Night Prey

their longer coats. A nurse named Jim showed Lucas the men’s locker room, gave him a lock and key for a locker, and told him how to dress: “There’re scrub suits in the bins, three different sizes. The shoe covers are down there in the bottom bin. The caps and masks are in those boxes. Take one of the shower cap types, and take a mask, but don’t put it on yet. We’ll show you how to tie it when you’re ready. . . . Take your billfold and watch and any valuables with you. Dr. Karkinnen’ll be out in a minute.”
    Weather’s eyes smiled at him when he stepped out of the locker room. He felt like an idiot in the scrub suit, like an impostor.
    “How does it feel?” Weather asked.
    “Strange. Cool,” Lucas said.
    “The girl who was killed . . . was it him?”
    “Yes. Didn’t get much out of it. A kid saw him, though. He’s white, he probably snorts coke, he drives a truck.”
    “That’s something.”
    “Not much,” he said. He looked down the hall toward the double doors that led to the operating rooms. “Is your patient already doped up?”
    “She’s right there,” Weather said, nodding.
    Lucas looked to his left. A thin, carefully groomed blond woman and a tiny redheaded girl sat in a waiting area, the little girl looking up at the woman, talking intently. The girl’s arms were bandaged to the shoulder. The woman’s head was nodding, as if she were explaining something; the little girl’s legs twisted and retwisted as they dangled off the chair. “I need to talk to them for a minute,” Weather said.
    Weather went down the hall. Lucas, still self-conscious about the scrub suit, hung back, drifting along behind her. He saw the girl when she spotted Weather; her face contorted with fear. Lucas, even more uncomfortable, slowed even more. Weather said something to the mother, then squatted and started talking to the girl. Lucas stepped closer, and the little girl looked up at him. He realized that she was weeping, soundlessly, but almost without control. She looked back at Weather. “You’re going to hurt me again,” she wailed.
    “It’ll be fine,” Weather said quickly.
    “Hurt’s bad,” the girl said, tears running down. “I don’t want to get fixed anymore.”
    “Well, you’ve got to get better,” Weather said, and as she reached out a finger to touch the girl’s cheek, the dam burst, and the girl began to sob, clutching at her mother’s dress with her bandaged arms like tree stumps.
    “This won’t hurt so bad today. Just a little pinch for the IV and that’s all,” Weather said, patting her. “And when you wake up, we’ll give you a pill, and you’ll be sleepy for a while.”
    “That’s what you said last time,” the girl wailed.
    “You’ve got to get better, and we’re almost done,” Weather said. “Today, and one more day, and we should be finished.” Weather stood and looked at the mother. “She hasn’t eaten anything?”
    “Not since nine o’clock,” the woman said. Tears were running down her cheeks. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said desperately. “I can’t stand this. Can we get going?”
    “Sure,” Weather said. “Come on, Lucy, take my hand.”
    Lucy slipped slowly out of the chair, took one of Weather’s fingers. “Don’t hurt me.”
    “We’re gonna try really hard,” Weather said. “You’ll see.”
     
     
     
    WEATHER LEFT THE girl with the nurses and took Lucas along to an office where she started going through an inch-high stack of papers, checking them and signing. “Preop stuff,” she said. “Who was the girl last night?”
    “A teenager from out of state. From Worthington.”
    Weather looked up. “Pretty bad?”
    “You’d have to see it to believe it.”
    “You sound a little pissed,” she said.
    “On this one, I am,” he said. “This girl looked like . . . she looked like somebody who did her first communion last week.”
     
     
     
    THE ROUTINE OF the operation caught him: precise, but informal. Everybody in the room except Lucas and the anesthesiologist was female, and the anesthesiologist left for another operation as soon as the girl was down, leaving the job in the hands of a female anesthetist. The surgical team put him in a rectangular area along a wall and suggested that he stay there.
    Weather and the surgical assistant worked well together, the assistant ready with the instruments almost before Weather asked for them. There was less blood than Lucas expected, but the smell of the cautery