Night Prey

flipped together over the railing and out into the night.
     
     
     
    LUCAS, TWO STEPS away, dove then, actually touched Koop’s foot, lost it, smashed into the railing, felt himself caught by Sloan. He leaned over the rail and saw them go.
    Connell’s eyes were open. She loosened her grip on Koop’s head during the fall, and at the end, they were in a splayed-out star shape, like sky divers.
    All the way to the sidewalk.
    And forever.
     
     
     
    “JESUS CHRIST, ” S L OA N said. He looked from Lucas to the railing to Lucas again. Blood was pouring from Lucas’s nose, down his shirt, and he was standing with one shoulder a foot lower than the other, crippled, hung over the balcony.
    “Jesus H. Christ, Lucas. . . .”

34
    LUCAS SAT IN his vinyl chair, staring at the television. A movie was playing, something about an average American family that was actually a bunch of giant bugs trying to blow up an atomic power plant and one of the kid-bugs smoked dope. He couldn’t follow it, didn’t care.
    He couldn’t think about Connell. He’d thought about her all he could, had considered all the different moves he might have made. He made himself believe, for a while, that she was ready to die. That she wanted it. That this was better than cancer.
    Then he stopped believing it. She was dead. He didn’t want her to be dead. He still had things to say to her. Too late.
    Now he’d stopped thinking about her. She’d come back, in a few hours, and over the next days, and the next few weeks. And he’d never forget her eyes, looking back up at him. . . .
    Ghost eyes. He’d be seeing them for a while.
    But not now.
    A door opened in the back of the house. Weather wasn’t due for three hours. Lucas stood, painfully, stepped toward the door.
    “Lucas?” Weather’s voice, worried, inquiring. Her high heels snapped on the kitchen’s tile floor.
    Lucas stepped into the hallway. “Yeah?”
    “Why are you standing up?” she asked. She was angry with him.
    “I thought you were operating.”
    “Put it off,” she said. She regarded him gravely from six feet away, a small woman, tough. “How do you feel?”
    “I hurt when I breathe . . . Is the TV truck still out there?”
    “No. They’ve gone.” She was carrying a big box.
    “Good. What’s that?”
    “One of those TV dinner trays,” she said. “I’ll set it up in the den so you don’t have to move.”
    “Thanks . . .” He nodded and hobbled back to the vinyl chair, where he sat down very carefully.
    Weather looked at the television. “What in God’s name are you watching?
    “I don’t know,” he said.
     
     
     
    THE DOCTORS IN the emergency room had held him overnight, watching his blood pressure. Blunt trauma was a possibility, they’d said. He had four cracked ribs. One of the doctors, who looked like he was about seventeen, said Lucas wouldn’t be able to sneeze without pain until the middle of the summer. He sounded pleased by his prognosis.
    Weather tossed her purse onto another chair, waved her arms. “I don’t know what to do,” she said finally, looking down at him.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I’m afraid to touch you. With the ribs.” She had tears in her eyes. “I need to touch you, and I don’t know what to do.”
    “Come over and sit on my lap,” he said. “Just sit very carefully.”
    “Lucas, I can’t. I’d push on you,” she said. She stepped closer.
    “It’ll be okay, as long as I don’t move quick. It’s quick that hurts. If you sort of snuggle onto my lap. . . .”
    “If you’re sure it won’t hurt,” she said.
    The snuggling hurt only a little, and made everything feel better. He closed his eyes after a while and went to sleep, with her head on his chest.
     
     
     
    AT SIX O’CLOCK, they watched the news together.
    Roux triumphant.
    And generous, and sorrowful, all at once. She paraded the detectives who worked on the case, all except Del, who hated his face to be seen. She mentioned Lucas a half-dozen times as the mastermind of the investigation. She painted a mournful portrait of Connell struggling for women’s rights, dedicating herself to the destruction of the monster.
    The mayor spoke. The head of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension took a large slice of the credit. The president of the AFSCME said she could never be replaced. Connell’s mother flew in from Bemidji, and cried.
    Wonderful television, much of it anchored by Jan Reed.
    “I was so scared,” Weather said. “When they called .