Mortal Prey

thought popped up. “Say, did you check Levy’s past account records, to see if Clara’s in there? If we could tell where she’s moved her money, that’d be good. Or maybe Levy would know.”
    “Workin’ on it,” Malone said. “If we can figure out these other accounts, we may have something to squeeze him with.”
    “Huh.”
     
    TWO MINUTES OF silence, then another thought: “She probably crossed the border illegally. I mean, you know, wetbacked it across. She can’t know the level of surveillance at the border, she wouldn’t want to take a chance of a random check on faked or stolen documents.” “So?”
    “So, if she crossed the border illegally, that means she probably crossed in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, or California.”
    “Yeah?”
    “I drove out to California last year, and there aren’t that many ways to get from those places to the Midwest, in a hurry. She could fly, but she never flew much when you guys were tracking her before, because there’s always a record and they want ID to get on the planes…. I bet she crossed out of Mexico and bought a car. She’d need one when she got here. And I think she’d stick to interstate highways, because there’s more volume of traffic and she’d be less conspicuous. And she’d probably pay cash for everything….”
    “Where’s this going?”
    “You’d only have to backtrack down a couple of interstates…Seventy, Forty-four.”
    “Maybe Fifty-five,” Malone said, getting interested now.
    “Ever since gas theft became a deal, most of the interstate stations have surveillance cameras snapping photos of the cars as they gas up. What if you gave the ID photos to all the local sheriff’s departments and had them paper the gas stations along the interstates? If somebody recognizes her…”
    “If we could even find out what day or even week that she was at a particular place, we could run all of the plates and check the anomalies.”
    “Long shot,” Lucas said.
    “But it’s a shot,” she said.
     
    THEY WERE STILL talking about it when Mallard arrived, looking harassed. Lucas’s eyes met Malone’s across the table, and she gave a tiny negative shake of her head: not now. Lucas turned to Mallard and asked, “You all meetinged out yet?”
    “Meetings are the water we swim in,” Mallard said. He fussed with some paper. “But now we all agree who’s running this particular investigation.” He paused. “Me.”
    “What about the net on Levy?”
    “We’re all over him. He’s in his office, and if he walks down the hall to the rest room, we’ll know.” He looked at Malone. “When I was listening to all that bullshit from Lewis, I was thinking about Levy. I want to contact him now. This afternoon. Get everything we can on him, go over there, tell him he’s on Rinker’s list, and ask him why. Find out if he knows her, or knows where her money is. At least get him cooperating with the net.”
    “What if he runs?” Malone asked.
    “What if she kills him?” Mallard said.
    They all thought about that for a moment, then Malone asked, “If you make the call, I can put it together in an hour.”
    Mallard looked at Lucas. “What do you think?”
    Lucas shrugged. “If he decides to run, can you stop him? Running would be the safest thing for him—and he wouldn’t even have to talk to you. If you have something—anything—that would keep him from leaving, I’d put it on him. Because if he has money ditched offshore somewhere, and he splits, it could be a long time before any of us see him again.”
    Mallard nodded. “We’ll find something. You can’t live in this country for two days without breaking some law, somewhere.”
    “You want me to put it together?” Malone asked.
    Mallard nodded. “Yes. Do it.”

10
    RINKER HAD SPENT THE EARLY MORNING watching the outside of Andy Levy’s mansion— mansion was the only word she had for the place. She was parked a block and a half away, across a busy street, waiting for any kind of movement. She needed to know that he was home, and not hiding out somewhere else. She’d been waiting for an hour when the front door opened, and Levy, in a robe and slippers, stepped out on the stoop and picked up the newspaper, opening and turning it in his hands as he stepped back inside. He was reading the follow-up on the Dichter killing, she thought. If the story was anything like what she’d been watching on television, it should spook him even further. Before he closed the door, he