Night Prey

he was out killing women.”
    “I remember that,” Connell said. “The mad dog. You killed him.”
    “He needed it,” Lucas said.
    “How do you think you would’ve done in court? I mean, if he hadn’t gotten shot?”
    Lucas grinned slightly. “You mean, if I hadn’t shot him to death . . . Actually, we had him cold. It was his second attack on the woman.”
    “Was he obsessed by her?”
    “No, I think he was just pissed off. At me, actually. We were watching him, and somehow he figured it out, slipped the surveillance and went after her. It was almost . . . sarcastic. He was crazier than a shithouse mouse.”
    “We don’t have that good a case on Koop.”
    “That’s an understatement,” Lucas said. “I’ve been worried about it.”
     
     
     
    THEY TALKED FOR a while, slowly ran down. Nothing happened. After two hours, they drove around the block, traded vehicles with Sloan and O’Brien, and walked up to the restaurant and sat with Del and Greave.
    “We’re talking about going to the movies,” Del said. “We all got beepers.”
    “I think we should stay put,” Connell said anxiously.
    “Say that after you’ve had fifteen cups of coffee,” Greave said. “I’m getting tired of peeing.”
    Del and Greave took the next shift, then Lucas and Connell again. O’Brien had brought his Penthouse with him again, forgot it in the truck. Halfway through the shift, Connell fell to reading it and looking at the pictures, occasionally laughing. Lucas nervously looked elsewhere.
    Del and Greave were back on when Koop started to move. Their beepers went off simultaneously, and everybody in the restaurant looked at them. “Doctors’ convention,” Sloan said to an openmouthed suburbanite as they left.
    “What do you got, Del?” Lucas called.
    “We got the garage door up,” Del said. “Okay, we got the truck, a red-and-white Chevy. . . .”

    THEYFIRST SAW Koop when he got out of his truck at a Denny’s restaurant.
    “No beard,” Connell said, examining him with the binoculars.
    “There’s been a lot of publicity since Hart,” Lucas said. “He would’ve shaved. Two of the Miller witnesses said he was clean-shaven.”
    Koop parked in the lot behind the restaurant and walked inside. He walked with a spring, as though he were coiled. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He had a body like a rock.
    “He’s a lifter,” Lucas said. “He’s a goddamned gorilla.”
    “I can see him, he’s in a front booth,” Sloan said. “You want me inside?”
    “Let me go in,” Connell said.
    “Hang on a minute,” Lucas said. He called back to Sloan. “Is he by himself?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Don’t go in unless somebody hooks up with him. Otherwise, stand off.” To Connell: “You better stay out of sight. If this drags out and we need to keep you close to Jensen, you gotta be a fresh face.”
    “Okay.” She nodded.
    Lucas went back to the radio. “Sloan, can he see his truck from where he’s at?”
    “No.”>
    “We’re gonna take a look,” Lucas said. They’d pulled into a car wash. “Let’s go,” he said to Connell.
    Connell crossed the street, pulled in next to Koop’s truck. Lucas got out, looked across the roof of the car toward the truck, then got back inside.
    “Jesus,” he said.
    “What?” She was puzzled. “Aren’t you gonna look?”
    “There’s a pack of Camels on the dashboard.”
    “What?” Like she didn’t understand.
    “Unfiltered Camels,” he said.
    Connell looked at Lucas, eyes wide. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “It’s him.”
    Lucas went to the radio. “Sloan, everybody, listen up. We sorta have a confirmation on this guy. Stay cool but stay back. We’re gonna need some technical support. . . .”

28
    THEY TRACKED KOOP while they talked at police headquarters, laying out the case. Thomas Troy, of the county attorney’s criminal division, declared that there wasn’t enough, yet, to pick him up.
    He and Connell, sitting in Roux’s office with Roux and Lucas and Mickey Green, another assistant county attorney, ran down the evidence:
—The woman killed in Iowa told a friend that her date was a cop. But Koop never was, said Troy.
—Hillerod saw him in Madison, said Koop recognized his prison tattoo, Connell said. Sounds like ESP, Troy said, and ESP doesn’t work on the witness stand. Besides, Hillerod can’t remember what he looked like, Green said, and Hillerod’s just been arrested for a whole series of heavy felonies, along with a parole