Night Prey

talked to somebody. Not long enough for a friend, so it must have been business.”
    “Unless his friend wasn’t there,” Connell said.
    “He was too long for that. . . .” A moment later he said, “Here we go. Oh, shit, Harvey, cover that guy, you remember him?”
    “I don’t . . .”
    “Just Plain Schultz,” Lucas said.
    Del, on the radio, from tracking Koop: “ Our Just Plain Schultz?”
    “Absolutely,” Lucas said.
    Schultz got in a red Camaro and carefully backed out of his parking slot. “C’mon,” Lucas said to Connell, hustling her down to the car.
    “Who is he?”
    “Fence. Very careful.”
    In the car, Lucas tagged a half-block behind Schultz and called in a squad. “Just pull him over to the curb,” he told the squad. “And stand by.”
    The squad picked Schultz up at the corner, stopped him halfway down the block, under a bright-green maple. Lucas and Connell passed them, pulled to the curb. A kid on a tricycle watched from the sidewalk, the flashing lights, the cop standing inside his open door. Schultz was watching the cop in his rearview mirror and didn’t see Lucas coming from the front, until Lucas was right on top of him.
    “Schultzie,” Lucas said, leaning over the window, his hands on the roof. “How you been, my man?”
    “Aw, fuck, what do you want, Davenport?” Schultz, shocked, tried to cover.
    “Whatever you just bought from Koop,” Lucas said.
    Schultz was a small man with a round, blemished face. He had dark whiskers a razor couldn’t quite control. His eyes were slightly protuberant, and when Lucas said “Koop,” they seemed to bug out a bit farther.
    “I can’t believe that crazy motherfucker belongs to you,” Schultz said after a moment, popping the door to get out of the car.
    “He doesn’t, actually,” Lucas said. Connell was standing on the other side of the car, her hand in her purse.
    “Who’s the puss?” Schultz asked, tipping his head toward her.
    “State cop,” Lucas said. “And is that any way to talk about the government?”
    “Fuck you, Davenport,” Schultz said, leaning back against the car’s front fender. “So what’re we doing? Do I call a lawyer, or what?”
    “Schultzie. . . .” Lucas said, spreading his arms wide.
    “That’s just plain Schultz,” Schultz said.
     
     
     
    THOMAS TROY WORE a blue military sweater over jeans. He looked neat but tough, like a lieutenant colonel in the paratroops. He was shaking his head.
    “We don’t have enough on the killings, by themselves, even with him cruising Jensen’s place. We could fake it, though, and put him away.”
    “Like how?” Roux asked. “What do you suggest?”
    “We take him on the burglary charges. We’ve got enough from Schultz to get a conviction on those. And we’ve got enough on the burglary charges to get search warrants for the truck and the house. If we don’t find anything on the murders or his stalking Jensen, well—we got him on the burglaries, and in the presentencing report, we let the judge know we think he’s tied in to the murders. If we get the right judge, we can get an upward departure on the sentence and keep him inside for five or six years.”
    “Five or six years?” Connell came up out of her chair.
    “Sit down,” Troy snapped. She sat down. “If you get anything in the search, then there’re more possibilities. If we find evidence of more burglaries, we’ll get a couple of more years. If we get evidence that he’s stalking Jensen, then we get another trial and go for a few more. And if there’s anything that would suggest the murders—any tiny little thing more than what you’ve got—we could set up the murder trials to go at the end of the sequence, and maybe the publicity from the first two will put him away on the others.”
    “We’re really betting on the come,” Lucas said.
    “All you need is a few hairs from Wannemaker or Marcy Lane, and with the circumstantial stuff you’ve got, that’d be enough,” Troy said. “If you can give me anything —a weapon, a hair, a couple drops of blood, a print—we’d go with it.”
    Connell looked at Lucas, then Roux. “If we stay with him, we might see him approach somebody.”
    “What if he kills her the second they’re in the truck?” Roux asked.
    Lucas shook his head. “He doesn’t always do that. Wannemaker had ligature marks on her wrists. He kept her a while, maybe a day, and messed with her.”
    “Didn’t mess with Marcy Lane. He couldn’t have had her