Invisible Prey

were standing off the stoop, smoking. Lucas pulled in behind the cop car, got out, and walked up to the stoop.
    “They’re pretty busy in there,” one of the smokers said.
    “I’m a cop,” Lucas said. He knocked once and let himself into the house. Two uniformed cops were standing in the living room, talking with the Barths, who were sitting on the couch. Lucas didn’t recognize either of the cops, and when they turned to him, he said, “Lucas Davenport, I’m with the BCA. I worked with the Barths on the grand jury.”
    One of the cops nodded and Lucas said to Jesse, “You all right?”
    “They got Screw,” she said.
    “But you’re all right.”
    “She’s scared shitless , if that’s all right,” Kathy snapped.
    “We just got a call from another squad,” one of the cops said. “There’s a dead dog on the side of the road, just off Lexington. It’s white, sounds like…Screw.”
    “All right,” Lucas said. Back to Jesse. “You think you could come down with me, look at the dog?”
    She snuffled.
    The cop said, “We called Animal Control, they’re gonna pick it up.”
    Lucas to Jesse: “What do you think?”
    “I could look,” she said. “He saved my life.”
    “Tell me exactly what happened…”
     
    S HE TOLD the story in an impressionistic fashion—touches of color, touches of panic, not a lot of detail. When the dog hit the big man, she said, she was already running, and she was fast. “I didn’t look back for a block and then I saw him jump in the van and Screw was stuck on his leg. Then the van went around in a circle, and that’s the last I saw. They turned on Lexington toward the interstate. Then I ran some more until I got home.”
    “So there had to be at least two people,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah. Because one was driving and the other one tried to hit me,” she said.
    “What’d he try to hit you with?” Lucas asked.
    “Like a cane.”
    “A cane?”
    “Yeah, like a cane,” she said.
    “Could it have been a pipe?”
    She thought for a minute, and then said, “Yeah. It could have been a pipe. About this long.” She held her hands three feet apart.
    Lucas turned away for a second, closed his eyes, felt people looking at him. “Jesus.”
    “What?” Kathy Barth was peering at him. “You havin’ a stroke?”
    “No, it’s just…Never mind.” He thought: the van guys were in the wrong case. To Jesse: “Honey, let’s go look at the dog, okay?”
     
    T HEY FOUND the dog lying in the headlights of a St. Paul squad car. The cop was out talking to passersby, and broke away when Lucas pulled up. This cop he knew: “Hey, Jason.”
    “This your dog?” Jason was smiling, shaking his head.
    “It’s sorta mine,” Jesse said. She looked so sad that the cop’s smile vanished. She got up close and peered down at Screw’s body. “That’s him. He looks so…dead.”
    The body was important for two major reasons: it confirmed Jesse’s story; and one other thing…
    Lucas squatted next to it: the dog was twisted and scuffed, but also, it seemed, broken. Better though: its muzzle was stained with blood.
    Lucas stood up and said to the cop, “Somebody said Animal Control was coming?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I don’t know how to do this, exactly, but I want an autopsy done,” Lucas said. “I’d like to have it done by the Ramsey medical examiner, if they’ll do it.”
    “An autopsy?” Jason looked doubtfully at the dead dog.
    “Yeah. I want to know how he was killed. Specifically, if it might have been a pipe,” Lucas said. “I want the nose, there, the mouth, checked for human blood. If there is human blood, I want DNA.”
    “Who’d he bite?” the cop asked.
    “We don’t know. But this is seriously important. When I find this guy, I’m gonna hang him up by his…I’m gonna hang him up,” Lucas said.
    “By his balls,” said Jesse.
     
    G ABRIELLA DIDN’T NOTICE the broken window in the back door until she actually pushed the door open and was reaching for the kitchen light switch. The back door had nine small windows in it, and the broken one was bottom left, above the knob. The glass was still there, held together by transparent Scotch tape, but she could see the cracks when the light snapped on. She frowned and took a step into the kitchen and the other woman was right there.
     
    J ANE W IDDLER had just come down the stairs, carrying the sewing basket. She turned and walked down the hall into the kitchen, quiet in running shoes, Leslie twenty feet