Chosen Prey

reviewing paper bored him, and after a visit to Homicide to talk to Black, he noticed a shaft of sunlight out on the street.
    “Sun’s out,” he said to Black as he left.
    “Today only,” Black said. “More rain or snow coming for the weekend.”
    The sunlight made the decision for him. He was out of downtown ahead of the rush, running through the sun-dappled countryside. The countryside still had the cold colors of winter, but when he cracked the windows, he could smell spring on the way. Still a little snow in the north shadows, along the shaded sides of the fence lines and the glacial hills, but the water was moving in the drainage ditches, and farmers had their tractors out of the machine sheds and the sun felt yellower and warmer than in the weeks just past.
    On the grave-site hill, everything changed. The hill faced away from the afternoon sun, and under the oak trees, there was a river of mud, and men grubbing for bones. The hill, he thought, looked like an old browned photograph of a World War I trench site during a cease-fire, except for the brilliant blue slashes of a dozen plastic tarps.
    McGrady had gotten some rest. He was sitting on a camp chair, reading a copy of Maxim, when Lucas climbed up to the command tent. “I always liked pictures of sexy women,” he said, almost absently. “Like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. But somehow, after all the liberation bullshit, we finally got around to the point where women have stopped being objects and have become products. Have you ever looked at this rag?”
    “No.” But he was amused.
    McGrady flipped it over his shoulder onto the ground. “I’m just getting old, I guess. Couple of the younger guys were looking at it, thought it’s great.”
    “Still eight bodies,” Lucas said. He didn’t care about Maxim, had never heard of it.
    “Yeah, still eight. I think that’s all it’s going to be unless we find a whole new graveyard somewhere. We think one of them might be a girl from Lino Lakes, but we can’t track down any dental records. I don’t know what the hang-up is.”
    “Marcy said something about the parents moving a couple of times, and they’re still trying to track them down. From what I saw of the records, I’m not sure how good a fit she is.”
    “Blond, busty, and missing.”
    “But some of her friends think she was about to run away to California; and she wasn’t interested in art.”
    “If we find the parents, we could do some DNA and skip the dentals,” McGrady said. He yawned, and then said, “Another day out here, I think. If we don’t find anything new.”
    “You still got TV. . . .”
    “Yup. But they’re getting bored, I think. No new bodies.” They both looked down the hill at the television vans. The crews were sitting along the edge of the road on blue tarps; two of the cameramen were playing chess and one of the reporters was sprawled out on his back, talking on a cell phone.
    Lucas looked up the hill and saw Marshall sitting at the top, looking down. “But you still got Marshall.”
    “The guy spooks the hell out of me,” McGrady said. “Good guy, but a little intense.”
    They talked for a few more minutes, then Lucas walked up the hill to where Marshall was sitting on a garbage bag. “How’s it going?”
    Marshall was smoking a Marlboro. He grinned and blew smoke and nodded. “Getting a handle on it,” he said. “I got a little overworked there for a while. How’s it going on your end?”
    He sounded so mellow that Lucas couldn’t help smiling back. “We’re making some progress. We reviewed the cases we know about, and decided that our guy is stealing everything he can from the women he kills—everything small and worthwhile, anyway. Jewelry, cash, maybe small cameras. We’ve got photos of stuff that was taken from Aronson—and maybe another woman—and we’re gonna run them around to every fence in town.”
    Marshall bobbed his head and then said, “I’m starting to worry about what happens when we identify him.”
    “That could be a while, yet,” Lucas said.
    “I know the kind of work you guys do—that you do—and I think that sooner or later, you’re gonna figure him out. Am I right?”
    Lucas shrugged. “I believe we will. We always have a few who slip past us, but once we get any kind of a handle on this guy, I think we’ll be able to pin him with those drawings. Once we get a name, we can start connecting some dots, and we’ve got a lot of dots to start