Night Prey

intercom, and said, “Chief Davenport’s here.” To Lucas she said, “Go on in.” She made her thumb and forefinger into a pistol and pointed at the chief’s door.
     
     
     
    ROSE MARIE ROUX sat behind a broad cherrywood desk stacked with reports and memos, rolling an unlit cigarette under her nose. When Lucas walked in, she nodded, fiddled with the cigarette for a moment, then sighed, opened a desk drawer, and tossed it inside.
    “Lucas,” she said. Her voice had a ragged nicotine edge to it, like a hangnail. “Sit down.”
    When Lucas had quit the force, Quentin Daniel’s office had been neat, ordered, and dark. Roux’s office was cluttered with books and reports, her desk a mass of loose paper, Rolodexes, calculators, and computer disks. Harsh blue light from the overhead fluorescent fixtures pried into every corner. Daniel had never bothered with computers; a late-model IBM sat on a stand next to Roux’s desk, a memo button blinking at the top left corner of the screen. Roux had thrown out Daniel’s leather men’s-club furniture and replaced it with comfortable fabric chairs.
    “I read Kupicek’s report on the tomb burglaries,” she said. “How is he, by the way?”
    “Can’t walk.” Lucas had two associates, Del and Danny Kupicek. Kupicek’s kid had run over his foot with a Dodge Caravan. “He’s gone for a month.”
    “If we get a media question on the tombs, can you handle it? Or Kupicek?”
    “Sure. But I doubt that it’ll ever get out.”
    “I don’t know—it’s a good story.” A persistent series of tomb break-ins had first been attributed to scroungers looking for wedding rings and other jewelry, though the departmental conspiracy freaks had suggested a ring of satanists, getting body parts for black Masses. Whatever, the relatives were getting upset. Roux had asked Lucas to look at it. About that time, polished finger and toe bones had started showing up in art jewelry. Kupicek had found the designer/saleswoman, squeezed her, and the burglaries stopped.
    “Her stuff does go well with a simple black dress,” Lucas said. “ ’Course, you want to match the earrings.”
    Roux showed a thin smile. “You can talk that way because you don’t give a shit,” she said. “You’re rich, you’re in love, you buy your suits in New York. Why should you care?”
    “I care,” Lucas said mildly. “But it’s hard to get too excited when the victims are already dead. . . . What’d you want?”
    There was a long moment of silence. Lucas waited it out, and she sighed again and said, “I’ve got a problem.”
    “Connell.”
    She looked up, surprised. “You know her?”
    “I met her about an hour ago, over in Wisconsin, running her mouth.”
    “That’s her,” Roux said. “Running her mouth. How’d she hear about it?”
    Lucas shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “Goddamnit, she’s working people inside the department.” She nibbled at a fingernail, then said, “Goddamnit,” again and heaved herself to her feet, walked to her window. She stuck two fingers between the blades of her venetian blinds, looked out at the street for a moment. She had a big butt, wide hips. She’d been a large young woman, a good cop in decent shape. The shape was going now, after too many years in well-padded government chairs.
    “There’s no secret about how I got this job,” she said finally, turning back to him. “I solved a lot of political problems. There was always pressure from the blacks. Then the feminists started in, after those rapes at Christmas. I’m a woman, I’m a former cop, I’ve got a law degree, I was a prosecutor and a liberal state senator with a good reputation on race relations. . . .”
    “Yeah, yeah, you were right for the job,” Lucas said impatiently. “Cut to the chase.”
    She turned back to him. “Last winter some game wardens found a body up in the Carlos Avery reserve. You know where that’s at?”
    “Yeah. Lots of bodies up there.”
    “This one’s name was Joan Smits. You probably remember the stories in the papers.”
    “Vaguely. From Duluth?”
    “Right. An immigrant from South Africa. Walked out of a bookstore and that was it. Somebody stuck a blade in her just above the pelvic bone and ripped her all the way up to her neck. Dumped her in a snowdrift at Carlos Avery.”
    Lucas nodded. “Okay.”
    “Connell got the case, assisting the local authorities. She freaked. I mean, something snapped. She told me that Smits comes to her at night,