Chosen Prey

“Oh, man, look at that.”
    Weather looked: A seventeen- or eighteen-foot Lund open fishing boat was chugging by, the two occupants bent against the rain. “They’re going out,” Weather said.
    “Walleye fishermen,” Lucas said. “They’re all crazier than a shit-house mouse. Or would it be mice?”
    “Mice, I think.” She smiled a crooked smile under her crooked nose, but her eyes had gone serious, and she said, “So why don’t we get pregnant?”
    Lucas nearly choked on an olive. “What?”
    “I’m gonna be thirty-nine,” she said. “It’s not too late yet, but we’re pushing it.”
    “Well, I just . . .”
    “Think about it,” she said. “No emotional commitment is necessary, as long as I’m inseminated.”
    Lucas’s mouth worked spasmodically, no words forming, until he realized that she was teasing. He popped the second olive and chewed. “You’re the only person who can do that, pull my chain that way.”
    “Lucas, every woman you know pulls your chain,” Weather said. “Titsy pulls it about once every three minutes.”
    Titsy was Marcy Sherrill, a homicide cop. A woman with a fine figure, Lucas thought, who deserved a nickname more dignified than Titsy. “But I always see her coming,” he said. “I know when she’s doing it.”
    “Besides, I was only pulling your chain on the last part,” Weather said. “If you’re not going to do anything with the Photo Queen, I think we should start working on some kids.”
    The Photo Queen was Catrin. “Catrin and I are . . . friends,” Lucas said. “Honest to God. You’d like her, if you’d give her a chance.”
    “I don’t want her to have a chance. She’s had her chance.”
    “So look,” he said, flopping his arms. “I’ve got no problem with the kid thing. If you want to get . . .”
    “If you say ‘a bun in the oven,’ or something like that, I swear to God, I’ll pour a glass of wine in your lap.”
    Lucas swerved: “. . . if you want to get pregnant, we can work something out.”
    “So it’s settled.”
    “Sure. Whatever.”
    “What’s this whatever shit? What’s this . . .”
    Lucas scrubbed at the scar. Christ, a minute ago he’d been idly musing about commitment.
     
    T HE RAIN DWINDLED to a mist as they drove back west toward the Cities. They made it to St. Paul just before nine o’clock and found a strange car in Lucas’s driveway—an aging hatchback, dark, a Volkswagen maybe. Lucas didn’t have any friends who drove Volkswagens. There’d been some bad experiences with people waiting at Lucas’s door. He popped open the Tahoe’s center console; his .45 was snuggled inside. At the same time, Weather said, “Somebody on the porch.”
    Two people, in fact. The taller, heavier one was pushing the doorbell. Lucas slowed, turned into the drive. The two people on the porch turned, and the big one walked quickly into the Tahoe’s headlights.
    “Swanson,” Lucas said, and relaxed.
    Swanson was an old-time homicide dick, a voluntary night-shift guy, a little too old for the job, a little too heavy. Not brilliant, but competent. The woman beside him was a short tomboyish detective from the sex unit: Carolyn Rie, all freckles and braids and teeth. An interesting woman, Lucas thought, and well worth treating with a poker face when Weather was around. She was wearing a leather-and-wool letter jacket, too large, without gloves.
    “Swanson . . . Hey, Carolyn,” Lucas said out the window.
    “Got something you might want to look at,” Swanson said. He waved a roll of paper.
     
    I NSIDE, W EATHER WENT to make coffee while the cops pulled off their coats. “Tell me,” Lucas said.
    Rie took the roll of paper from Swanson and spread it across the dining table. “Oh, my,” Lucas said. It was a drawing, detailed, and nearly full-length, of a nude woman whose body was projecting toward the viewer, legs slightly spread, one hand pressed into her vulva. She was fellating a man who was mostly, but not entirely, out of the picture.
    Weather picked up on the tone and came over to look. “Gross,” she said. She looked closely at Rie. “Where’d you get it?”
    “Back in November, a woman named Emily Patton was walking across the Washington Avenue Bridge, the covered part, going over to the university library on the West Bank. This was about six in the morning, still really dark, not many people around. She sees this drawing on one of the walls—you know what I’m talking about? Those