Invisible Prey

Jane and Leslie were killing these people, I don’t know why Jane would try to drag me into it. Is she trying to do that?”
    “Maybe,” Lucas said.
    “Do you think they could kill people?” Smith asked.
    Anderson turned her face down, thinking, glanced sideways at Ramford, then said, “You know, Jane…has always struck me as greedy. Not really a bad person, but terribly greedy. She wants all this stuff. Diamonds, watches, cars, Hermès this and Tiffany that and Manolo Blahnik something else. She might kill for money—it’d have to be money—but…I don’t know.”
    Her mouth moved some more, without words, and they all sat and waited, and she went on:
    “Leslie, I think Leslie might kill. For the pleasure in it. And money. In college, we had this small-college football team. Football didn’t mean anything, really. You’d go and wave your little pennant or wear your mum and nobody cared if you won or lost. A lot of people made fun of football players…but Leslie liked to hurt people. He’d talk about stepping on people’s hands with his cleats. Like, if one of the runner-guys did too well, they’d get him down and then Leslie would ‘accidentally’ step on his hand and break it. He claimed he did it several times. Word got around that he could be dangerous.”
    Smith said, “Huh,” and Lucas asked, “Anything heavier than that? That you heard of? Did you get any bad vibrations from Leslie when Mrs. Donaldson was killed?”
    She shook her head, looking spooked: “No. Not at all. But now that you mention it…I mean, jeez, their store really came up out of nowhere.” She looked at Lucas, Smith, and Ramford. “You know what I mean? Most antique people wind up in these little holes-in-the-wall, and the Widdlers are suddenly rich.”
    “Makes you think,” Smith said, looking up at Lucas.
    There was more, but the returns were diminishing. Lucas finally stood up, sighed, said to Ramford, “You might want to give her a couple of names, just in case,” and he and Smith took off.
     
    “L ET’S DRIVE AROUND for a while, before you drop me off. Get Ramford out of there,” Lucas said to Smith. “I don’t know where she parked, I wouldn’t want her to pick me up.” He got on his radio and called Flowers as they walked to the car.
    “I’m looking right at you,” Flowers said.
    “There should be a lawyer coming out in a few minutes. Stay out of sight, and call when she’s gone.”
    Smith drove them up to Grand Avenue, and they both got double-dip ice cream cones, and leaned on the hood of Smith’s car and watched the college girls go by; blondes and short shirts and remarkably little laughter, intense brooding looks, like they’d been bit on the ass by Sartre or Derrida or some other Frenchman.
    Lucas was getting down to cone level on his chocolate pecan fudge when his radio beeped. Flowers said, “The lawyer is getting in her car.”
    “I’ll be in place in five minutes,” Lucas said.
     
    S URVEILLANCE COULD be exciting, but hardly ever was. This night was one of the hardly-evers, four long hours of nothing. Couldn’t even read, sitting in the dark. He talked to Flowers twice on the radio, had a long phone chat with Weather—God bless cell phones—and at midnight, Jenkins eased up behind him.
    “You good?” Lucas asked, on the radio.
    “Got my video game, got my iPod. Got two sacks of pork rinds and a pound of barbeque ribs, and a quart of Diet Coke for propellant. All set.”
    “Glad I’m not in the car with you,” Lucas said. “Those goddamn pork rinds.”
    “Ah, you open the door every half hour or so, and you’re fine,” Jenkins said. “You might not want to light a cigarette.”
     
    W EATHER WAS CUTTING again in the morning, and was asleep when Lucas tiptoed into the bedroom at twelve-fifteen. He took an Ambien to knock himself down, a Xanax to smooth out the ride, thought about a martini, decided against it, set the alarm clock, and slipped into bed.
    The alarm went off exactly seven hours and forty minutes later. Weather was gone; that happened when he was working hard on a case, staying up late. They missed each other, though they were lying side by side…
    He cleaned up quickly, looking at his watch, got a Ziploc bag with four pieces of cornbread from the housekeeper, a couple of Diet Cokes from the refrigerator, the newspaper off the front porch, and was on his way. Hated to be late on a stakeout; they were so boring that being even a minute late was