Invisible Prey

you don’t see this every day. The cards not stolen.”
     
    L UCAS BROWSED THROUGH the second floor, nodding at cops, taking it in. One of the cops pointed him down the hall at Peebles’s apartment, a bedroom, a small living room with an older television, a bathroom with a shower and a cast-iron tub. Again, the medicine cabinet was open, with some of the contents knocked out; another quilt had been pulled off the wall.
    The other bedrooms showed paintings knocked to the floor, bed-covers disturbed.
    A door to a third floor stood open and Lucas took the stairs. Hotter up here; the air-conditioning was either turned off, or didn’t reach this far. Old-time servants’ quarters, storage rooms. One room was full of luggage, dozens of pieces dating back to the early part of the twentieth century, Lucas thought. Steamer trunks. A patina of dust covered the floor, and people had walked across it: Lucas found multiple footprints came and went, some in athletic shoes, others in plain-bottomed shoes.
    He browsed through the other rooms, and found a few more footprints, as well as stacks of old furniture, racks of clothing, rolls of carpet, shelves full of glassware, a few old typewriters, an antique TV with a screen that was nearly oval, cardboard boxes full of puzzles and children’s toys. A room full of framed paintings. A cork bulletin board with dozens of promotional pins and medallions from the St. Paul Winter Carnival. The dumbshits should have taken them, he thought; some of the pins were worth several hundred dollars.
    He was alone in the dust motes and silence and heat, wondered about the footprints, turned around, went back downstairs, and started hunting for his boss.
     
    O N THE first floor, he walked around the crime scene in the hallway and past another empty room, stopped, went back. This was the TV room, with a sixty-inch high-definition television set into one wall.
    Below it was a shelf for electronics, showing nothing but a bunch of gold cable ends. He was about to step out, when he saw a bright blue plastic square behind the half-open door of a closet. He stepped over, nudged the door farther open, found a bookcase set into the closet, the top shelves full of DVD movies, the bottom shelves holding a dozen video games. He recognized the latest version of Halo, an Xbox game. There was no Xbox near the TV, so it must have been taken with the rest of the electronics.
    Were the old ladies playing Halo? Or did this belong to the Lash kid?
    Smith went by, and Lucas called, “Hey, Johnny…have you been up on the third floor?”
    “No. I was told there wasn’t much there,” Smith said.
    “Who went up?” Lucas asked.
    “Clark Wain. You know Clark? Big pink bald guy?”
    “Yeah, thanks,” Lucas said. “When’re you talking to Peebles’s nephew?”
    “Soon. You want to sit in?”
    “Maybe. I noticed that all the electronics were taken, but there were a bunch of games and DVDs there that weren’t,” Lucas said. “That’s a little odd, if it’s just local assholes.”
    Smith rubbed his lip, then said, “Yeah, I know. I saw that. Maybe in a hurry?”
    “They had time to trash the place,” Lucas said. “Must have been in here for half an hour.”
    “So…”
    “Maybe somebody asked them not to,” Lucas said.
    “You think?” They were talking about the Lash kid.
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “They stole the game console, but not the games? I don’t know. Maybe check and see if Lash has another console at home.”
     
    L UCAS FOUND Rose Marie in the small kitchen talking with the state representative for the district, an orange-haired woman with a black mustache who was leaking real tears, brushing them away with a Kleenex. Lucas came up and Rose Marie said, “You know Kathy. She and Mrs. Bucher were pretty close.”
    “I-ba-I-ba-I-ba…” Kathy said.
    “She identified the bodies,” Rose Marie said. “She lives two doors up the street.”
    “I-ba-I-ba…”
    Lucas would have felt sorrier for her if she hadn’t been such a vicious political wolverine, married to a vicious plaintiffs’ attorney. And he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her anyway. “You oughta sit down,” he said. “You look tippy.”
    “Come on,” Rose Marie said, taking the other woman’s arm. “I’ll get you a couch.” To Lucas: “Back in a minute.”
     
    T HE KITCHEN had been tossed like the rest of house, all the cabinet drawers pulled out, the freezer trays lying on the floor, a