Night Prey

fuck up. You don’t shut the fuck up, you can take the bus back to Minneapolis.”
     
     
     
    CONNELL, STILL ANGRY, trailed him into Harp’s and muttered, “Oh, Lord” when she saw the bartender. The bartender was a dark-haired pixieish woman with large black eyes, too much makeup, and a bee-stung lower lip. She wore a slippery low-cut silk pullover without a bra, and a black string tie with a turquoise clasp at her throat. “Cops?” she asked, but she was smiling.
    “Yeah.” Lucas nodded, grinned, and tried to meet her eyes. “We need to talk to somebody who was here Friday night.”
    “I was,” she said, dropping her elbows on the bar and leaning toward Lucas, glancing at Connell. The bartender smelled lightly of cinnamon, like a dream; she had a soft freckled cleavage. “What do you need?”
    Lucas rolled out the photo of Wannemaker. “Was she here?”
    The bartender watched his eyes, and, satisfied with her effect, picked up the photo and studied it. “She look like this?”
    “Pretty much,” Lucas said, steadfastly holding her eyes.
    “What’d she do?” the bartender asked.
    “Was she here?” Lucas asked again.
    “Meanie,” she said. “You don’t want to tell me.” The bartender frowned, pushed out her lower lip, studied the picture, and slowly shook her head. “No, I don’t think she was. In fact, I’m sure she wasn’t, if she dressed like this. Our crowd’s into black. Black shirts, black pants, black dresses, black hats, black combat boots. I’d have noticed her.”
    “Big crowd?”
    “In St. Paul?” She picked up her bar rag and scrubbed at a spot on the bar.
    “Okay. . . .”
    As they started out, the bartender called after them, “What’d she do?”
    “It was done to her,” Connell said, speaking for the first time. She made it sound like a punishment.
    “Yeah?”
    “She was killed.”
    The bartender recoiled. “Like, murdered? How?”
    “Let’s go,” said Lucas, touching Connell’s coat sleeve.
    “Stabbed,” said Connell.
    “Let’s go,” Lucas repeated.
    “ ‘Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day,’ ” the bartender said solemnly, in a quotation voice.
    Now Lucas stopped. “Who was that?” he asked.
    “Some dead French dude,” the bartender said.
    “That was disgusting,” Connell fumed.
    “What?”
    “The way she was throwing it at you.”
    “What?”
    “You know.”
    Lucas looked back at the bar, then at Connell, a look of utter astonishment on his face. “You think she was coming on to me?”
    “Kiss my ass, Davenport,” she said, and stalked off toward the car.
    Lucas called Anderson again. “Roux’s still talking to St. Paul,” Anderson said. “She wants you back here, ASAP.”
    “What for?”
    “I don’t know. But she wants you back.”
     
     
     
    CONNELL COMPLAINED MOST of the way back. They had something, she said. They should stay with it. Lucas, tired of it, offered to drop her at the St. Paul police headquarters. She declined. Roux was up to something, she said. When they walked into the chief’s outer office, the bony secretary flipped a thumb toward the chief’s door and they went through.
    Roux was smoking furiously. She glanced at Connell, then nodded. “I guess you better stay and hear this.”
    “What’s going on?” Lucas asked.
    Roux shrugged. “We’re outa here, is what’s going on. No crime committed in Minneapolis. You just proved it. Wannemaker goes to that bookstore in St. Paul, gets dumped in Hudson. Let them fight about it.”
    “Wait a minute,” said Connell.
    Roux shook her head. “Meagan, I promised to help you and I did. But we’ve got lots of trouble right now, and this is St. Paul’s killing. Your killing, up in Carlos Avery, is either Anoka County’s or Duluth’s. Not ours. We’re putting out a press release that says our investigation concludes the murder was not committed here, that we’ll cooperate with the investigating authorities, and so on.”
    “WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE!” Connell shouted. “Are you telling me we’re done?”
    “ We’re done,” Roux said, still friendly, but her voice sharpening. “ You’ve still got some options. We’ll get your research to St. Paul, and I’ll ask that they let you assist their investigation. Or you could continue with the Smits case. I don’t know what Duluth is doing with that anymore.”
    Connell turned to Lucas, her voice harsh. “What do you think?”
    Lucas stepped back. “It’s an interesting