Mind Prey

sure,” she said.
    “Gloria said his name was David,” Lucas said.
    McPherson shook her head. “It wasn’t. I would have remembered that—I mean, two Davids from the same town and the same age and all.”
    Sloan sighed and looked at Lucas. “God, it’s a shame the way young people lie to us nowadays.”
    “And the old people,” Lucas said. “And the middle-aged.” To McPherson he said, “C’mon. Let’s go see if she remembers you, and if that helps her remember the guy’s name.”
    “Jeez, I kinda hate to be seen with cops,” McPherson said.
    “Is that what they taught you in Wisconsin?” Sloan asked as they got back out of the car.
    “Nope. They taught me that if I get lost, ask a cop. So I got over here at the U, and I got lost, and I asked a cop. He wanted to take me home. With him, I mean.”
    “Must’ve been a St. Paul cop,” Lucas said. “C’mon, let’s go.”
     
    T HEY CLIMBED THE stairs again, but when they knocked on Gloria’s door, there was no answer. “Could be visiting another apartment,” Sloan said. But it didn’t feel that way. The building was silent, nothing moving.
    Lucas walked down to the end of the hall and looked out a window: “Fire escape,” he said. An old iron drop-ladder fire escape hung on the side of the building. He checked the window above it, and the window slid open easily. “The window’s unlocked from inside. Goes down the back.”
    He leaned out: nothing moved.
    Sloan said, “She’s running.”
    Lucas said, “And she knows him—you go that way.”
    Sloan ran for the stairs, while Lucas went out the window and ran down the fire escape. At the top of the lowest flight, he had to wait for a counter-weight to drop the stairs to a narrow walkway between the apartment and the next building. The walkway was filled with debris, blown paper, a few boards, a bent and rusting real-estate sign, and wine bottles. Lucas looked one way toward the street, and the other toward an alley that ran along the back of the buildings. If she’d gone out to the street, they should have seen her. He ran the other way, toward the alley, high-stepping over dried dog shit and a knee-high pile of what looked like cat litter. Just down the alley was the rear door of a pizza shop, with a window. Behind the window, a kid was hosing down dishes in a stainless-steel sink. Lucas went to the door and pushed through: and a woman leaned against a counter, smoking a cigarette, and the kid looked up. “Hey,” she said, straightening up. “You’re not supposed to…”
    “I’m a cop,” Lucas said. “Did either of you guys see a woman come down the fire escape in back of the building across the alley? Five, six minutes ago?”
    The woman and the dishwasher looked at each other and then the dishwasher said, “I guess. Skinny, dressed in black?”
    “That’s her,” Lucas said. “Did you see where she went?”
    “She walked up that way…” The dishwasher pointed.
    “Was she in a hurry?”
    “Yeah. She sort of skipped, and she was carrying like a laundry bag. She went around the corner. What’d she do?”
    Lucas left without answering, ran down to the corner. There was a bus stop, with nobody waiting. He ran across a street, into a bakery, flashed his badge and asked to use a phone: a flour-dusted fat man led him into the back and pointed at a wall phone. Lucas called Dispatch: “She might be on a bus, or she might be walking someplace. But flood it: we’re looking for a tall, pale woman in her middle twenties, dressed all in black, probably in a hurry, probably carrying a bag of some kind. Maybe a sack. Check for a car registration and get that out.”
    Back on the street, he looked both ways: he could see three or four women dressed in black. One might have been Crosby, but when she turned to cross a street, Lucas, running up from behind, saw it wasn’t her. A cop flashed by: two guys looking out the windows. Lucas turned back: there were students everywhere.
    Too many of them in black.
     
    L UCAS WALKED BACK to the apartment’s front door. Sloan turned the corner and walked toward him from the other end of the street. Sloan shook his head, took off his hat, smoothed his hair, and said, “Didn’t see a thing.”
    “Goddamnit, this is just like the fuckin’ game store. We were this close,” Lucas said, showing an inch between his thumb and forefinger. He looked up at the building. “Let’s see if there’s a manager.”
    A glassed-over building directory