Eyes of Prey

him.
    “We stay with him,” Daniel said sharply. “I want to know every step he fuckin’ takes. I got a feeling about this guy, Lucas. I get strong vibrations.”
    “I’m thinking—” Lucas said. He was thinking of cracking Druze’s apartment: an informal survey without a warrant.
    Daniel stopped him in midsentence. “Don’t say it. But, uh, it would be nice to know some things . . .”
    Lucas nodded, bent over Daniel’s desk, opened the humidor and peered inside. Three cigars. He snapped it shut.
    “What?” Daniel asked.
    “I always wondered what you really had in there . . . .”
     
    The investigation file on Druze was thin. Nothing on NCIC—Anderson had run him against the federal computers as soon as Daniel called the meeting. Druze had been interviewed by Detective Shawn Draper after the Armistead murder, and the interview had been summarized in a half-dozentight paragraphs. Subject said he was in theater at the time of the murder. Cited several incidents that placed him there. Brief cross-checks with other actors confirmed those incidents . . . .
    Daniel, Anderson, Lester, Sloan, Del, Draper, Shearson and three or four other detectives sat in Daniel’s office, plotting out the surveillance, while Lucas sat in a corner reading the file. Draper, a large, sleepy man in a knit suit, slumped on a folding chair behind Anderson.
    “You interviewed him, Shawn,” Lucas said during a break in the discussion. “Did you think, in person, that he looked at all like the cyclops picture? Was there anything . . . ?”
    Draper scratched an ear. “Naw . . . I wouldn’t say so. I mean . . . he looked fucked up, but he wasn’t . . . . Naw.”
    “Was he solid for an alibi on Armistead?”
    “When the chief called about the meeting, I went back and looked at my notes. He really had the evening nailed down, after about seven or seven-thirty. Earlier than that, it was sketchy.”
    “We think she was killed, what, about seven?” Lucas asked.
    “Give or take,” Sloan said.
    “So he could have done her, then come back and tried to make himself obvious around the place . . . .”
    Anderson jumped into the exchange. “Yeah, but he didn’t try to cover himself that much for the actual time of the murder. If I’d been doing it, I would have done something to establish myself before I went over. Then I would have gone over, done it and come back as fast as I could, maybe with a bunch of doughnuts or something, and established myself again,” he said.
    “Well, he didn’t,” Draper said shortly. “He was solid later, but not earlier.”
    “Hmph,” Lucas grunted.
    “What?” asked Daniel.
    “I’m still trying to fit that phone call in . . . .”
     
    The Star Tribune classified-advertising manager said he would see to the ad himself. Not responsible for the debts of Lucille K. Smith, signed Lucas Smith. It would appear the next morning.
    “This is critical,” Lucas said. “Keep your mouth shut, but this is the most important ad you’ll run all year.”
    “It’ll be there . . . .”
     
    Lucas called Cassie from the lobby.
    “What’re you doing here? Oh Gawd, the apartment is a wreck . . . .” Cassie buzzed him through the door. She met him, flushed, at her apartment door.
    “Looks nice,” Lucas said as he stepped inside. The apartment was small, a kitchen nook opening directly off the living room, a short hall with three doors leading off it, a bathroom, a closet and the single bedroom.
    “That’s because I just stuffed four days’ clothes in a closet, two days’ dishes in the dishwasher, and did about a month’s worth of cleaning.” She laughed, stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, took in the briefcase he was carrying. “What’re you doing? You look like Mr. Businessman. I was about to leave for the theater.”
    “I was over at the U and thought I’d stop by,” he said. “You have to leave right away?”
    She nodded and produced a sleepy-eyed pout. “Pretty soon. Since I read Elizabeth’s note, I thought I’d be on time for work.”
    “Ah . . . well.”
    “We could take a quick shower . . .” she offered.
    “Nah. If we started a shower . . . And I’ve got to get back to work, anyway. See you after?”
    “Sure. We’ll be done before eleven.”
    “I’ll take you someplace expensive.”
    “Shameless sweet-talker, you.” She caught his ear and pulled his head down and kissed him again.
    “See you . . . .”
     
    He