Chosen Prey

door at Ware’s exploded inward from the impact of the hammer, they joined the surge into the office.
    The front was exactly that: a front. Only seven or eight feet deep, it contained four chairs lined up against one wall, and a metal desk with a red telephone. A door, closed, led into the back. The uniformed cop didn’t bother to try the knob, but simply kicked it, and the door flew open.
    The back room was huge: a warehouse space draped with rolls of backdrop paper. A plush red couch was sitting on one of the rolls; a brass bedstead with a king-size mattress was pushed into a corner. A table held lamps, and two floor lamps stood behind them. There were five strobes on their light stands, two of them covered with soft-boxes, and more lighting equipment sat on another side table.
    A short, balding man sat on the couch, holding a camera the size of a shoe box; he was frozen in place. Another man, older, taller, wearing a crisp white shirt and gray slacks, was walking briskly toward a desk full of computer equipment. The computer cop yelled, “Hey, hey hey . . .” and the man walked faster, reaching, and the computer cop ran straight into him and pushed him away from the computer desk.
    The man in the white shirt started screaming at the computer cop: “Get away, get away, get away, this is all illegal this is all illegal get away . . .”
    Another man, who had been out of sight behind a lighting rack, walked to the back door and punched it open: Two cops stood there, and he turned back. “Hey, what’s happening . . .”
    Then the guy on the couch with the big camera stood up and said, “I’m leaving. I’m not even supposed to be here.”
    “Everybody shut up,” Rie shouted. “We’re Minneapolis police. You two guys . . .” She pointed at the man who’d tried the back door, and the man by the couch. “Sit. Just sit.”
    “I want to call my lawyer,” the man in the white shirt shouted.
    Lucas walked over to him. “How are you, Morris?” he asked. “You remember me?”
    Ware looked at Lucas for a moment, then said, “No. I don’t. I want my attorney, and I want him now.”
    “Somebody give Mr. Ware a copy of the warrant,” Lucas said. And to one of the squad cops from the blocking car: “Then take him out front and let him use the phone.”
    Rie got IDs on the other two men, Donald Henrey and Anthony Carr, as Ware was taken into the front room. As he went, he said to Rie, “You’re all going down for this. This is the end of your jobs. This is the end. . . .”
    The computer specialist pulled a phone line out of the back of Ware’s sleek Macintosh, and checked the power cords that went out to peripherals. “Looks okay,” he said. “We’re isolated, but I’d rather not work on it until I can get it back to the shop.”
    Lucas nodded. “Whatever’s best. The way he was going for it when we came in . . . gotta be something there.”
    One uniformed cop from the blocking squad watched the two men on the couch, while Rie, Larsen, Del, Lucas, and the two entry-team uniforms began taking the back room apart—pulling out drawers, looking under pillows, shaking out boxes. They found not a single photograph. They did find two dozen Jaz disks for the Macintosh.
    Nothing to look at.
    Finally, Lucas asked Henrey, the man with the big camera, “What’re we going to find on the disks?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. He sounded depressed. “I’m just hired to shoot. Nothing illegal. I won’t shoot anything illegal.”
    “Does anything illegal get shot in here?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. He turned the big camera in his hands. “I was just hired for one shoot.”
    “When? Now? Earlier? Later?”
    Henrey looked at his watch. “Half hour. We were just setting up lights.”
    Lucas turned to Rie. “Maybe we ought to get Ware back in here. You could sit out front and be a receptionist.”
    She ticked a finger at him. “Not bad.”
     
    W ARE CAME BACK with his escort, looked at Lucas, and snapped, “What?”
    “Sit on the couch,” Lucas said.
    “My attorney is on the way,” Ware said.
    “Good. I suggest that you not say anything until he gets here.”
    “I won’t. Nobody else better say anything, either,” he said, looking at the two other men. “I’ll sue for slander and get every nickel you’ve got. You better believe it.”
    Lucas crooked a finger at the man with the camera, who followed him into the front room. Rie was moving a chair behind the metal