Chosen Prey

that resembled melting mudbergs, and at the women with their red noses and cheeks and plastic boots. “Kind of interesting, having Marcy as a coordinator,” Del said, as he hopped over an icy puddle at a corner curb.
    “Could be chief someday, if she works things right,” Lucas said, hopping after him. “If she’s willing to put up with some bullshit.”
    “Hate to see her go for lieutenant,” Del said. “She’d wind up stuck away somewhere, property crime or something. They’d start pushing her through the rounds.”
    “Got to do it, if you want to go up,” Lucas said.
    “You didn’t do it,” Del said.
    “Maybe you didn’t notice, but I never went up until I pulled a political job out of my ass,” Lucas said.
     
    T HE SIX AD agencies took the rest of the morning; hip, smart people in sharp clothes, all with a touch of color, the people looking curiously at the cops. Lucas, in his straight charcoal suit, felt like a Politburo member walking in a flower garden. They showed pictures of Willis in Pulp Fiction, and got shaking heads at four of the agencies, raised eyebrows at two others. They looked at the possibilities presented by these two agencies, without any personal contact, and agreed that they were possible but unlikely.
    One was a kid, the right size and shape, but probably too young—his personnel jacket said he was twenty-two, a summer graduate of the University of Minnesota–Morris. His winter coat was a dark blue hip-length parka, and his boss had never seen him in anything else. “Never in a topcoat,” she said. “He’s pretty country for a topcoat.”
    Lucas nodded. “So thanks,” he said.
    “What should I do?” she asked. “If he’s being investigated . . .”
    “Don’t do anything,” Lucas said. “Wouldn’t be right; the chances of his being involved in anything are pretty slim.”
    Outside, Del said, “Didn’t Aronson come from out there somewhere? Like Morris?”
    “No, she was from Thief River,” Lucas said.
    “That’s out there.”
    “Del, Thief River is about as close to fuckin’ Morris as we are to fuckin’ Des Moines, for Christ’s sakes.”
    “Excuse my abysmal fuckin’ ignorance,” Del said.
    The second possibility was the right age, and he had a dark topcoat, but the hair and body shape were wrong. The agency chief said the man never had a buzzcut, always the ponytail. They thanked him and left.
    “This sucks,” Lucas said.
    “Be nicer if we were walking around in the summer,” Del said. “I’ll run them both, but they don’t feel so good.” He looked up at the gray sky and said, “I wish the sun would come out.”
    “Maybe in April.”
     
    T HEY WALKED BACK to City Hall through the Skyways, shouldering through the lunchtime rush and the human traffic jams around the food courts. Lucas got an apple at the courthouse cafeteria, and Del got a tuna-fish sandwich and a Coke. At the office, Marcy, who was talking to a severe-looking young woman, looked up and said, “The Dunn County guy is here. I put him in your office. And we got those pictures made. You say yes, and we send them out.”
    Lucas took a picture from her. The artist had deftly generalized Willis’s features, emphasized the buzzcut and added the long coat. “Good,” Lucas said. “Send it.”
    Terry Marshall was ten or fifteen years older than Lucas, in the indeterminate mid-fifties to early sixties, with a lean, weathered face, brown hair showing swatches of gray, and a short brush-cut mustache. He wore round steel-rimmed glasses that might have made someone else look like John Lennon. Marshall didn’t look anything like Lennon; he looked like something that might have eaten Lennon. He was sitting in Lucas’s guest chair reading the paper. When Lucas pushed through the door, he stood up and said, “Your girl out there told me to wait here.”
    For all his wolfish appearance, he seemed a little embarrassed, and Lucas said, “As long as you didn’t go through my drawers.”
    Marshall grinned and said, “Let it never be said that I spent any time in your drawers. Is that girl a secretary, or what? She pushes people around.”
    “She’s a cop,” Lucas said. “She does push.”
    “Ah.” Marshall sat down again as Lucas settled behind his desk. “I thought she seemed, I guess . . .” He stopped, looking confused.
    “What?”
    “She seemed like she might be . . . I don’t know. Handicapped, or something.”
    “We had a guy up here running around