Chosen Prey

They’re going back in this afternoon to try to consolidate it, and now they think they might have some outside soft tissue in the spinal cord itself, which they didn’t pick up on the X rays the first time around. Like some of his skin got blown into the cord and they couldn’t see it.”
    “Tomorrow?”
    “I don’t know. He may be dead tomorrow.”
    “Not really.”
    “No, not really, but . . . man, they aren’t saying much. He is pretty fucked up, and they really don’t know when we can talk to him.”
    “It’s like a goddamn TV show,” Lucas said. “The next thing is, he’s gonna fall out of the bed and hit his head and get amnesia.”
    He told Marshall, and Marshall shook his head. “I’d give a thousand dollars if we could take back what happened yesterday,” he said. “That boy getting shot.”
    “He’s a major asshole,” Lucas said.
    “I don’t much give a shit about that. That’s your problem,” Marshall said. “My problem is, I want a name out of him. He gives me the name, and after that, he can get run over by a steamroller. But I want the name first.”
    “Did you look at that event over at St. Pat’s?” Lucas asked.
    “Yup. Copied out every one of Miz Qatar’s names into a laptop, gave the disk to Harmon, and he ran them late last night,” Marshall said. “Didn’t come up with much—except that we figured out one more thing. They got a college alumni magazine called the Shamrock. Some pictures from this get-together were in there, and it was all these women out on a lawn and they were all wearing name tags. So if our guy was there, taking pictures, he could take a shot and know who the woman was, without even asking her name. Or even talking to her.”
    “Goddamnit. That doesn’t help us much,” Lucas said. “How many guys on your list?”
    “Maybe a hundred and fifty. Harmon’s running them against the sex-offender files right now.”
    Del called from Regions hospital: “They let me in to see Randy, and he is seriously fucked up. He makes a little goddamn noise once in a while, and that’s it. His folks got a lawyer and they gave me some shit. . . . I don’t know, it’s getting tangled up over here.”
    “Might as well come back,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah. Nothing’s gonna happen today, unless he bites it.”
    “Allport says that’s not much of a risk.”
    “I dunno,” Del said. “The docs say he’s got so many weird drugs in him that they’re fighting withdrawal symptoms along with everything else. He’s got heroin in him, cocaine, maybe some PCP—he was using inhalers. . . . The little prick.”
     
    M ARCY AND M ARSHALL left for St. Paul, the first meeting of the interagency board on what the papers and TV stations were now calling the gravedigger case. The label was created by a Channel Eight anchorman, was picked up by Channel Three, which began using a graphic of a hillside grave with its stories, and finally by the papers. The named looked like it would stick.
    After they’d gone, Lucas continued to read through the accumulating paper in the case, without any penetrating insights. When he went out for lunch at midday, he found the clouds had closed down again and a miserable cold drizzle was whimpering through the streets. Cold and damp, he loafed around City Hall, talking with Lester and Sloan, then went through the secret tunnel to the medical examiner’s office and talked to an investigator there about strangulation.
    At two o’clock, he was back in the office, when Weather called. “Why don’t you invite the Capslocks and the Sloans over tomorrow night. We’ll get some lobsters.”
    “All right. Short notice, though,” he said.
    “They never do anything. And it’s been a while since we all got together.”
    “Who knows,” he said. “Tomorrow night—maybe it’ll all be over by then.”
    But he didn’t really think so. The case felt like it was slowing down. Everything was pinned on Randy, and Randy had gone to never-never land.

18
    T HE KILLING OF the unnamed hooker at Randy Whitcomb’s brought a temporary semblance of peace to Qatar’s soul. He mentally replayed the scene every few minutes, especially the last part, when he hung over her and she began to quiver. . . .
    It’s the killing, stupid.
    He’d always thought it was the sex, that the killing was punishment for the sexual disappointments the woman had inflicted upon him. He knew better now. Any sexual practice he’d ever remotely considered he’d