Eyes of Prey

gone—things have changed,” Lucas said. “I’ve seen you act, and you’re good . . . .”
    “But she was supposed to be my friend,” Cassie said, wadding up the note. “We talked together. We were always talking about what we wanted to do.”
    “Your friends . . . are sometimes different people than you think they are. Most of your friends are halfway made-up. They’re what you’d like them to be.”
    “Do you mind if I sit here and cry for a couple of minutes?”
    “C’mon,” said Lucas, “that’d really bum me out.” He put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the forehead, and she grabbed his jacket lapel and buried her face on his shoulder. “C’mon, Cassie . . .”
    He stroked her hair and she cried.

CHAPTER
24
    Daniel, looking from the photograph to Lucas, was stunned. “We got him? Like that?”
    “Maybe,” Lucas said. “He fits what we know about the killer. He looks right, he acts right, and my friend says he’s something of a sociopath. He had reason to kill Armistead. And Bekker gave me those tickets, which suggested that his wife had something going at the theater . . . .”
    “We’ve had two guys full-time on that and as far as they can tell, nobody ever saw her there—or remembers it, anyway,” Daniel said. He looked at the photo again. “But this guy looks like the cyclops.”
    “And we’ve got those American Express charge slips . . . .”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Daniel scratched his head, still looking at the photo of Druze.
    “I think we need to put a team on him . . . .”
    “We’ll do that, definitely. Since we pulled the team on Bekker . . .”
    “The problem is, if Druze saw that story, he might have thought we were watching him. ”
    A thin smile creased Daniel’s ruddy face. “So for the pasttwo days he’s been slinking around with his back to the wall, seeing spies.”
    “I was thinking . . .”
    “Yeah?”
    “You could accuse Channel Eight of damaging the investigation, saying they tipped an unnamed suspect to the surveillance and the police have been forced to pull the surveillance after the suspect confronted a departmental officer . . . that being me.”
    “Yeah. Hmm. It’d back off the TVs a little, too,” Daniel said. The grin flicked across his face again. “I’ll have Lester do it. He’ll enjoy it.”
    “And if there’s a political kickback, you can always blame it on him,” Lucas said, grinning himself.
    “Did I say that?” Daniel asked innocently, his hand over his heart. “About this guy, Druze . . . maybe we could get some video on him, walking at a distance, show it to this kid out in Maplewood.”
    “Yeah, good,” Lucas said.
    “We oughta do that today,” Daniel said. He walked around his desk, staring at the photo as if it were a talisman.
    “I still think Bekker’s in here somewhere,” Lucas said. “If Druze and Bekker are talking, maybe we can come up with some phone records.”
    Daniel nodded. “We can do that, too. All right. Make a list for Anderson, tell him to do it,” Daniel directed. “Now, how’re you planning to get this picture to Stephanie Bekker’s lover?”
    Lucas shrugged. “I haven’t got that figured . . . .”
    “Try this,” Daniel said. He sat behind his desk, opened his humidor, stared into it and snapped it shut. “I’ve been thinking about it. Channel Two still goes off the air sometime after midnight. We ask them to go back on at, say, three o’clock, with the photo. Just for a minute. Nobody’d see it, unless theywere accidentally clicking around channels. And the lover would be safe. He could get it on any TV in the metro area, cable or no. And if he’s got a VCR, he could record it.”
    “Great. Have you got any clout with Two?” Lucas asked. Channel Two was the educational station.
    “Yeah. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
    Lucas nodded. “Sounds perfect. I’ll have an ad in the StarTribune tomorrow morning. When he calls me, I’ll try to talk him in. If he won’t come, I’ll tell him when to watch.”
    “Until then, we treat Druze as though he was the one. And let’s get with the other people on this, so everybody knows what we’re doing . . . .” He leaned over his desk and pressed the intercom button. “Linda, get Sloan in here, and Anderson, and the point guys on the Bekker case, everybody who’s around. Half an hour . . .”
    “We’ve really got nothing on him yet, it’s all speculation,” Lucas reminded