Eyes of Prey

worrying about whether she was pretty or not, although she claimed she had the best forty-three-year-old butt in the neighborhood. She was settled in her body, in her life. Her husband seemed to like her, and she liked him, and they both liked the kids . . . .
    She took the jeans to the cashier’s counter, groaned when she saw the Visa charge slip, folded it, dropped it in her purse.
    “If my husband finds it, he’ll wring my neck,” she said to the girl behind the counter.
    “Yeah, but . . .” The blonde salesgirl tossed her hair with a smile and made a piano-playing gesture with her hand as she put the jeans in a bag. Husbands can be handled, she was saying. “They’re nice pants.”
    Nancy left the store and, bag in hand, window-shopped at a women’s store, but she kept moving. The man with the hat was behind her on the escalator, heading toward the same exit. She noticed but didn’t think about it. Let’s see, I was out the exit by the cookie stand . . . .
    A burly high school kid with a letter jacket and a white-sidewall haircut held the door for her. He was wearing an earring and looked at her butt, and she smiled to herself. When she was growing up, in the fifties, there were older boys with sidewalls, but they’d have cut their own wrists before wearing an earring . . . .
    Nancy stepped over a curb and stopped at her car, and fished in her purse for her keys. The man with the hat went by. She almost nodded—they’d sort of looked at each other a few times in the mall—but she didn’t. Instead, she popped open the car door, dumped the jeans in the backseat, climbed in and started the engine. She should make it home by eight. What was on TV tonight?
     
    Druze had been ready, the knife-sharpening steel in his pocket, the same one he’d used on George. He had cleaned it meticulously, kept it in his kitchen drawer. And it was ready when he needed it. He followed the woman out of the mall, into the parking lot, ready to close on her, watching for other walkers, for cars turning down the rows, checking the lights. He was ready . . . .
    The woman stopped at the first car in the lot, a white Chevy Spectrum. Propped the bag between her hip and the car, began digging in her purse. They were absolutely exposed to the mall. If he moved on her, he would be seen. He glanced back: people on the sidewalk, at the doors, coming, going . . . Shit.
    He felt stupid. If he picked a woman inside, there was an excellent chance that she’d be parked somewhere in the open, where he couldn’t get to her. Or even that she’d be picked up at the curb by a husband or son. He’d have to wait outside. He went by Nancy Dunen, unconsciously flipped his keys in the air with one hand, picked them out with the other. The woman glanced vaguely at him, then went back to her purse. He never looked back, he heard the door slam and the engine start . . . .
     
    Druze went back to his car, moved it to the edge of the lot, tried a parking space, found he couldn’t see out of it, tried another. Good. He parked, turned off the lights and waited. He was parked at an acute angle to a side entry. Peoplewouldn’t naturally look at this area, but he could watch them coming through.
    He waited five minutes. Nothing. Then a couple crossed the lot, walking toward the cluster where Druze was parked. A single woman followed them by twenty yards. The couple reached their car; the man walked around to the passenger side to open the door, then opened the trunk to put their packages inside. The single woman reached the cluster as the man closed the trunk and popped open the driver’s-side door. By that time, the single woman, unaware that she was being watched, and not more than thirty feet from Druze, was already getting into her car. She backed out at the same time as the couple, and they were gone.
    Damn. She would have been a good one, Druze thought. A little young, but that was okay. He slouched in the seat, the hat brim pulled down. People walked in and out of the lighted doors. Eenie meenie minie moe . . .
     
    Kelsey Romm was wearing a scarlet blouse and jeans, with white gym shoes, her hair long, her lipstick dark. She worked part-time at Maplewood and part-time at a convenience store in Roseville, and on weekends at a Target. Sometimes the workload made her sick to her stomach; sometimes her legs ached so bad that she couldn’t bend them to sit down. But full-time jobs were hard to find. Economics, her