Night Prey

went into the bookstore.”
    “How long did you stay?”
    “About five minutes. There was a crowd in there, and I didn’t fit so good. For one thing, I smelled like a Budweiser truck had peed on me.”
    “So?” Connell prompted.
    “So I left.” His voice hardened, and he sat up. “There was this pimply-faced asshole kid in there, a clerk. He said I stayed, and that later, when this book thing was over, I followed her out of the store. That’s what he said. The lawyer asked him on the witness stand, he said, ‘Can you point to the man who followed her out?’ And this kid said, ‘Yessir. That’s the man right there.’ He pointed to me. I was a gone motherfucker.”
    “But it wasn’t you.”
    “Hell no. The kid remembered me because I bumped into him. Sorta pushed him.”
    “What’s this tattoo business?” Lucas asked.
    Price’s eyes slid toward the escort, back to Lucas, back to the escort, back to Lucas, and his chin moved quickly right and left, no more than a quarter inch. “Tattoo? Kid didn’t have no tattoo.”
    Connell, jotting down notes, missed it. She looked up. “According to my notes,” she said, but Lucas rode over her.
    “We gotta talk,” he said to her. “I’d rather Mr. Price didn’t hear this. . . . C’mon.”
    The escort had been browsing The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul. He looked up and said, “I could take him. . . .”
    “The corner is fine,” Lucas said, pulling Connell along.
    “What?” she asked, low-voiced.
    Lucas got his back to Price and the escort. “D. Wayne doesn’t want to talk about tattoos in front of the guard,” Lucas said. “Talk to him for another five minutes, then ask the guard where the ladies’ room is. Get him to take you—it’s back through one set of doors.”
    “I can do that,” she said.
    The escort was back in his book when they sat down again. “So where’d you go when you left the store?” Lucas asked.
    “Home.”
    “You didn’t stay with her? You didn’t try again?”
    “Fuck, no. I was too drunk to follow her anywhere. I went back to the convenience store and got a couple more beers—never even got my coffee. I barely made it back home. I sat on my steps for a while, drank the beers, then I went inside and passed out. I didn’t wake up until the cops came to get me.”
    “Must’ve been more to it than that,” Lucas said.
    Price shrugged. “There wasn’t. The guy across the street even saw me sittin’ on the steps, and said so. They found the fuckin’ beer cans next to the step. Said it didn’t prove nothing.”
    “Must’ve had a horseshit attorney,” Lucas said.
    “Public defender. He was all right. But you know . . .”
    “Yeah?”
    Price leaned back and looked at the ceiling again, as though weary of the story. “The cops wanted me. I was stealing stuff. I admit that. Tools. I specialized in tools. Most people steal, like, stereos. Shit, you can’t get nothing for a stereo compared to what you can get for a good set of mechanic’s tools, you know? Anyway, the cops were trying to get me forever, but they never could. I’d steal something, and before anybody knew it was gone, there was three niggers down in Chicago with a new welding rig, or something. I go into a shop, take out the tools, drive two hours and a half down to Chicago, unload them, drive back, and be drunk on my butt with the money in my pocket before anybody knows anything happened. I thought I was pretty smart. The cops knew , and I knew that they knew, but I never thought they’d just get me. But that’s what they did.”
    “I read a file that said you might have done a couple of liquor stores, that some people got hurt. Old man got beat with a pistol,” Connell said.
    “Not me,” Price said, but his eyes slid away.
    “Took some booze with the cash,” Connell said. “You are a booze hound.”
    “Look, I admitted the stealing,” Price said. He licked his lips. “But I didn’t kill the bitch.”
    “When you were in the store, did you see anybody else that might have been with her?”
    “Man, I was drunk ,” Price said. “When the cops come for me, I couldn’t even remember seeing this gal, until they reminded me a lot.”
    “So you don’t know shit about shit,” Lucas said.
    A little coal sparked in Price’s eye that said he’d like to be alone with Lucas. “That’s about it,” Price said. Lucas held his eyes, and the coal died. “There were people down in the bookstore that night that nobody ever