Easy Prey

a terrible thought,” she said.
    “What?”
    “One of them’s about to go off to the U. She could run into a Lucas Davenport.”
    “Hey, how bad could it get?”
    But she was laughing. “I read about you in the newspaper. Sometimes I can’t believe that, you know, I knew you once. You’re kinda famous.”
    “Yeah. Like they say, world famous in Minneapolis.” Pause. “So let me buy you lunch,” Lucas said.
    A pause on the other end. “Will you tell me all the inside-cop stuff about Alie’e?”
    “If you won’t tell anybody else.”
    She laughed again, and said, “When?”
     
 
CATRIN. A SSOON as she was off the phone, he wanted to call her again.
    And what was he gonna wear tomorrow? Something really cool and expensive, or something tough, coplike? He’d been a hockey jock when they first got together, but she’d confessed then that she wasn’t much interested in sports—or jocks, either. He’d talk about taking somebody out on the ice, or he’d come back after the match with a little ding on a cheekbone, a little rub, and she’d be perplexed and disturbed and sometimes even a little amused by his pleasure in the violence. . . .
    The adrenaline of Catrin’s call got to him. He pushed himself out of the chair, took another turn around the office, and finally launched himself out into the hallway. Frank Lester was sitting in his office, leaning back in his leather chair, the door open, cops coming and going. “Anything new?” Lucas asked.
    “Nope. Rose Marie’s doing another press conference about the lesbo thing.”
    “Jesus—don’t call them lesbos if you go on TV.”
    “Hey, am I an idiot?”
    Lucas looked at the ceiling, as if thinking about it, and Lester grinned and said, “We’re indexing everything we’re getting from the interviews, running down every single person at the party, but I’ll tell you what: The guys are starting to think it’s a cat burglar.”
    “That’d be tough,” Lucas said. “If we haven’t got anything yet.”
    “It’d be damn near impossible, unless somebody turns him in. What’s the evidence gonna be? He didn’t even get any blood on him, because there wasn’t any. We’re thinking about putting up a reward.”
    “You know about George Shaw?” Lucas asked.
    Lester nodded. “Nothing there.”
    “Probably not, but the media seems to have gotten the idea that there is. If you decide to organize a reward, why don’t you wait until after the George Shaw angle burns out? A reward would be something new. Keep the goddamn TV off our backs as long as we can.”
    “All right.”
    “Besides, I’ll tell you what,” Lucas said. “The answer is in the party. There wasn’t any cat burglar.”
    “Sez who?”
    “Sez me. Rose Marie told me this morning that a man killed Alie’e, that it wasn’t a lesbo thing, and by God, she was right. It wasn’t a cat burglar, either. God just wouldn’t like it, if it was all just a coincidence, a one time thing, and the victim just happened to be Alie’e Maison.”
    Lester puffed up his cheeks, and then exhaled. Then nodded.
    “A cat burglar does not crawl though a window and accidentally find a passed-out Alie’e Maison lying there without her underpants,” Lucas said. “Not in a million fuckin’ years.”
    Lester grinned again, thinking about it. “Have to be a profoundly lucky cat burglar.”
    Lucas asked, “Where’s Sloan?”
    “Still down doing interviews.”
     
 
LUCAS HEADED FOR the stairs. Maybe Sloan was pulling a thread.
    He wondered what Catrin would be like. What if she’d turned into this small-town mommy housewife? She hadn’t looked like that. At the gas station, she’d looked . . . interesting. He tried to gather back the memory of the morning. She was older, obviously, but then, so was he. She had some lines. A couple of extra pounds? Maybe. Maybe ten? Maybe. But still with the good hair, the good moves. The laugh . . .
    He flashed back to his college apartment. He’d lived over a dingy auto-parts shop down University Avenue. He had one room with a fold-out couch and fake Oriental carpet from Goodwill, a bathroom permanently frosted over with either mildew or fungus—he was never interested enough to find out which—and a kitchen with a cheap gas stove and a refrigerator that was missing a leg and so listed to the left, and made sloped ice cubes. He also had a tiny bedroom, and in the bedroom was the best piece of furniture in the apartment, a bed he’d brought from