Mortal Prey

could.
    Listening to all the commotion, he thought, All right. Two guys on the roof, an electrician on the porch, at least two nail guns inside and a table saw. That was a minimum of six guys, and if there were six guys working on the house, then he wouldn’t have to scream at the contractor. Seven or eight guys would have been better. Ten would have been perfect. But the house was only a week behind schedule now, so six was acceptable. Barely.
    As he climbed the porch steps, he noticed that somebody had pinned a four-by-four beam in the open ceiling, down at the far end. It would, someday soon, support an oak swing big enough for two adults and a kid. The electrician saw him coming, ducked his head to look down at him from the ladder, and said, “Hey, Lucas.”
    “Jim. How’s it going?”
    The electrician was screwing canary-yellow splicing nuts onto pairs of bared wires that would feed the porch light. “Okay, I’m getting close. But somebody’s got to put in that telephone and cable wiring or we’re gonna get hung up on the inspection. The inspector’s coming Tuesday, and if we have to reschedule, it could hold things up for a week and they won’t be able to close the overheads.”
    “I’ll talk to Jack about it,” Lucas said. “He was supposed to get that guy from Epp’s.”
    “I heard the guy fell off a stepladder and broke his foot—that’s what I heard,” the electrician said, pitching his voice down. “Don’t tell Jack I mentioned it.”
    “I won’t. I’ll get somebody out here,” Lucas said.
    Goddamnit. Now he was back in yelling mode again. Much of the problem of building a new house was in the sequencing—sequencing the construction steps and all the required inspections in a smooth flow. One screwup, of even a minor thing like phone and cable-television wiring, which should take no more than a day, could stall progress for a week, and they didn’t have a lot of time to spare.
    Besides which, living in Weather Karkinnen’s house was driving him crazy. He didn’t have any of his stuff. Everything was in storage. Weather had even lost her TV remote, and never noticed because she watched TV only when presidents were assassinated. For the past two months, he’d had to get up and down every time he wanted to change channels, and he wanted to change channels about forty times a minute. He’d taken to crouching next to the TV to push the channel button. Weather said he was pathetic, and he believed her.
     
    INSIDE THE SHELL of the new house, everything smelled of damp wood and sawdust—smelled pretty good, he thought. Building new houses could become addictive. Everybody was working on the second story, and he made a quick tour of the bottom floor—four new boxes were piled on the back porch; toilet stools—and then took the central stairs to the second floor. One nail-gun guy and the table saw guy were working in the master bedroom, fitting in the tongue-in-groove maple ceiling. The other nail gunner was working in the main bathroom, fitting frames for what would be the linen closet. They all glanced at him, and the guy on the saw said, “Morning,” and went back to work.
    “Jack around?”
    The saw guy shook his head. “Naw. I been working. Harold’s been kinda jackin’ around, though.”
    “Rick…” No time for carpenter humor. “Is Jack around?”
    “He was down the basement, last time I saw him.”
    Lucas did a quick tour of the top floor, stopped to look out a bedroom window at the Mississippi—he was actually high enough to see the water, far down in the steep valley on the other side of the road—and then headed back downstairs. His cell phone rang when he was halfway down, and he pulled it out and poked the power button: “Yeah?”
    “Hey.” Marcy Sherrill, a detective-sergeant who ran his office and a portion of his life. “That FBI guy, Mallard, is looking for you. He wants you to get back to him soon as you can.”
    “Did he say what he wanted?”
    “No, but he said it was urgent. He wanted your cell phone number, but I told him you kept it turned off. He gave me a number to call back.”
    “Give it to me.” He took a ballpoint out of his jacket pocket and scribbled the number in the palm of his hand as she read it to him.
    “You at the house?” she asked.
    “Yeah. They’re about ready to put in the toilets. We got four of the big high-flow American Standard babies. White.”
    He could feel her falling asleep, but she said, “Getting