Chosen Prey

something.”
    “Do you think he’s connected to the university here?”
    “We have no idea. None of the murdered women were, of the ones we’ve identified.”
    “Hmm.”
    “Since you came up four times, and you’re an art museum, and he’s an artist, apparently . . . although he may also be a photographer.”
    “We’re not really an art museum,” she said. “I mean, we don’t have much in the way of paintings or sculpture.”
    “Really? I’ve never been here before. I assumed because of the name . . .”
    “We have thirty thousand glass paperweights and ten million dollars’ worth of Mayan pottery,” Qatar said.
    “Ah.” But he was puzzled. “An unusual collection.”
    She smiled and said, “Our first graduate to become a bishop went off to care for the Indians in Mexico. When he died, the college got his money, which was considerable—he came from a rich milling family—and his pots. We couldn’t hardly take one and throw the rest out. And eventually, people figured out that we had the best collection of authentic documented Mayan pots in the country, so we brought them out of the basement and now all sorts of scholars come to look at them.”
    “The paperweights?”
    “Same sort of thing. Jemima Wells, whose son went to school here, left us one million dollars in cash back in 1948, and bequeathed additional funds to build this building, and also required that if we wanted the cash and the building, that we house her paperweight collection in perpetuity. We took the money. As it happens, the paperweights were a joke when we got them—they told terrible stories about us over at St. Thomas. But now we’ve gone full circle, and the thirty thousand paperweights are worth more than the Mayan pots. Scholars—”
    “—come from all over to study them.”
    “Yes. They do. They shake them and watch the snow fall on the tiny villages.”
    Lucas stood up, took a card out of his card case, and handed it to her. “You will think about it?”
    “Absolutely.”
    Lucas turned to go, then said, “Black showed you the drawings, I know. Did he show you a picture of the Aronson girl? She was not one of the Catholics, but she was from here in Minneapolis. She disappeared a year and a half ago.”
    “No. I only saw a couple of the drawings. Not the good ones, from what they say in the paper.”
    Lucas dug through the file, found the Aronson photo, and passed it across the desk. “This is the most recent photo we have of her.”
    Qatar put the reading glasses back on and peered at Aronson’s photo. After a moment, she said, “A lot of young girls look alike to me now. They look so much the same . . . but I don’t think I know her.” She handed the photo back.
    “Long shot,” Lucas said. He was putting it back when he saw the Xeroxes of the Laura Winton photos. He fished a couple of them out. “How about these? It’s possible that the killer took them himself.”
    Qatar said. “The killer took them?” She squinted at the top one, then shuffled once and looked at the next one. After a minute, she said, “No, I don’t know her, I don’t recall ever seeing her . . . but . . . Huh.”
    “What?”
    “This background, the background here.”
    Lucas stepped around the desk to look over her shoulder. She had a finger on the rock wall in the background of the last of the photos.
    “I thought it looked like it was along the river,” Lucas said. “Here in town.”
    “I think it is. You know that big bronze statue of St. Patrick squashing a St. Thomas quarterback?”
    “I thought it was a snake.”
    “Could be—they’re easily mistaken. Anyway, I think this wall . . .” She tapped the photograph. “I think the end of this wall here is the beginning of the semicircular wall that goes out around the statue. It’s on the south side of the statue as you come up toward it, along the bike path.”
    Lucas looked at the Xerox. “Really. You think?”

12
    H ELEN Q ATAR WALKED with Lucas down to the river. The ice was gone and a Corps of Engineers workboat was plugging along below them, a guy on the foredeck looking at the bank through binoculars. A cyclist went past, and, despite the cold, a redheaded jogger with bare tummy and a black jog bra. An eagle hung over the water, hunting for a tidbit.
    The statue of St. Patrick looked as metallic as ever, staring blankly at the campus as though he’d forgotten something. He was, in fact, trampling on a snake; and the wall behind him