Eyes of Prey

black ski jacket with teal insets. Just like ten thousand other jackets, but still: the lover had seen a jacket like this. Lucas took it out of the closet, slipped it on, got a Polaroid camera from his briefcase, put it on the bookcase shelf, aimed it, set the self-timer and shot himself wearing the jacket—two views, front and back.
    When he’d checked the photos, he rehung the jacket. He’d been in the apartment for fifteen minutes. Long enough. He went to the door, looked around one last time. Down the stairs. Out.
     
    “Lucas?” Daniel calling back.
    “Yeah.” He was sitting in the Porsche, looking at the Polaroids. “Did you get in touch with Channel Two?”
    “We’re all set,” Daniel said. “If he calls you tomorrow night, we can go on the air an hour later. Four o’clock . . .”
    “Can I get another picture on?”
    “Of what?”
    “Of a guy in a ski jacket . . .”
     
    Later:
    Daniel paced around his office, excited, cranked. Lucas and Del sat in visitors’ chairs, Sloan leaned against the wall, Anderson stood with his hands in his pockets.
    “I’ve got a real feeling,” Daniel insisted. Lucas had cut his own face out of the ski jacket photos before he gave them to Daniel. Daniel and Anderson had looked at them, and agreed that it could be the jacket Stephanie Bekker’s lover had described. “Almost certainly is, with what we know,” Anderson said. “It’s too much of a coincidence. Maybe we ought to pick him up and sweat him.”
    “We’ve still got to get him with Bekker,” Lucas protested.
    “What we’ve got to do is turn him against Bekker, if they’re really working together,” Daniel said. “If we sweat him a little, we could do that.”
    “We don’t have much to deal with,” Sloan said. “With the politics of it, with four people dead, the goddamn media would have our heads if we dealt him down to get Bekker.”
    “Let me deal with the politics,” Daniel said. He picked up one of the Polaroids and looked at it again, then up at Sloan. “We could do this: We charge him with first-degree murder, but deal down to second degree with concurrent sentences if he gives us Bekker. Then we tell the press that even though he’s getting a second, we’re asking the judge to depart upward on the sentence, so it’s almost as good as a first . . . .”
    Sloan shrugged: “If you think you can sell it.”
    “I’d make us look like fuckin’ geniuses,” Daniel said.
    “It’d still be nice if we could get something solid,” Lucas pressed. “Can we cover his phones, at least? Maybe watch him for a few days before we move? See if we can get him talking to Bekker, or meeting him?”
    “We couldn’t get a warrant for the phones, not yet, there’sjust not enough,” Daniel said. “If Stephanie Bekker’s friend comes through, if he confirms this . . . then we get the warrant. And we’ll want to put a microphone in his apartment.”
    “So everything depends on Loverboy,” Lucas said. “He’s got to call back tomorrow night.”
    “Right. Until then, we stay on Druze like holy on the pope,” Daniel said, running his hands through his thinning hair. “Jesus, what a break. What a fuckin’ break . . .”
    “If it’s true,” Anderson said after a moment.
     
    Bekker stood in the bay window, looking past the cut-glass diamonds in the center, out at the dark street, and decided: he had to move. Tomorrow. The cigarette case rode low in his pocket and he opened it, and chose. Nothing much, just a touch of the power. He put a tab of PCP between his teeth and sucked on it for a moment, then put it back in the case. The acrid chemicals bit into his tongue, but he hardly noticed anymore.
    The drug helped him concentrate, took him out of his body, left his mind alone to work. Clarified the necessary moves. First the woman, then Druze. Get Druze to come with a last-minute call. The best time would be around five o’clock: Druze always ate at his apartment before walking over to the theater, and the woman would most likely be around at the same time.
    No luxuries here, Doctor. No studies. Just do it and get out.
    He paced, his legs seemingly in another country, working it out in his mind. If everything went right, it’d be so simple . . . . But he ought to check the gun. Go to Wisconsin, fire a couple of shots. He hadn’t fired it in years, not since a trip to New Mexico. He’d bought it originally in Texas, a casual purchase from a cowboy in El Paso, a