Eyes of Prey

her.”
    “Are you sure it was his? Not hers?”
    The cop shrugged. “The woman’s got about six tools—some screwdrivers, a crescent wrench and a hammer. One pack of nails and some picture hangers. They’re still in the kitchen drawer. She wasn’t a do-it-yourselfer. Why would she have two hammers? And a big heavy one like this? And how’d the guy just happen to get his hands on the second one?”
    A bright light swept the front of the house and Lucas half turned.
    “TV’s here,” said the first cop. He stepped away toward the front door.
    “Tell everybody to keep their mouths shut. Daniel’ll issue a statement in the morning,” Lucas said. He turned back to the cop with the hammer.
    “So he brought it with him,” Lucas said.
    “I’d say so.”
    Lucas thought about it, frowned, then clapped the cop on the shoulder. “I don’t know what it means, but it’s a good catch,” he said. “If it’s new, maybe we could check and see where they sell this Estwing brand . . . .”
    “We’re doing that tomorrow . . . .”
    “So what do we know about her?” Lucas asked, pointing a thumb back toward the living room.
    Armistead was an actress, the hammer-toting cop told Lucas. When she hadn’t shown up for a performance, a friend had come to check on her, found the body and called the police. To judge from the body temperature, still higher than the rather cool ambient temperature of the house, she’d been dead perhaps four hours when the medical examiner’s investigator had arrived, a few minutes after eleven. There was no sign of a burglary.
    “Where’s the friend?” Lucas asked.
    “Back in the bedroom, with Swanson,” the cop said, nodding toward the rear of the house. Lucas wandered back, looking the place over, trying to get a picture of the woman’s life-style. The place was decorated with taste, he decided, but without money. The paintings on the walls were originals, but rough, the kind an actress might get from artist friends. The carpets on the floor were worn Orientals. He thought about the rugs at Bekker’s house, and stooped to feel the one he was standing on. It felt thin and slippery. Some kind of machine-woven synthetic. Not much of a tie . . .
    The bedroom door was open, and when Lucas poked his head in, he found Swanson sitting in a side chair, rubbing the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses with a Kleenex. A woman was lying faceup on the bed, one foot on the floor. The other foot had made a muddy mark on the yellow bedspread, but she hadn’t noticed. Lucas knocked on the jamb and stepped inside as Swanson looked up.
    “Davenport,” the Homicide cop said. He put his glasses back on and fiddled with them for a second until they were comfortable. Then he sighed and said, “It’s a fuckin’ bummer.”
    “Same guy?”
    “Yeah. Don’t you think?”
    “I guess.” Lucas looked at the woman. “You found the body?”
    She was redheaded, middle thirties, Lucas thought, and pretty, most of the time. Tonight she was haggard, her eyes swollen from crying, her nose red and running. She didn’t bother to sit up, but she reached up to her forehead and pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. They looked dark, almost black. “Yes. I came over after the show.”
    “Why?”
    “We were worried. Everybody was,” she said, sniffing.
    “Elizabeth would go on with a broken leg. When she didn’t show up and didn’t call, we thought maybe she’d been in an accident or something. If I didn’t find her here, I was going to call the hospitals. I rang the doorbell, and then looked through the window in the door and saw her lying there . . . . The door was locked, so I ran over to a neighbor’s to call the cops.” A wrinkle creased her forehead and she cocked her head forward and said, “You’re the cop who killed the Indian.”
    “Mmmnn.”
    “Is your daughter okay? I heard on the TV . . .”
    “She’s fine,” Lucas said.
    “Jesus, that must have been something.” The woman sat up, a quick muscular motion, done without effort. Now her eyes were jade green, and he noticed that one of her front teeth was just slightly crooked. “Are you going after this guy? The killer?”
    “I’m helping,” Lucas said.
    “I hope you get him and I hope you kill the sonofabitch,” the woman said, her teeth bared and her eyes opening wide. She had high cheekbones and a slightly bony nose, the craggy variety of Celt.
    “I’d like to get him,” Lucas said. “When was the