Eyes of Prey

the TV radar,” she said.
    “Okay,” he said. He took her elbow in his hand and kissed her on the mouth. “Did you hear?”
    “Hear what?” she asked, puzzled by his somber tone.
    “We had another killing. Out in Maplewood.”
    “Oh, no,” she said, pressing her fingertips to her lips. “Is it a theater person?”
    Lucas shook his head. “Not as far as we know. It’s a woman who worked at the mall. They’re checking, but she doesn’t seem like she’d be a playgoing type. Certainly didn’t look like an actress.”
    “Jesus . . . Like he just picked her out at random?”
    “Eenie meenie minie moe,” Lucas said. “And I’ve got something to ask you . . . later.”
    “What’s the mystery?”
    “I can’t tell you. I want your brain to be fresh. Let’s run.”
    Cassie set the pace along the river until Lucas, puffing, slowed her down. “Take it easy,” he said. “Remember, I’m old. ”
    “Six years older than me,” she said. “At your age, you ought to be able to run a marathon under four, just to be in fair shape.”
    “Bullshit,” he grunted. “If you can run a marathon under six, you’re in great shape, for a normal human being, anyway.”
    “See, you’re not hurtin’,” she said. “You can still talk.” But she slowed the pace and they stopped at a scenic overlook, walked in circles for a minute, then took off again, this time running away from the river.
    “I have to stop at a video store,” Lucas said. “I want to pick up a movie.”
    “A movie?”
    “A kid at the mall saw the killer. Said he looked like Darkman, in the movie. You see it?”
    “No. Heard about it. Supposed to be pretty bad.”
    “So we watch it for a few minutes.”
    When they got back to the house, Lucas leaned against the garage door, gasping for breath, dangling the plastic bag with the videocassette in one hand.
    “I gotta do this more often,” he said. “How far do you think we ran?”
    “Three miles, maybe. Enough to crack a sweat.”
    “I hate to tell you, but I cracked a sweat about two hundred yards out,” he said.
    “Better take a shower,” she said in a low voice. She was standing next to him, and she slipped a hand under his sweatshirt and lightly drew her nails from his nipples to his navel. Lucas shivered and moved against her.
    “We’ve got serious business here,” he said, patting her on the butt with the plastic bag.
    “Hey—what difference does it make if we look at it now or an hour from now?”
    He seemed to think about it, stroking his chin. “Hmm. An argument with a certain persuasive force . . .”
    “So let’s take the shower . . . .”
     
    Lucas, still damp from a second shower, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, popped the cassette into his VCR and turned on the television.
    “What are we looking for?” she asked.
    “I want to see if this Darkman character brings anybody to mind. Don’t study him—just let it percolate.”
    The movie unwound, Cassie sitting on the floor in front of the TV. “I see why the kid called it a comic-book movie,” she said a few minutes into it, when Darkman was blown through his laboratory window by an enormous explosion. “It’s all bullshit.”
    “Doesn’t bring anybody to mind?”
    “Not yet.” She stood up. “Is that peach ice cream still in the freezer?”
    “Sure.”
    She sat with the ice cream, sucking on the spoon, watching intently. During a scene in which Darkman did a macabre dance, an oil funnel on his head, she frowned and shook her head.
    “What?” Lucas asked.
    “Run that again.”
    He stopped the movie and reran the dance scene.
    “Don’t tell me yet,” he said.
    “Okay. Keep going.”
    He watched her as the movie continued and she got more and more into it. At the end, she said, “Junk, but some parts were strong.”
    “So what’d you see?”
    She studied him for a moment and then said, “You know, I’m your basic ‘Off the Pigs’ sort of person.”
    “Yeah, yeah . . .”
    “Me and the people I hang out with.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “And I really hate the idea of police creeping around and monitoring people and all that . . .”
    “Come on, come on . . .”
    She looked at the blank TV screen, wrinkled her forehead and said, “Darkman reminds me of a guy at the theater. I mean, he’s completely different. He’s built different, he looks different, but he sort of has . . . the aura of Darkman. He moves like Darkman, sometimes.”
    “Okay. Don’t move.”
    He