Night Prey

“With TV3? Could I join you for a cup?”
    “Sure. . . .” He waved at the seat opposite. “I can’t tell you much.”
    “The camera guys said you were pretty good about us,” Reed said.
    Reed was older than most TV reporters, probably in her middle thirties, Lucas thought. Like all of the latest crop of on-camera newswomen, she was strikingly attractive, with large dark eyes, auburn hair falling to her shoulders, and just a hint of the fashionable overbite. Lucas had suggested to Weather that a surgeon was making a fortune somewhere, turning out TV anchors with bee-stung lips and overbites. Weather told him that would be unethical; the next day, though, she said she’d been watching, and there were far too many overbites on local television to be accounted for by simple jaw problems.
    “Why is that?” she’d asked. She seemed really interested.
    Lucas said, “You don’t know?”
    “No. I don’t,” she said. She looked at him skeptically. “You’re gonna tell me it’s something dirty?”
    “It’s because it makes guys think about blow jobs,” Lucas said.
    “You’re lying to me,” Weather said, one hand on her hip.
    “Honest to God,” Lucas said. “That’s what it is.”
    “This society is out of luck,” Weather said. “I’m sorry, but we’re going down the tubes. Blow jobs.”
     
     
     
    JAN REED SIPPED her coffee and said, “One of our sources says it’s the serial killer. We saw Officer Connell there, of course, so it’s a reasonable presumption. Will you confirm it?”
    Lucas thought about it, then said, “Listen, I hate talking on the record. It gets me in trouble. I’ll give you a little information, if you just lay it off on an unnamed source.”
    “Done,” she said, and she stuck her hand out. Lucas shook it: her hand was soft, warm. She smiled, and that made him feel even warmer. She was attractive.
    Lucas gave her two pieces of information: that the victim was female and white, and that investigators believed it was the work of the same man who killed Wannemaker.
    “We already had most of that,” she said gently. She was working him, trying to make him show off.
    He didn’t bite. “Well, what can I tell you,” he said. “Another day in the life of a TV reporter, fruitlessly chasing down every possible scrap.”
    She laughed, a nice laugh, musical, and she said, “I understand you used to date a reporter.”
    “Yes. We have a daughter,” Lucas said.
    “That’s serious.”
    “Well. It was,” Lucas said. He took a sip of coffee. “Some time ago.”
    “I’m divorced myself,” she said. “I never thought it would happen.” She looked at her hands.
    Lucas thought he ought to mention Weather, but he didn’t. “You know, I recognized you right away—I thought you were anchoring.”
    “Yes—I will be. I’ve done a little already, but I only got here three months ago. They’re rotating me through the shifts so I can see how things work, while I anchor on a fill-in basis. In another month, I’ll start getting more anchor time.”
    “Smart. Get to know the place.”
    They chatted for a few more minutes, then Lucas glanced at his watch and said, “Damn. I’ve got to go,” and slid out of the booth.
    “Got a date?” She looked up at him, and he almost fell into her eyes.
    “Sort of,” Lucas said, trying to look somewhere else.
    “Listen, uh . . . see you around, huh?”
    “No doubt,” she said, sending him off with a bee-stung smile.
     
     
     
    WEATHER HAD SEEN Lucas working at close range, as he broke a murder case in her small northern Wisconsin town. Lucas had seen Weather working as a coroner—doctors were scarce up north, and they took turns at the county coroner’s job—but the only time he’d been around when she was working on a live patient, he’d been unconscious: he’d been the patient.
    He had promised her he’d come and watch what she did, not thinking about it much. She’d become insistent, and they’d set the visit up a week earlier, before the Wannemaker killing. He could just squeeze it in, he thought.
    He touched the scar on his throat, thinking about Weather. Most of the scar had been caused by a Swiss Army knife that she’d used to open him up; the rest came from a .22 slug, fired by a little girl. . . .
     
     
     
    LUCAS LEFT HIS car in a parking ramp three blocks from University Hospitals and walked down through the cool morning, among the medical students in their short white coats, the staff doctors in