Mortal Prey

composites. They’re moving a big special team in, all hush-hush. They’ve mostly cut out the St. Louis cops.”
    “Are you going back down?”
    “If they ask, I guess,” Lucas said. “It’s an interesting situation—a top killer turning on her own people, with all her special knowledge. With her record of successful hits, the knuckleheads gotta be pretty freaked out.”
    “And no matter what happens, the FBI wins,” Rose Marie said, peering at the ceiling. “If she kills a few people, they can squeeze the rest of the assholes with protection deals. If they catch her, they can squeeze her with the death penalty.”
    “Yeah—and she’s out for revenge, too, so if the feebs get their hands on her, they’ve got that going. Another reason for her to talk. Not much downside.”
    Rose Marie puffed on the cigarette, exhaled, smiled, and said, “The governor liked that shit we did with Qatar.” Qatar was a recently deceased serial killer. “If we could squeeze a little more good PR out of St. Louis, it’d be worth doing. Elmer got elected on his family money, and everybody considered him a pencil-necked geek. He likes the idea of having his own goon squad. Makes his testicles swell up.”
    “I thought it was idealism,” Lucas said.
    Rose Marie snorted. “Let me know when anything happens.”
     
    ON THE WAY OUT of the building, an old-timer cop sidled toward him and Lucas said, “Ah, Jesus, Hempsted, go away.”
    “I just got a business tip for you,” the cop protested. “You heard about the big Pillsbury merger, right?”
    “Something about it,” Lucas admitted.
    “Well, after everything was said and done, Pillsbury wound up owing the Trojan company.”
    “What?”
    “Yeah. They’re coming up with a self-rising condom.”
    “Get away from me, dickweed.”
    “You’re laughing to yourself, Davenport,” Hempsted called after him. “I can always tell.”
     
    WEATHER KARKINNEN WAS sitting at her desk in her office at Hennepin General, peering into a computer monitor. Lucas caught her unaware, and leaned in the doorway, watching her face. She’d put on weight with the pregnancy, had gone rounder and softer. She’d always been a sailor, the girl on the foredeck hauling on the spinnaker, wide shoulders and crooked nose, the sun-bleached hair and wind-burned cheekbones. The softness and weight was so different—he’d seen her, just out of bed in the morning, standing naked in front of a door-mounted mirror, measuring the changes in herself.
    She moaned about the weight, about the changes in her figure. But it all sounded to Lucas like the war stories he’d heard from other women who’d gone through childbirth, stories akin to male basic-training tales, but female, a bunch of women sitting around talking about water weight and stretch marks and ultrasounds and episiotomies.
     
    “ YOU LOOK TERRIFIC ,” he said, and she jumped.
    “God, don’t do that,” she said, smiling, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. She stood up, stretched, and came around the desk, put her arms around his waist, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.
    “I mean it,” he said. He had her hands on her waist, his thumbs near her navel, the growing part of her. “You make my heart feel funny when I look at you.”
    “That kind of talk could get you somewhere,” she said. “When did you get back?”
    “Just a few minutes ago,” Lucas said. “Talked to Rose Marie—the conspiracy is flourishing. She’ll quit Minneapolis in the middle of October and move over to the state on November first.”
    “That’ll be the busy season, with the baby coming.”
    Lucas nodded. “I don’t have to be there the exact minute she is. I’m thinking, I could quit Minneapolis when she does, but not move over to the state until December or January. Have a couple of months off to get the house together and you and the kid set up.”
    She tapped him on the chest. “That’s the best idea you’ve had in weeks.”
    “So we’ll do that,” he said.
    “How about Rinker? Was it her? Are you going to be involved?”
    “Maybe. The feebs think she’s headed for St. Louis. As soon as something happens, they’ll let me know what they want to do.”
     
    BUT NOTHING HAPPENED . A week went by. Lucas and Weather spent one Sunday sailing in a regatta on Lake Minnetonka, and Lucas took two days to work on his Wisconsin cabin, never far from the cell phone.
    Finally, he called Mallard. “What’s up?”
    “Malone’s been out in L.A.,