Night Prey

knife attack ties him to the other killings and the Camel we found on Wannemaker.”
    “You think he’ll come up?” she asked as they hurried to the elevators.
    “I hope so. Jesus, I hope so. That’d be it.” At Jensen’s apartment, they let themselves in, and Lucas turned on one light, slipped his .45 out of his shoulder holster and checked it.
     
     
     
    “WHAT’S HE DOING?” Lucas asked.
    “Moving very slowly, but he’s moving,” the spotter called. “Now, now, we’ve lost him, he’s under some trees or some shit, wait, I got a flash, I see him again, now he’s gone. . . .”
    “I see him,” Del called. “I’m parked in the bike shop lot, and he’s coming this way. He’s moving faster, but he’s under trees, he’ll be out in a sec. . . .”
    “Got him,” the spotter said. “He’s going around the block again. Slowing down . . .”
    “Real slow,” Del called. “I’m on the street, walking, he’s right in front of the apartment, real slow, almost stopped. No, there he goes. . . .”
    “He’s outa here,” the spotter called a minute later. “He’s heading into the loop.”
    “Did he see you, Del?”
    “No way.”
    Connell said, “Well, shit. . . .”
    “Yeah.” Lucas felt like a deflated balloon. He walked twice around the room. “Goddamnit,” he said. “Goddamnit. What’s wrong with the guy? Why didn’t he come up?”
    Koop continued through downtown to a bar near the airport, where he drank three solitary beers, paid, bought a bottle at the liquor store down the street, and drove back to his house. The last light went off a few minutes after two o’clock.
    Lucas went home. Weather was asleep. He patted her affectionately on the ass before he went down himself.
     
     
     
    KOOP RESUMED THE driving the next day, trailing through the suburbs east and south of St. Paul. They tracked him until one o’clock in the afternoon, when he stopped at a Wendy’s. Lucas went on down the block to a McDonald’s. Feeling dried out, older, bored, he got a double cheeseburger, a sack of fries, and a malt, and ambled back to the car, where Connell was eating carrot sticks out of a Tupperware box.
    “George Beneteau called yesterday, while we were out,” Connell said when they’d run out of everything else to talk about.
    “Oh, yeah?” She had a talent for leaving him short of words.
    “He left a message on my machine. He wants to go out and get a steak, or something.”
    “What’d you do?”
    “Nothing.” She said it flatly. “I can’t deal with it. I guess tomorrow I’ll give him a call and explain.”
    Lucas shook his head and pushed fries into his face, hoping that she wouldn’t start crying again.
    She didn’t. But a while later, as they escorted Koop across the Lake Street bridge, Connell said, “That TV person, Jan Reed. You guys seem pretty friendly.”
    “I’m friendly with a lot of media,” Lucas said uncomfortably.
    “I mean friendly-friendly,” she said.
    “Oh, not really.”
    “Mmm,” she said.
    “Mmm, what?” Lucas asked.
    “I’d think a very long time. This is one of those things where, you know—I suspect you’re just a suit.”
    “Not quite bright,” he said.
    “Took the words out of my mouth,” Connell said.
     
     
     
    KOOP STOPPED AT a Firestone store but just sat in the truck. The surveillance van, watching him from a Best Buy store parking lot, said he seemed to be looking at a Denny’s restaurant across the street.
    “He ate less than an hour ago,” Lucas said. They were a block away, parked in front of a used-car lot, a bit conspicuous. “Let’s go look at some cars.”
    They got out and walked into the lot, where they could watch Koop through the windows of a used Buick. After ten minutes in the Firestone lot, Koop started the truck, rolled it across the street to the Denny’s and went inside.
    “He’s looking for surveillance,” Lucas said. On the radio: “Del, could you get in there?”
    “On my way . . .” Then, a few seconds later, “Shit, he’s coming back out. I’m turning around.”
    Koop walked out with a cup of coffee. Lucas caught Connell’s arm as she started toward the car, and brought the radio to his face. “We’re gonna stay here a minute; you guys tag him. Hey, Harvey?”
    Harvey ran the surveillance van. “Yeah?”
    “Could you put a video on the front of that Denny’s, see who else comes out?”
    “You got it.”
    “He wasn’t in there long enough,” Lucas said to Connell. “He