Eyes of Prey

was in.
    Druze’s apartment was three floors below, and Lucas hadn’t wanted to risk raking the lobby locks. That Cassie lived in the same building was not quite pure luck: several other Lost River players lived there, drawn by its proximity to the theater and the low rent. Lucas took the stairs down, emerging a few doors away from Druze’s apartment. The hall was empty. Lucas stepped back into the stairwell, took a handset from the briefcase and called the surveillance team leader. At his last check, Druze was at the theater.
    “Where is he?”
    “Still inside.” The team leader didn’t know where Lucas was.
    “The instant he moves . . .”
    “Right.”
    The theater was less than a block from the apartment. If Druze had to run home for something, Lucas wanted adequate warning. He called Dispatch and gave the dispatcher Druze’s telephone number.
    “Patch me through . . . let it ring as long as necessary. The guy may be outside mowing the lawn,” he said.
    “Sure . . .” Jesus, he thought. He had just made the whole dispatch department an accessory to a felony. He put the handset under his arm, so he could hear it if the dispatcher called back, and stepped into the hall. Sixteen doors, spaced alternately down the hall. Plasterboard walls, aging rug. The power rake would clatter, but there was no help for it. He walked down to Druze’s apartment and heard the phone ringing. Five times, ten. Nobody. He tried the door, just in case—it was locked—and took the rake from the briefcase.The rake looked like an electric drill, but was smaller, thinner. A prong stuck out of the tip; Lucas slipped it into the lock and pulled the trigger.
    The rake began to clatter, a sound like a ball bearing dropped into a garbage disposal. The clatter seemed to go on forever, but a second or two after it started, Lucas turned the lock and the door popped open.
    “Hello? Anybody home?” The phone was still ringing when he stepped inside. “Hello?”
    The apartment was neat, but only because there was almost nothing in it. A stack of scripts and a few books on acting were piled into a small built-in bookcase, along with a tape player and a few cassettes. A couch was centered on a television, the remote left carelessly on the floor next to the couch. In his years in the police department, Lucas had been in dozens of cheap boardinghouses and transient apartments, places where single men lived alone. The rooms often had an air of meticulous neatness about them, as though the inhabitants had nothing better to do than arrange their ashtrays, their radios, their hot plates, their cans of Carnation evaporated milk. Druze’s apartment had that air, a lack of idiosyncracy so startling it became an idiosyncracy of its own . . . .
    The telephone was still ringing. Lucas got on the handset and said, “Betty? About that call—forget it.”
    “Okay, Lucas.” A few seconds later, the ringing stopped.
    The bedroom first. Lucas didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but if he saw it . . .
    He went rapidly through the closets, patting the pockets of the sport coats and pants, checked the detritus on the dresser top, pulled the dresser drawers. Nothing. The kitchen went even quicker. Druze had little of the usual kitchen equipment, no bowls, no canisters, none of the usual hiding places. He checked the refrigerator: nothing but a head of lettuce, a bottle of A.1. sauce, a chunk of hamburger wrapped in plastic, an open box of Arm & Hammer baking soda and ared-and-white can of Carnation. Always a can of Carnation. Nothing in the ice cube trays. Nothing in the bottom drawer of the stove . . .
    Druze did have a nice blunt weapon, a sharpening steel. Lucas took it out of the kitchen drawer, swung it, inspected it. No sign of hair or blood—but the steel was exceptionally clean, as though it had been washed recently. He took a piece of modeling clay from the briefcase, held it flat in his hand, and hit it once, sharply, with the steel. The steel stuck to the clay when he pulled it out, but the impression was good enough. He put the steel back into the kitchen drawer, and the clay, wrapped in wax paper, into his briefcase.
    The living room was next. Nothing under the couch but dust. Nothing but pages in the books. In a cupboard under the built-in bookcase, he found a file cabinet, unlocked. Bills, employment records, car insurance receipts, tax forms for six years. Check the front closet . . . .
    “Damn.” A