Chosen Prey

the time, you oughta do it. If you don’t, you’ve got your head up your ass. We’re not going to try to get somebody to incriminate himself off the record with his lawyer standing there. If we say we think he can help us and we can help him, we’re telling the truth.”
    “To quote the famous Lucas Davenport,” Lansing said, “blow me.”
     
    L UCAS LED THE way out to the car, with Marshall and Del trailing. Halfway across the parking lot, Lucas heard them start laughing and looked back and said, “What?”
    “We were talking about your interpersonal relations technique,” Del said. “Terry thinks you might need a course.”
    “Fuck Terry and his course,” Lucas said. “The officious little prick.”
    Marcy was the only person in the office when they got back. “We’ve got everybody down at St. Patrick’s,” she said. “We got some chemistry back from the ME’s office: They think maybe she was smothered.”
    “I knew it,” Lucas said. “Might have been spontaneous rather than planned . . . but if it was spontaneous, it had to be somebody who knew her well enough to get her back to her office. What was her kid’s name? James?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Doesn’t fit the picture, but the picture could be crap,” Marshall said. “He doesn’t look like the right movie star. He looks more like Yul Brynner.”
    “You think he could kill his mother?”
    “The gravedigger could because he’s crazier’n hell,” Lucas said. “But we saw him over at the ME’s office and he was pretty fucked up. Marshall had to hold him.”
    “I’m always pleased when strong men allow themselves to show a little tenderness,” Marcy said to Marshall.
    “Fuck you, little lady,” Marshall drawled. He’d caught on to Marcy’s act. “I just patted him on the back.”
    “What happened with Randy?”
    “We ran into this officious little prick . . .” Lucas told her the rest of the story, while Del and Marshall found chairs.
    “Gotta get back to him,” Marcy said. “He’s still got the key.”
    “I know, I know. . . . Goddamnit, it looked like it was gonna be easy. Instead, it’s like counting votes in Florida.”
    A lot seemed to be happening, but there didn’t seem much to do—the trouble was sweeping them along, and they couldn’t get a handle on it. “So what do we do?” Del asked Marcy.
    “There’re plenty of people to talk to down at St. Pat’s.”
    “Ah, shit,” Del said. “All right, I’ll do it.”
    “I’m gonna go talk to Harmon,” Marshall said. “Maybe the computers will spit something out.”
    “They did, this morning. Those names Ware gave us—remember those—we got two hits. One guy for dope, possession of cocaine after a traffic stop, the other guy for crim sex III, problem with his wife. I pulled the mug shots, and they do sorta look like our picture.”
    Lucas shook his head. “Keep them in mind, but they’re not our guy. Not even Ware thought so. I’ll go on down to St. Pat’s with Del, and we’ll hook up with the other guys. He’s down at St. Pat’s.”
     
    T HE REST OF the afternoon was tedious. They all stopped at two o’clock to catch a cup of coffee and a sandwich, then went back—looking for professors, talking with students, pushing to find friends of Helen Qatar. At the end of the day, they’d struck out.
    “I got one possible, an anthropologist who took drawing lessons so he could draw signs and statues and shit like that. He’s a little crazy and he looks sorta right, but he claims he got his Ph.D. from USC six years ago and never set foot in Minnesota before then . . . and other people in his department say that’s right,” Del said.
    “Better’n me,” Swanson said. “I didn’t find anybody.”
    “I got a guy who looked like a very distant possibility, but, uh . . .” Black turned away and said, “I need another sandwich.”
    “But what?” Lucas asked. “What about the guy?”
    “He sorta came on to me,” Black said. “He, uh, isn’t oriented toward women at all—and I got that confirmed from his department.”
    “Maybe something repressed,” Swanson said. “Maybe when he’s pushing fudge, all he’s thinking about is killing women.”
    They all sat chewing for a moment, then Del started to laugh, and then both Lucas and Swanson. Black, who was gay, said, “Fuck all of you bigots.”
     
    J UST BEFORE THEY quit, Lucas said to Del, “You and Cheryl are coming for lobsters tonight, right?”
    “Hell yes. Gotta