Invisible Prey

things on his own.
    He looked back over his shoulder to the entry from the house, then knelt on the bottom landing, groped under the edge of the tread of the first step, felt the metal edge. He worked it for a moment with his fingernail, and it folded out, like the blade of a pocketknife.
    He pulled on the blade, hard, and the face of the step popped loose. A drawer. He would have bet that not even a crime-scene crew could have found it. Inside, he kept his special cop stuff: two cold pistols with magazines; a homemade silencer that fit none of his guns, and that he kept meaning to throw away, but never had; an old-fashioned lead-and-leather sap; a hydraulic door-spreader that he’d picked up from a burglary site; five thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills in a paper bank envelope; an amber-plastic bottle of amphetamines; a box of surgical gloves lifted from Weather’s office; and a battery-powered lock rake.
    The rake was about the size and shape of an electric toothbrush. He took it out of the drawer, along with a couple of latex gloves, slipped the drawer back in place, pushed the blade-grip back in place, and took the rake and gloves to his truck.
    Back inside the house, he got Weather’s digital camera, a pocketsized Canon G7, got his jacket, and told the housekeeper he was leaving. Kissed Sam.
    On the phone to Jenkins: “You still got her?”
     
    “Y EAH . She just got in the elevator. So what do I do now, sit on my ass?”
    “Ah…yeah,” Lucas said. “Go on over and sit in the Starbucks.”
    “Listen, if she wants to get out, there’s a back stairs that comes out on the other side of the building,” Jenkins said. “Or she can walk down into the Skyways off the elevators on the second floor, or she could come all the way down and walk out the front door. There’s too much I can’t see, and if I guess wrong, I’ll be standing here with my dick in my hand.”
    “She shouldn’t have any idea that we’re watching her, so she’s not gonna be sneaking around,” Lucas said.
    “I’m just saying,” Jenkins warned. “We either get three or four guys over here, or she could walk on us.”
    “I know what you’re saying. Just…sit. Call me if you see her moving.”
     
    H ER HOUSE WAS two minutes away in the truck. He parked under a young maple tree, a half block out, watched the street for a moment, then slipped the rake in one pocket, the camera and gloves in the other, and walked down to her door. The door was right out in the open, but with tall ornamental cedars on each side. A dental office building was across the street, with not much looking at him.
    He rang the doorbell, holding it for a long time, listening to the muffled buzz. No reaction; no movement, no footfalls. He rang it again, then pulled open the storm door, as if talking to somebody inside, and pushed the lock-snake into the crappy 1950s Yale. The rake chattered for a moment, then the lock turned in his hand. He was in.
    “Hello?” he called. “Hello? Amity? Amity?”
    Nothing. A little sunlight through the front window, dappling the carpet and the back of the couch; little sparkles of dust in the light of the doorway to the kitchen. “Amity?”
    He stepped inside, shut the door, pulled on the latex gloves, did a quick search for a security system. Got a jolt when he found a keypad inside the closet next to the front door. And then noticed that the ’80s-style liquid-crystal read-out was dead.
    He pushed a couple of number-buttons: nothing.
    He could risk it, he thought. If the cops came, maybe talk his way out of it. But still: move quick. He hurried through the house, looking for anything that might be construed as an antique. Found a music box—was she a music-box collector? That would be interesting. He took a picture of it. Up to the bedroom, taking shots of an oil painting, a rocking chair, a drawing, a chest of drawers that seemed too elegant for the bedroom.
    Into the bathroom: big tub, marijuana and scented candle wax, bottles of alprazolam and Ambien in the medicine cabinet. Stress? Under the sink, a kit in a velvet bag. He’d seen kits like that, from years ago, but what…He opened it: ah, sure. A diaphragm. So she swung both ways. Or had, at one time.
    His cell phone rang, and vibrated at the same time, in his pocket, nearly giving him a heart attack.
    Carol: “Mrs. Coombs called. She wants to talk to you. She’s really messed up.”
    “I’ll get back to her later,” Lucas said.
    “She’s pretty