Eyes of Prey

sidewalk toward the main buildings. Spring, but a cold wind was blowing. Well off to the west, over Minneapolis, they could see darker clouds, and the blurring underedges that said it was raining.
    “The eye fixation could have been created by some kind of traumatic incident, but that seems somewhat unlikely,” Elle said. “It’s more likely that he’s always had a feeling of being watched, and this is his reaction . . . .”
    “Then why weren’t the kids cut up?”
    “Lucas, you’re missing the obvious,” the nun said. “No good for a gamer.”
    “All right, tell me the obvious, Sister Mary Joseph, ma’am,” he said.
    “Maybe he didn’t kill the children.”
    Lucas shook his head. “Thought of that. But Merriam gets these vibrations, and it fits with what he’s doing with this Sybil, and the interest in the eyes fits with these other killings. Could be a coincidence, but I doubt it.”
    “As I said, it is possible that he developed the fixation between killings.”
    “But not likely.”
    “No.”
    They walked with their heads down, climbing the hill, and Lucas said, “Would it make any difference when he did the eyes? I mean, could he do them later?”
    Elle stopped and looked up at him. “Well. I don’t know. This woman who died at the mall—her eyes weren’t done until after death.”
    “Neither were George’s, the guy they dug up in Wisconsin. He probably wasn’t done for twenty-four hours . . . .”
    “That’s your answer, then. He does it after death, but apparently it doesn’t have to be right away. What are you thinking?”
    “Just that if a kid dies and there’s going to be a postmortem, you might not want to do the eyes right away. Especially if you had another shot, later.”
    “Like at the funeral home?”
    “Sure. Anytime after the postmortem. He’s a pathologist, he’s right there with the bodies. He could do the eyes there, right in the hospital, or at the funeral home during a visitation. Who watches a dead body?”
    “Do they do anything with the eyes at funeral homes? Would anybody notice?” Elle was doubtful.
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “But I can find out.”
    “What time is it?” she asked suddenly. “I’ve got a four-o’clock class.”
    Lucas looked at his watch. “It’s just four now.”

CHAPTER
26
    Bekker checked the time as he got out of the car: just four o’clock, right on schedule.
    The apartment building was a block away. He had the clipboard under his arm, and the flower box. The gun weighed heavily in one pocket; the tape was much lighter in the other. He walked with his head down against the drizzle.
    The rain had arrived just in time, and was a blessing, Bekker thought. The rain suit made perfect sense, and the hood would cover his entire head, with the exception of a narrow band from his eyebrows to his lips. He walked heavily: the PCP always did that, stiffened him up. But it made him strong, too. Focused him. He thought about it, then took the brass cigarette case from his pocket and popped another pill, just to be sure.
    He had taken elaborate measures to make sure he hadn’t been followed, driving through the looping streets of the lake district, waiting, doubling back, taking alleys. If he was being watched, they were doing it by satellite.
     
    Walt’s Appliance faced Druze’s apartment building from across the street. The sales level was a rectangular space, fourtimes as deep as it was wide, with wooden floors that creaked when a customer walked among the ranks of white kitchen appliances. The washers, dryers, refrigerators and stoves carried brand names that sounded familiar at first, less familiar after some thought. Walt kept the lights off, unless a customer was on the floor; the interior was usually illuminated only by the weak light from the street, which filtered through the dusty windows with the fading advertising signs.
    Like his merchandise, Walt was nondescript. Too heavy. Not so much soft-spoken as noncommittal. A few strands of fading brown hair were combed sideways over a balding head, and plastic-framed glasses perched on the end of a button nose slowly withering with age, like an overripe raspberry. Walt had been a beatnik in the fifties, kept a copy of Howl in his desk drawer. Read it more now, rather than less.
    He was happy to cooperate with the police, Walt was: genuinely happy. He’d never used the loft anyway, except to store leftover samples of carpet and rolls of cracking vinyl, the