Eyes of Prey

on the steps for a moment; then one of the men went left, the man and woman right. Another minute passed, and another knot of students came out of the building, talking, and walked away together. A bank of lights went off in the target windows, then another. Druze drifted out toward University Avenue again, then down Pillsbury, toward the parking lot. He walked to the far end of the lot, stepped between two bushes, waited, waited . . . .
    Two men walked into the lot, from along the side of the building. He could hear their voices, at first like a faraway typewriter, clacking, then as human speech:
    “ . . . Can’t figure out how they won it, given the way the company failed to warn anybody about the gas-tank leaks . . .” The speaker was the shorter of the two men.
    “Juries. You have to keep that in mind, always. There’s no absolutely good way to predict what they’ll do, even with the best screening program. In this particular . . . Oh, shit.” The conversation stopped. Druze started back up the sidewalk toward the building. If there were two of them, he’d have to forget it. “Look at the goddamn tire. It’s only three months old . . . .”
    “You want me . . .” the other man offered. A student, Druze thought.
    “No, no, I can change it in two minutes,” George said, peering down at the tire in disgust. “But it pisses me off, excuse the expression. I should be able to drive over railroad spikes with those tires . . . . Now, there’s a case for you, Mr. Brekke. Sue the goddamn tire company for me . . . .”
    “Glad to . . .”
    There was more talk and a clatter of tools as the slender student stood and watched the heavyset professor dismount the spare from the Jeep. Druze, feeling something almost like relief, thought the student would stay. But after watching for a couple of minutes, the man looked at his watch and said, “Well, my wife will be wondering . . .”
    “Go on. This’ll just take a minute.”
    The student was gone, rolling out of the lot, never looking toward Druze’s bush. Druze let him go, heard his car accelerate down University . . . . The professor had his jacket off, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and he grunted and cursed in the night. The flat came off, the spare went on. He seemed to know what he was doing, working without wasted motion. With a series of quick twists, the spare was lugged down.
    Druze took a deep breath, got a grip on the sharpening steel with his right hand and stepped into the parking lot, jingling his car keys with his left hand, moving slowly.
    The professor popped open the back of the Jeep, leaving the keys in the lock—everything was moving slowly for Druze now, everything was in needle-sharp focus—lifted the flat, holding it carefully clear of his trousers, and heaved it inside the Jeep.
    Druze was ten feet away, checking, checking. Nobody around. Nothing coming on Pillsbury, no cars: The professor, a big, beefy blond man, slamming the back of the Jeep, now turning at the sound of Druze’s keys . . . The keys would bea soothing sound, suggesting that Druze was headed for the last car in the lot . . . .
    “Flat tire?” Druze asked.
    The professor nodded without a flicker of recognition, although Druze was less than a long step away. “Yeah, damn thing was flat as a pancake.”
    “Got it under control?” Druze asked, slowing. He looked around a last time: Nothing. The handle of the sharpening steel was cool in his hand.
    “Oh yeah, no problem,” George said, pulling on his jacket. His hands were black with grease from the lug nuts.
    “Well . . .” Druze drew the steel behind his leg and stepped on, heading for his car, then pivoted and swung the steel one-handed, half overhead, like a whip, or a machete chopping sugarcane. The steel crashed through the side of George’s head, two inches above his right ear. The professor bounced off the Jeep and down. Druze hit him again, but it was unnecessary: the first blow had crushed the side of his head. A sudden stench told Druze that George’s bowels had relaxed. Neither he nor Bekker had thought about the stink the body could make in the car.
    No reason to be furtive now: if anyone came in the next thirty seconds, it was over. Druze grabbed George under the arms, dragged him to the station wagon. The building lights, which had seemed remote and inadequate a few moments before, now seemed bright as stadium lights. Druze snatched open the wagon’s