Invisible Prey

“Get your asses out of the country club, and get onto the Klines. Jack those fuckers up. My gut feeling is that they’re not involved, but I want you to prove it,” Lucas told Jenkins.
    “Can’t prove a negative,” Jenkins said.
    “Not before this,” Lucas said. “You guys are gonna do it, though, or we’re gonna do a gay prostitution sting, and your ass will be on the corner.”
    “We get to wear nylons?” Jenkins asked. He didn’t threaten well.
    Lucas’s voice went dark: “I’m not fuckin’ around here, man. We had an attempted kidnapping, we got a dead dog, now we got a firebomb.”
    “We’ll jack them up, no shit,” Jenkins promised. “We’re on the case.”
    “Flowers is coming up. He’ll get in touch.”
     
    O FF THE PHONE, Lucas started walking around the neighborhood, checking the houses on each side of the Barths’ house, then across the alley in back, and so on, up and down both streets and the houses on the alley. Four houses up from the Barths, and across the alley, he found an elderly man named Stevens.
    “I was cooking some Weight Watchers in the microwave, and I saw a car go through the alley,” Stevens said. He was tall, and too thin, balding, with a dark scab at the crest of his head, as if he’d walked into something. They were in the kitchen, and he pointed a trembling hand at the window over the sink, the same arrangement as in the Barths’. “Then, maybe, ten minutes later I was just finished eating, and I took the dish to the trash, and saw more lights in the alley. I didn’t see the car, but I think it was the same one. They both had blue headlights.”
    “Blue?”
    “Not blue-blue, but bluish. Like on German cars. You know, when you look in your rearview mirror on the interstate, and you see a whole bunch of yellow lights, and then, mixed in, some that look blue?”
    “Yeah. I’ve got blue lights myself,” Lucas said.
    “Like that,” Stevens said. “Anyway, I’d just sat back down again, and I heard the sirens.”
    “That was right after you saw the blue headlights.”
    “I got up to take the dish to the trash during a commercial,” Stevens said. “Saw the lights, came in, sat back down. The sirens came before there was another commercial.”
    “You didn’t see what kind of a car it was? The time you actually saw it?”
    “Nope. Just getting dark,” Stevens said. “But it was a dark-colored car, black, dark blue, dark green, and I think a sedan. Not a coupe.”
    “Not a van.”
    “No, no. Not a van. A regular, generic car. Maybe bigger than most. Not a lot bigger, a little bigger. Not an SUV. A car.”
    “You see many cars back in the alley?” Lucas asked.
    “Between five and six o’clock, there are always some, with the garages off the alley. But not with blue lights. None with blue lights. That’s probably why I noticed it.”
    That was all he’d seen: he hadn’t heard the bomb, the screaming, hadn’t heard anything until the sirens came up. He’d been watching Animal Planet.
    “Live here alone?” Lucas asked, as he went out.
    “Yeah. It sucks.”
     
    L UCAS CONTINUED WALKING, found a woman who thought she’d seen a car with bluish lights, but wasn’t exactly certain what time. She’d seen it coming out of the alley at least sometime before the sirens, and added nothing to what Stevens said, except to confirm it.
     
    H E CHECKED OUT with the firemen at the Barths’. The arson investigator had shown up, and said he’d have some preliminary ideas in the morning. “But I can tell you, there was gasoline.” He sniffed. “Probably from BP. I’d say, ninety-two octane.” Lucas frowned and the arson guy grinned: “Pulling your weenie. Talk to you in the morning.”
     
    L UCAS GOT HOME at midnight and found Weather in bed, reading a book on cottage gardens. “I think we live in a cottage,” she said.
    “Good to know,” he grunted.
    “So, I think we should hire a couple of gardeners next year, and get a cottage garden going,” she said. “Maybe a white picket fence.”
    “Picket fence would be nice,” he said, grumpily.
    She put the book down. “Tell me about it.”
     
    H E TOLD her about it, walking back and forth from the bathroom, waving his arms around, getting into his pajamas. He’d brought up a bottle of caffeine-free Diet Coke, with a shot of rum. He sat on the edge of the bed drinking it as he finished, and finally said, “The ultimate problem is, there is no connection between the two cases. But