Chosen Prey

about it. He kept thinking about it as he finished sorting, and developed an erection so intense that it was almost painful. He might have done something about it immediately, but for his class. And during his class . . .
    One of the young virgins in his Matrix of Romanticism class was nearly perfect: blank, clueless blue eyes, fine slender body, punky blond hair. She would be perfect, he thought, except for her incessant gum-chewing, and the constant presence of an earphone in one ear. She even tried to listen to music during his class, until he questioned it. She unplugged, annoyed, and told him that she was only listening to background music for his lecture and the art. She always tried to find something appropriate.
    Like what? he asked. Beethoven?
    “Enigma,” she said. “The Screen Behind the Mirror.”
    “Please . . .”
    But today she was sitting there with her virginal legs stretched out in front of her, and a little into the aisle, nicely encased in nylon; and she wore a thin white sweater like a fifties movie star.
    He thought of sexual asphyxiation and tried to talk about Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, and also keep his sports jacket appropriately draped as the erection came and went. He could imagine this blank-eye blonde on a bed, the long, groove of her spinal column leading up her back to her neck, her head arches in orgasm and the rope in his hand . . .
    By the time he left for Ellen Barstad’s studio, he was in a hurry, his worries about the gravedigger investigation pushed to the back of his mind. He needed to see her now.
    In his hip pocket, he carried his rope.
     
    L ANE CALLED: “L UCAS, I got him coming out of the building, heading to the car. Good shots. I’m gonna take it over to a one-hour place—I oughta have big prints by the time you get out of there.”
    “Good, but have you talked to Marcy? We’re a little hung up on Randy,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, I talked to her. They haven’t worked anything out yet, but having the pictures can’t hurt.”
    “Okay. You just do the pictures. You say he’s out of the place?”
    “He is, and he’s moving your direction. He’s in a hurry.”
    Lucas, Del, Marshall, and Gibson were huddled in the middle office with two TV monitors, both hooked to the same camera and each with its own tape deck; a couple of Bose speakers; two tape recorders; and four separate cell phones.
    Lucas picked up his phone and called Barstad next door. “Ellen, he’s coming. Now, if it doesn’t work, if it gets uncomfortable, throw his ass out. If he won’t go, yell for help. Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry, Lucas. I’m going to hang up now. . . .” And she did.
    “Crazy chick,” Gibson said.
    They couldn’t see her: She was in the bedroom, and there had been no place for a monitor. Even if there had been, Lucas was worried by the privacy problem: A camera pointing at the bed didn’t seem right, though Barstad hadn’t seemed bothered by the concept. They’d finally decided that the room was simply too small and sparsely furnished. Qatar had been there several times, Barstad said; they didn’t want to change the style just to hide the camera. The only camera was hidden behind the grille of a return-air vent at the front door, from where it could sweep the room.
    Gibson could change the sound from one mike to the next with a simple slide switch. The microphones were sensitive enough that they could hear Barstad moving around, could hear the refrigerator open, could hear her flush the toilet.
    “One more mike, we could hear her pee,” Gibson said.
    “That’s what we want to put in front of a jury,” Del said. “Our witness taking a leak.”
    Marshall disapproved. “I worry about this girl. She thinks she knows what she’s getting into, but she doesn’t. She ain’t a hell of a lot more than a child.”
    “She says he doesn’t carry a gun, he doesn’t carry a knife. If he goes to get a knife, she’ll scream her head off and we’ll be there in twelve seconds.”
    The twelve seconds wasn’t a guess. They’d timed it.
    “That’s a long goddamn time if somebody is cutting your throat or hitting you on the head with a ballpeen hammer,” Marshall said.
    “Yeah, well . . . So I’m worried too. This is what we’ve got, and I think we’re ninety-seven percent okay,” Lucas said.
     
    D EL HAD MOVED out to the front while Lucas and Marshall argued; Qatar drove a green and silver Outback,