a surveillance deal. . . .” He told her about Barstad and her apartment, and the possibility of using Barstad as bait in a trap.
    “All right, I’ll get on it. I better talk to her first, find some place we can do the monitoring from.”
    Lucas looked around. “Where’s Marshall?”
    “He went home. He’ll be back, but he had some stuff to do.”
    “Okay. And I’ll call Towson.” As he was dialing, he could see Marcy moving around the office. She was moving well, the pain receding from her face, although on occasion she would ease herself past a piece of furniture or up a step, still feeling the damage to her side and rib cage. But maybe the artist was good for her, Lucas thought. She’d been cheerful for the past couple of days, the first time he’d seen that in a while.
     
    R ANDALL T OWSON WASN’T a bad county attorney, as county attorneys went; still, he had his own priorities, like reelection. He did not enjoy losing court cases that were heavily covered by the movie people, who might imply that he’d let a multiple murderer slip through his incompetent fingers. With evidence, he always wanted more.
    “Look,” he said, “Marcy laid it out pretty well, and I appreciate the circumstantial stuff and the supportive evidence like his college record. But at this point, if you don’t get Whitcomb you don’t get Qatar. And Whitcomb is not reliable. When he figures out that he could be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he might be pretty unhappy with our side. And what’s Qatar ever done to him?”
    “I know. We’re working on one more thing,” Lucas said. He described the relationship between Barstad and Qatar. “She’s cooperating. We’re gonna wire her apartment, and if we get him talking, maybe we won’t need Randy as much.”
    “Good. The more the better,” Towson said. “You still want to get Whitcomb, but this Barstad—if we can get him on tape, and Whitcomb comes through, he’s toast.”
    “If he doesn’t say anything?”
    “Well, shit . . . Wait for Whitcomb, and if Whitcomb comes through, take Qatar. Once we get him and we get into his house, get at his computer and all his other stuff, there’s a chance we’ll find more.”
    “That’s what I was thinking,” Lucas said.
    “ ’Cause there’d be one thing worse than losing the trial—and that’s having him kill somebody else while we’re jacking around.”
    “Especially if the TV people found out about it.”
    “That’s what I was thinking,” said Towson.
     
    W EATHER HAD CALLED to see if they were going out for dinner. Lucas said, “Things are happening. I’ll get back if I can, but you better not count on it.”
    “There. You sound as cheerful as you have all winter,” she said.
    “Yeah, well . . . it’s getting intricate.” He liked intricate. They talked for a few more minutes, and then he saw Marcy hold up a finger, and he said, “I gotta go. Titsy calls.”
    “Then you gotta go.”
    Marcy moved quickly on the surveillance. “We’ve got Jim Gibson free. He’s going up to the Radisson to get Barstad’s keys, and then he’s gonna go over and look at her apartment right now. Barstad says there’s a place next door called Culver Processing Sales that’s a good possibility as a place that we can hide out. I just talked to the owner, it’s a Dave Culver, and he says he wants to talk to the guy in charge—you—before