Chosen Prey

“August twenty-ninth. We invited six hundred people. We don’t know how many came, but all the food was eaten, and the party was crashed by a number of students coming back to school.”
    “These other women who identified you as an acquaintance. Would they have been invited?” Lucas asked. Marcy whispered: “Guest list.” “Do you have a guest list?”
    “We wouldn’t have a guest list anymore,” Qatar said, a tingle of excitement in her voice. “But we invited everybody on our contacts lists, and I think all four of them are on it. When officer Black gave me the four names, I knew three of them as acquaintances, but the fourth one didn’t ring a bell. When I looked in our files, though, there she was.”
    “If you could find a guest list, that would be a mammoth help to us,” Lucas said.
    “We’ll look. I don’t think we’ll find one, but I bet we could reconstruct it.”
    “That would be terrific, Mrs. Qatar.”
    “We’ll try to get something for you tomorrow,” she said. “I never did get a chance to look at that film. Maybe I’ll do that tonight.”
    “Anything you can do, we’d appreciate,” Lucas said.
    “Just like Miss Marple,” she said, with relish.

17
    W EATHER SLEPT OVER —not for the sex, she said, but because she missed him. “I think we’re settling in,” she said, as she lay on the bed with a book on her chest. “Are we going to talk about the house?”
    “What about the house?”
    “Do we want a bigger one?” she asked.
    He looked around: He’d been in the place for better than ten years, and it fit him reasonably well—but if there were children and a wife, things might be a little tight.
    “Maybe.”
    The talk kept him up even after Weather was sleeping: night thoughts about big changes. The idea of a change didn’t worry him much, he realized, somewhat surprised at himself. When he really thought about it, he didn’t think as much about this house as he did of the house he might have.
    More space; a media room and a workshop. A real study, instead of a converted bedroom. A nice master suite, extra bedrooms for the kids. Kids. What all would they need? With Weather committed to surgery, maybe they ought to think about a full-time housekeeper. . . .
    He liked the neighborhood, and the neighbors. He would miss it, and them, if they moved. How about this: Maybe live in Weather’s place for a while, and remodel this place, or even take it out and design and build something new?
    There was plenty of room to expand into the backyard. He’d need a bigger garage, for sure, maybe with four places. A bigger basement workshop would be nice, and maybe they could build a completely dry basement this time.
    When he went to sleep, he was thinking about table saws. He didn’t have much use for one, but he’d been looking at them in hardware stores. Interesting tools. Lots of parts. You could sit in the basement and fool around with a table saw for hours. Big table saw, and maybe a planer/jointer. He could make furniture. . . . Zzz.
     
    W HEN THE PHONE rang, it was still dark. Weather moaned, “I’d forgotten about this part. The calls in the middle of the night.”
    “Five-thirty,” he said; the clock’s green numerals glowed at him through the dark. He found the phone, picked it up, groggy. “Yeah?”
    “Chief Davenport?” He could hear traffic in the background.
    “Speaking.”
    “This is John Davis, I’m a St. Paul patrol sergeant. Lieutenant Allport said I ought to give you a call.”
    Lucas sat up. “Yeah, John, what’s going on?”
    “I’m with a garbage crew out on East Seventh, out at the Kanpur Indian restaurant? They pulled a body out of the dumpster an hour or so ago. We don’t have an ID, but she’s young, small, blond, naked, and she’s been strangled with a rope. It might not have anything to do with your case, but Allport says to tell you that she fits the profile of all them women you been digging up . . .”
    “Ah, jeez.”
    “. . . and she fits the description of a woman who was supposed to be living with Randy Whitcomb. We don’t know for sure yet, but we’re taking some blood samples and oughta know pretty quick. We’re trying to find a neighbor of Whitcomb’s who saw her a few times. One of our guys supposedly talked to this neighbor, but we don’t have her name yet.”
    “All right.” Lucas thought for a minute, felt the power of the bed pulling him down. “If I came down, would there be anything for me to