Night Prey

girl, and her boyfriend stands up—Bill McGuane’s boy—and says to her, ‘C’mon, let’s go.’ And they go. And I sees Bill, and I mention it, and he says, ‘I told that kid, don’t fight, ever. He’s no chickenshit, but it’s worth your life to fight.’ And he’s right, Davenport. You can’t walk down the street without worrying that somebody’s gonna knock you in the head. For nothin’. For not a fuckin’ thing. It used to be, if somebody was looking for you, they had a reason you could understand. Now? For nothing.”
    “Well, take it easy with the piece, huh?”
    “Yeah.” Leski turned back to the bar and Lucas stepped away and turned. Then Leski suddenly giggled, his flaps of facial flesh trembling with the effort, and said, “Junky Doog.” And giggled some more.
    Outside, Lucas looked around, couldn’t think of anything else to do. Far away, he could hear sirens—lots of them. Something going on, but he didn’t know where. He thought about calling in, finding out where the action was; but that many sirens, it was probably a fire or an auto accident. He sighed, a little tired now, and headed back to the car.

    WEATHER WAS ASLEEP. She’d be up at six, moving quietly not to wake him; by seven, she’d be in the OR; Lucas would sleep for three hours after that. Now, he undressed in the main bath down the hall from the bedroom, took a quick shower to get the bar smoke off his skin, and then slipped in beside her. He let himself roll against her, her leg smooth against his. Weather slept in an old-fashioned man’s T-shirt and bikini pants, which left something—not much—to the imagination.
    He lay on his back and got a quick mental snapshot of her in the shirt and underpants, bouncing around the bedroom. Sometimes, when she wasn’t operating the next morning, he’d get the same snapshot, couldn’t escape it, and his hand would creep up under the T-shirt. . . .
    Not tonight. Too late. He turned his head, kissed her goodnight. He should always do that, she’d told him: her subconscious would know.
     
     
     
    WHAT SEEMED LIKE a long time later, Lucas felt her hand on him and opened his eyes. The room was dimly lit, daylight filtering around the curtains. Weather, sitting fully dressed on the bed beside him, gave him another tantalizing twitch. “It’s nice that men have handles,” she said. “It makes them easy to wake up.”
    “Huh?” He was barely conscious.
    “You better come out and look at the TV,” she said, letting go of him. “The Openers program is talking about you.”
    “Me?” He struggled to sit up.
    “What’s that quaint phrase you police officers use? ‘The fuckin’ shit has hit the fan?’ I think that’s it.”

7
    ANDERSON WAS WAITING in the corridor outside Lucas’s office, reading through a handful of computer printouts. He pushed away from the wall when he saw Lucas.
    “Chief wants to see us now. ”
    “I know, I got a call. I saw TV3,” Lucas said.
    “Paper for you,” Anderson said, handing Lucas a manila file. “The overnights on Wannemaker. Nothing in the galleries. The Camel’s confirmed, the tobacco on her body matched the tobacco in the cigarette. There were ligature marks on her wrists, but no ties; her ankles were tied with a piece of yellow polypropylene rope. The rope was old, partially degraded by exposure to sunlight, so if we can find any more of it, they could probably make a match.”
    “Anything else? Any skin, semen, anything?”
    “Not so far . . . And here’s the Bey file.”
    “Jesus.” Lucas took the file, flipped it open. Most of the paper inside had been Xeroxed for Connell’s report; a few minor things he hadn’t seen before. Mercedes Bey, thirty-seven, killed in 1984, file still open. The first of Connell’s list, the centerpiece of the TV3 story.
    “Have you heard about the lakes?” Anderson asked, his voice pitching lower, as though he were about to tell a particularly dirty joke.
    “What happened?” Lucas looked up from the Bey file.
    “We’ve got a bad one over by the lakes. Too late to make morning TV. Guy and his girlfriend, maybe his girlfriend. Guy’s in a coma, could be a veggie. The woman’s dead. Her head was crushed, probably by a pipe or a steel bar. Or a rifle barrel or a long-barreled pistol, maybe a Redhawk. Small-time robbery, looks like. Really ugly. Really ugly.”
    “They’re freaking out in homicide?”
    “Everybody’s freaking out,” Anderson said. “Everybody went over