Eyes of Prey

retirement . . . .” Lucas looked at his hand, found that he was holding a square of pink paper, a receipt from a tire store. On the back was a list, with the word “Loverboy” at the top. He crushed it into a tight little wad and tossed it toward the big plastic basket that stood in an alcove behind Daniel’s desk. The paper wad rimmed out, and they both watched it bounce across the rug. “I dated the letter tomorrow—I’ve got some official things to clean up. And I want to slide some of my files over to Del.”
    “Okay. Del . . . I know he pounded on Bekker, but he doesn’t have the history . . .”
    “Sure. If there’s a problem, if Internal Affairs gets on his case, tell them to talk to me. I’ll take the heat for it.”
    “Won’t happen. Like I said, I can contain it, if you’re not around to goad them. And I can do something else, I think. I can take your resignation and put you on reserve . . . .”
    “Reserve? What the fuck is that?”
    Daniel gestured helplessly. “It’s nothing, right now. But maybe, if you get out clean, let things cool down, we could get you back . . . . If not full-time, in some kind of consultant capacity . . .”
    “Sounds like bullshit,” Lucas said. He looked at Daniel for a moment, then said, “You could do more than contain it . . . but you can’t, can you?”
    Daniel turned, uncertain. “What?”
    “You can’t have me around. I’d . . .” He looked at Danielfor another long minute, then shook his head and said, “I’m outa here.”
    Daniel, still confused, said in a rush, “Do something, Lucas. You’re one of the smartest guys I’ve ever known. Go to law school. You’d make a great attorney. You got money: see the world for a while. You’ve never been to fuckin’ Europe . . . .”
     
    As Lucas was going out the door, he stopped, and he turned back again to look at Daniel, who was standing behind his desk, his hands in his pockets. Lucas looked for a long three seconds, opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and walked out, pulling the door closed behind him.
    From the chief’s office he went down to the evidence room, signed for the box on Bekker and started through it. The physical evidence was there—plaster casts of the footprints at the Wisconsin burial site, the pieces of the bottle used to kill Stephanie Bekker, the hammer used to kill Armistead, the notes from Stephanie’s lover.
    Tape pickups had been used to preserve the lover’s footprints from the floor of Stephanie Bekker’s bedroom. They’d been sealed in plastic bags, with a label stapled to the top of the bag. They were gone.
    After checking out of the evidence room, Lucas got his jacket, locked his office and walked up the stairs to the street level, out past the bizarre but strangely interesting statue of the Father of Waters, and onto the street.
    Where to go? He waited for the pull of the guns, down there in the safe in the basement. They’d be glowing, wouldn’t they, like a luminescent brand of gravity . . . .
    “Not a lot left, fuckhead,” he said aloud to himself as he wandered toward the corner.
    • • •
    “Hey, Davenport.” A uniformed cop was calling from the door to City Hall. “Somebody looking for you.”
    “I don’t work there anymore,” Lucas shouted back.
    “Neither does this one,” said the cop, holding the door open and looking down.
    Sarah, in a pink frock and white shoes, toddled through the door looking for him, her face breaking into a happy smile when she spotted him. She had a pacifier in one hand, waved it and gurgled. Jennifer was a step behind, her face flushed with what might have been embarrassment. The whole scene was so blatantly contrived that Lucas started to laugh.
    “Come here, kid,” he said, squatting, clapping his hands. Sarah’s face turned determined and she came on full-steam, dashing toward a soft landing in Lucas’ hands.
    “So we start talking, if it’s not too late,” Jennifer said as Lucas tossed the kid in the air.
    “It’s not too late,” Lucas said.
    “The way you were the other night . . .”
    “I was full of shit,” Lucas said. “You know about . . . ?”
    “Sloan heard rumors, and called me,” Jennifer said. She poked her daughter in the stomach and Sarah clutched Lucas’ neck and grinned back at her mother. “I think Sarah’s got a future in the TV news business. I coached her on going through the door, and she did it like a