Mortal Prey

groaned, “What?”
    “Gene Rinker cut his wrists. He’s dead.”
    Silence for a beat, a couple of beats. “Awww…shit.”

15
    THE CELL HAD THE BLOODY-STEAK SMELL of sudden death, riding over the usual odors of floor wax, paint, and disinfectant. The medical examiner’s assistants had rolled Gene Rinker’s body, but not moved it off the bunk.
    Rinker’s ferretlike face was paper-white but finally peaceful, almost happy in death, except for the dry salty tear paths that ran sideways across his nose and cheeks. He’d been crying as he went down, Lucas thought. There were no marks on his body of the kind that usually accompany violent death, except that his lower arms and legs were coated with dried blood, and there was a stripe of blood in his hair where he apparently had pushed back his long bangs after cutting himself. The blood puddle had soaked into the mattress.
    When Lucas and Andreno stepped inside the cell to look, the ME’s assistant moved back to improve the view, and said, “He’s got old transverse scars—he tried before.”
    “Got it right this time,” Lucas said.
    “Gives me the goddamn willies,” Andreno said. “I’m afraid of flu shots. But cutting yourself, man…” He shuddered at the thought.
    After cutting his wrists, and probably wiping the hair out of his eyes, the ME’s assistant said, Rinker had rolled onto his side, into a fetal position, and clasped his hands between his thighs. There were three new cuts on one wrist, two practice marks in addition to the killing cut, but only one on the other. The cuts ran vertically beside the ligaments that ran down to the hand.
    “ NOW I WISH I hadn’t brought him,” Malone said from behind them. Standing just outside the cell, she was gray-faced, tired, on the edge of anger. “These people…” She looked around. “How could they let this happen?”
    Andreno opened his mouth to say something, then closed his mouth, shrugged, and went past her toward the exit, past the line of locked cell doors.
    “What’s with him?” Malone asked.
    “I think he, uh, was kinda depressed by the whole thing,” Lucas said. “Where’s Mallard?”
    “He went down to talk to the people who were on duty last night. Not that there’s going to be much—they followed procedure, but the procedure was bad.”
    “Probably don’t have that many people cutting their wrists with Coke-can holes,” Lucas said.
    “Just goddamn incompetence,” Malone said bitterly. “And some of the mud’s gonna stick to me. What a disaster.”
    “I gotta find Mallard. Are you coming?”
    “I’m going to wait until they move the body. I don’t want anything else screwed up,” Malone said. She looked past his shoulder and said, “Here’s Louis.”
    Mallard came up, blocky, thick-necked, face sour, as angry as Malone. He was wearing a suit jacket over what might have been a silk pajama top. He looked at Lucas and shook his head. “Bad business. Gonna be hell to pay for this.”
    “Especially after White’s column yesterday.”
    “I don’t blame people for being mad—this is unbelievable,” Mallard said. “These people…” He looked around and shook his head.
    “Louis…Rinker’s gonna call me when she finds out,” Lucas said. “We gotta be ready. I think we should move all your people and whatever kind of detection equipment you can find down to Soulard. She’ll use the cell phone, but I bet she doesn’t drive a hundred miles to do it. I bet she calls from wherever she’s hiding, or maybe goes out a few blocks. But she’ll be pissed, and I bet she’ll call.”
    “You think?”
    “I’d bet you a hundred dollars.”
    “So then maybe we want it on TV,” Malone said. “This Gene Rinker thing is bad enough, but if we can snag Clara, then maybe some good’ll come of it.”
    “She’s gonna call,” Lucas said. “She’s gonna freak out. I’m gonna head down to Soulard myself, and wait. There’s nothing else to do.”
    “I’ll get everybody going. I’m gonna try to get some choppers in. We’ve got a couple in Chicago that are equipped to spot cell-phone calls. And we gotta keep the net on Levy—but every other guy I got, and the technicians, I’ll have them down there.”
     
    ANDRENO WASN’T IN the building. Lucas looked around for him, then stepped outside and spotted him leaning against his car’s fender in a handicapped zone. He saw Lucas and pushed away from the car, and came up the sidewalk to meet him. “Those