Invisible Prey

of Gabriella Coombs, about the keys and the car, about the broken window with the Scotch tape, about the spool of thread and the music box.
    Wilson said, “That sounds like an Agatha Christie book.”
    “I know what it sounds like,” Lucas said. “But you need to cover this, Jerry—we need to find Gabriella. I’ll talk to her boyfriend, but I could use some cops spread out behind me, talking to her other friends.”
    “Okay. You got names? And I’ll tell you what—that window wasn’t broken day before yesterday.”
    “I’ll get you names and phone numbers,” Lucas said. “If you find her, God bless you, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Lucas was on his cell phone, looked back to the house, where Lucy Coombs was locking the front door. “I’ve got a feeling she’s gone.”
     
    L UCY C OOMBS wanted to come along when Lucas confronted Ron Stack, the artist boyfriend. Lucas told her to go home and get on the phone, and he lied to her: “There’s an eighty percent chance that she’s at a friend’s house or out for coffee. We’ve just got to run her down, and anything you can do to help…”
    On the way to Stack’s place, Lucas called Carol: “Have you seen Shrake?”
    “Yes, but I’m not sure he saw me. He’s getting coffee, and he needs it. His eyes are the color of a watermelon daiquiri.”
    “Fuck him. Tell him to meet me at the Parkside Lofts in Lowertown. Ten minutes.”
     
    W HEN L UCAS got back downtown, Shrake was sitting on a park bench across the street from Stack’s apartment building. He got shakily to his feet when Lucas pulled into the curb. He was a tall man in a British-cut gray suit and white shirt, open at the collar. His eyes, as Carol said, were Belgian-hare pink, and he was hungover.
    “I hope we’re gonna kill something,” he said, when Lucas got out of the car. “I really need to kill something.”
    “I know. I talked to Jenkins this morning,” Lucas said. “We’re looking for an artist. His girlfriend disappeared last night.” Lucas told him about it as they crossed the street.
    The Parkside was a six-story building, a onetime warehouse, unprofitably converted to loft apartments, with city subsidies, and was now in its fourth refinancing. They rode up to the top floor in what had been a freight elevator, retained either for its boho cool or for lack of money. For whatever reason, it smelled, Lucas thought, like the inside of an old gym shoe.
    As they got off the elevator, Lucas’s cell phone rang. Lucas looked at the Caller ID: the medical examiner’s office. He said, “I’ve got to take this.”
    The ME: “You know, I like doing dogs,” he said. “It’s a challenge.”
    “Find anything good?” Lucas asked.
    “A lot of people think all we can do is routine, run-of-the-mill dissections and lab tests, like it’s all cut-and-dried,” the ME said. “That’s not what it’s about, is it? It’s a heck of a lot more than that…”
    “Listen, we’ll have lunch someday and you can tell me about it,” Lucas said. “What happened with the dog?”
    “You’re lying to me about the lunch. You’re just leading me on…”
    “What about the fuckin’ dog?” Lucas snarled.
    “Pipe,” the ME said. “I did Bucher—and man, if it ain’t the same pipe, it’s a brother or a cousin. The dog’s skull was crushed, just like Bucher’s and Peebles’s, and the radius of the crushing blow is identical. I don’t mean somewhat the same, I mean, identical. We got mucho blood samples, but I don’t know yet whether they’re human or dog.”
    “Give me a guess,” Lucas suggested.
    “My guess is, it’s human,” the ME said. “It looks to me like the mutt was chewing on somebody. We’ve got enough for DNA, if it’s human.”
    “That’s great,” Lucas said. “And the pipe…”
    “You’re hot,” the ME said. “You’re onto something.”
    “Get a break?” Shrake asked, when Lucas rang off.
    “Maybe, but not on Gabriella.”
     
    R ON S TACK was in 610. Lucas knocked on the door, and a moment later a balding, bad-tempered, dark-complected man peered out at them over a chain. He was wearing a nasal spreader on his nose, the kind football players use to help them breathe freely. He was holding a cup of coffee and had a soul patch under his thin lower lip. “What?”
    Lucas held up his ID. “Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We’re investigating the disappearance of Gabriella Coombs,” Lucas said.
    Stack’s chin receded into his