Eyes of Prey

wasn’t working right. Hadn’t been for months. But now, he thought, something was changing. There’d been just the smallest quieting of the storm . . . .
    He’d lost his woman and their daughter. They’d walked: the story was as simple as that, and as complicated. Hecouldn’t accept it and had to accept it. He pitied himself and was sick of pitying himself. He felt his friends’ concern and he was tired of it.
    Whenever he tried to break out, when he worked two or three days into exhaustion, the thoughts always sneaked back: If I’d done A, she’d have done B, and then we’d have both done C, and then . . . He worked through every possible combination, compulsively, over and over and over, and it all came up ashes. He told himself twenty times that he’d put it behind himself, and he never had. And still he couldn’t stop. And he grew sicker and sicker of himself . . . .
    And now Bekker. A flicker, here. An interest. He watched the first tickle, couldn’t deny it. Bekker. He ran his hand through his hair, watching the interest bud and grow. On the legal pad he wrote:
Elle
Funeral
    How can you lose with a two-item list? Even when—what was it called? a unipolar depression?—even when a unipolar depression’s got you by the balls, you can handle two numbers . . . .
    Lucas picked up the phone and called a nunnery.
     
    Sister Mary Joseph was talking to a student when Lucas arrived. Her door was open a few inches, and from a chair in the outer office he could see the left side of her scarred face. Elle Kruger had been the prettiest girl in their grade school. Later, after Lucas had gone, transferred to the public schools, she’d been ravaged by acne. He recalled the shock of seeing her, for the first time in years, at a high school district hockey tournament. She had been sitting in the stands, watching him on the ice, eyes sad, seeing his shock. The beautiful blonde Elle of his prepubescent dreams, gone forever. She’d found avocation with the Church, she had told him that night, but Lucas was never quite sure. A vocation? She’d said yes. But her face . . . Now she sat in her traditional habit, the beads swinging by her side. Still Elle, somewhere.
    The college girl laughed again and stood up, her sweater a fuzzy scarlet blur behind the clouded glass of Elle’s office door. Then Elle was on her feet and the girl was walking past him, looking at him with an unhidden curiosity. Lucas waited until she was gone, then went into Elle’s office and sat in the visitor’s chair and crossed his legs.
    Elle looked him over, judging, then said, “How are you?”
    “Not bad . . .” He shrugged, then grinned. “I was hoping you could give me a name at the university. A doctor, somebody who’d know a guy in the pathology department. Off the record. A guy who can keep his mouth shut.”
    “Webster Prentice,” Elle said promptly. “He’s in psychology, but he works at the hospital and hangs out with the docs. Want his phone number?”
    Lucas did. As she flipped through a Rolodex, Elle asked, “How are you really?”
    He shrugged. “About the same.”
    “Are you seeing your daughter?”
    “Every other Saturday, but it’s unpleasant. Jen doesn’t want me there and Sarah’s old enough to sense it. I may give it up for a while.”
    “Don’t cut yourself off, Lucas,” Elle said sharply. “You can’t sit there in the dark every night. It’ll kill you.”
    He nodded. “Yeah, yeah . . .”
    “Are you dating anybody?”
    “Not right now.”
    “You should start,” the nun said. “Reestablish contact. How about coming back to the game?”
    “I don’t know . . . what’re you doing?”
    “Stalingrad. We can always use another Nazi.”
    “Maybe,” Lucas said noncommittally.
    “And what’s this about talking to Webster Prentice? Are you working on something?”
    “A woman got killed. Beaten to death. I’m taking a look,” Lucas said.
    “I read about it,” Elle said, nodding. “I’m glad you’re working it. You need it.”
    Lucas shrugged again. “I’ll see,” he said.
    She scribbled a phone number on an index card and passed it to him.
    “Thanks . . .” He leaned forward, about to stand.
    “Sit down,” she said. “You’re not getting out of here that easy. Are you sleeping?”
    “Yeah, some.”
    “But you’ve got to exhaust yourself first.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Alcohol?”
    “Not much. A few times, scotch. When I’d get so tired I couldn’t