Mortal Prey

second piece of information I gave you. That’ll give you a clue about where some of my sources are, and why I can’t take Sally along.”
    “Are you…ah, man.” He got it in one second. At least some of Lucas’s sources were with the FBI. “All right. Sally, you work here with Malone, but Lucas, Sally’s your contact with us. She’ll get you what you need, from our side. Call her anytime day or night. Feed her everything you collect, all right? And try to get to the morning report on time. Seven o’clock, okay?
    “Okay,” Lucas said, with no sincerity whatever.
     
    MALLARD WENT THROUGH the list of the day’s assignments, then said to Malone, “I’m outta here. I doubt that we’ll be with Ross for an hour, and I’ll be on the phone the whole time.”
    “Good luck,” she said.
     
    SALLY FOLLOWED THEM out into the hall. “Give me two minutes with Chief Davenport,” she said to Mallard. Mallard said, “I’m going to hit the john,” and walked away. To Lucas, she said, “What was the second piece of information?”
    Lucas shook his head. “You’d have to get that from Louis.”
    “I surmise that one of your informants is with the Bureau.”
    He shook his head again, kept his face straight. “You’d have to get that from Louis.”
    “It’s really good to build up this level of trust with the guy you’re coordinating with,” she said.
    “I don’t need my balls busted by the FBI,” Lucas said. “I’m getting tired of leading you guys around by the hand.”
    “I don’t think that’s the case,” she said.
    “Bullshit. You guys couldn’t find your own elbows with two agents and a pair of binoculars.”
    Her lip twitched, and Lucas thought she might smile. “My old man would’ve said, ‘You couldn’t find your asshole with both hands and a flashlight.’”
    “That was my thought,” Lucas admitted. “I edited it because of your tender years.”
    “I’m not that tender,” she said. “What are we doing?”
    “I’ll get your number and give you mine. It’s always on, except at night.”
    “Good.” They finished the arrangements in two minutes, and she asked, “That Andy Levy stuff isn’t just a rumor, is it?”
    “No. But I don’t know anything about him.”
    She nibbled at the inside of her lip. “We’ll have a formal profile in an hour. We’re very good at that.”
    Lucas started down the hall. “Then do it. When you find anything out, call me,” he said over his shoulder. “And hey—I like the epaulets.”
     
    THEY TOOK A dark government car, a Dodge, Mallard in the back, a younger agent driving, Lucas riding shotgun. On the way over, Mallard browsed through a file on Ross, reading out occasional anecdotes.
    The anecdotes covered Ross’s youth (he’d taken piano lessons for four years as a child, but didn’t like them; he had allegedly pushed the piano out of his parent’s fourth-floor apartment and down the stairs, it had rocketed through the side of the apartment house and into the street); his love life (he was on his fourth wife; his third had died tragically in an unsolved hit-and-run shortly after the divorce, while Ross had been vacationing in alibi heaven); and his legitimate interests (his long-distance trucking company was “Mother Trucker of the Year” for ’98, and was listed in Missouri magazine as one of the top 100 Missouri companies to work for).
     
    ROSS LIVED ON a semiprivate street in the town of Ladue, in the middle of a broad, rolling lawn of faultless green, dappled here and there with flower beds. The house, a rambling redbrick mansion with white trim, was set at the crest of a low hillock, and was surrounded by mature, artfully spaced trees. If Ross had any kind of security system, Rinker would need a rocket launcher to get at him, Lucas thought.
    The driver stayed with the car, while Lucas and Mallard went to the door. Ross’s wife answered the doorbell. She was a striking woman in her mid-thirties, with strawberry-blond hair, a smooth oval face, and jade-green eyes—way too much for her Missouri accent. She was wearing tennis whites and carrying a bottle of orange Gatorade. She led them across polished wooden floors, past colorful, intricate framed prints, back to a home office, and called, “John—they’re here,” and then said to Mallard, “Well, I’m off to play tennis,” as though she found the idea amazing.
    “Good luck,” he said. She turned away as John Ross came up to the office door.
    “Come in,”