Eyes of Prey

staircase. “I’m down there,” Bekker said, when they reached the top. He gestured to the left, but turned to the right. Halfway down the hall, he pushed a door open, reached inside, clicked on a light, stepped back and said, “Here we are.”
    Stephanie Bekker had slept in an old-fashioned double bed with a rough-cut French frame. The quilt, blankets and sheets were in a heap at the foot of the bed, lying across the frame and partially covering an antique steamer trunk. A dozen magazines on home decorating, antiques and art were piled on the trunk. Near the head of the bed, a Princess phone sat on a bedstand, along with a clock, two more magazines and a Stephen King novel.
    A door opened to the left. Lucas stuck his head inside and found a compact but complete bathroom, with a vanity, toilet, tub and shower. A ruby-colored bath towel hung from one of two towel racks. There were traces of fingerprint powder on the vanity, toilet handle, shower handles and towel racks. Lucas turned back into the bedroom, noticed another towel on the red-toned Oriental carpet.
    “Just like . . . the night . . .” Bekker said. “The laboratorypeople said they’d call and tell me when I can clean up. Do you have any idea when that might be?”
    “Have they filmed it?”
    “I think so . . . .”
    “I’ll check that, too,” Lucas said. He looked at Bekker across the bedroom, measuring him, and asked, “You didn’t do it?”
    Bekker looked at him now. “No,” he said levelly, with the same straightforward, unflinching gaze.
    “Well. Nice meeting you,” Lucas said.
     
    Outside, the night had turned colder, sliding into frost. The cold air was welcome on his face after the heat of the house. Lucas strolled up the sidewalk, took a right to the alley, looked around and walked down the alley until he was behind Bekker’s house. The killer had probably come in this way.
    At the side of the house, a light came on, a long narrow shaft gleaming bright at the edge of a curtain. Struck by a sudden impulse, Lucas pushed the gate in the hurricane fence along the backyard. Locked. He glanced around, then vaulted the fence and walked carefully through the dark backyard, feeling with his feet as much as his eyes, wary of loose garbage can lids and invisible clotheslines . . . .
    At the side of the house, he moved by inches to the lighted window, put his back to the outside wall, then slowly rotated his head until he could see through the crack.
    Bekker was in the study, nude, lurching from one end to the other, chewing convulsively, his face twisted into a mask of pain, terror or religious ecstasy, his eyes turned so far up into his skull that only the whites were visible. He shuddered, twisted, threw out his arms, then collapsed into a leather chair, his mouth half open. For a minute, then two, he didn’t move, and Lucas thought he might have had a heart attack or stroke. Then he moved, his arms and legs uncoiling, smoothing themselves into an upright attitude, like that of a king ona throne. Laughing. Bekker was laughing, a mechanical “Ha-ha-ha-ha” choking out of his throat. And still his eyes were looking inward, at God.
     
    Lucas dreamed of Bekker’s face. Had to be drugs. Had to be. In the dream he kept arguing that point, that it was drugs; but no drugs were found, and Bekker, lightly restrained by two faceless cops in blue uniforms, would swoop up and screech, I’m high on Jesus.  . . .
    The dream was one of those where Lucas knew he was dreaming but couldn’t get out. When the alarm went off, just after one in the afternoon, it was a positive relief. He rolled out, cleaned up and was about to pour a cup of coffee when Del banged on the door.
    “You’re up,” Del said, when Lucas answered.
    “Come on in. What’s going on?”
    “Got some calls on the tip line. Nothing much.” He shook a no-nicotine, no-tar cigarette out of a crumpled pack and lit it with a Zippo as they walked through the house to the kitchen. “And Sloan talked to a woman named Beulah Miller this morning—another one of Stephanie Bekker’s friends. He asked about the psychologist, and she said, ‘Maybe.’ ”
    “But the shrink denies it . . . .”
    “So does his wife,” Del said. He settled at the kitchen table, and when Lucas held up a pot of coffee, he nodded. “Sloan went back and got her alone. She said he’d had an affair, years ago, and she knew about five minutes after it started. There haven’t been any