Night Prey

who’d hit him in the head, missed again.
    His attackers both had dark hair. One had glasses, both had bared teeth, and that was all he saw: hair, glasses, teeth. And the briefcase.
    Blondy was down and Koop stumbled and looked down at him, saw the scarlet blood on his shirt and a fourth man yelled at him, and Koop ran.
    He could hear them screaming, “Stop him, stop him . . .” He ran sideways across the street, between parked cars. A woman on the sidewalk jumped out of the way. Her face was white, frightened; she had a red necktie and matching hat and large horsy teeth, and then he was past her.
    One of the men chased him for two hundred feet, alone. Koop suddenly stopped and started back at him, and the man turned and started to run away. Koop ran back toward the park, into it, down the grassy tree-shaded walks.
    Ran, blood gushing from his nose, the knife folding in his hand, as if by magic, disappearing into his pocket. He wiped his face, pulled off the hat and glasses, slowed to a walk.
    And was gone.

21
    THE CURB OUTSIDE City Hall was lined with TV vans. Something had happened.
    Lucas dumped the Porsche in a ramp and hurried back. A Star-Tribune reporter, a young guy with a buzz cut, carrying a notebook, was coming up from the opposite direction. He nodded at Lucas and held the door. “Anything happening with your case?” he asked.
    “Nothing serious,” Lucas said. “What’s going on?”
    “You haven’t heard?” Buzz Cut did a mock double take.
    “I’m just coming in,” Lucas said.
    “You remember that couple that was jumped up by the lakes, the woman was killed?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Somebody else got hit, right across the street. Four hours ago. Thirty feet away from the first scene,” Buzz Cut said. “I ain’t bullshitting you, Lucas: I been out there. Thirty feet. This guy came out of nowhere like a maniac, broad daylight. Big fucking switchblade. He sounded like somebody from a horror movie, had a hat over his face, he was screaming. But it wasn’t any gang. It was white-on-white. The guy who got stabbed is a lawyer.”
    “Dead?” Lucas asked. He’d relaxed a notch: not his case.
    “Not yet. He’s cut to shit. Got a knife in the guts. He’s still in the operating room. He spent the night with his girlfriend, and the next morning, he walks out the door and this asshole jumps him.”
    “Has she got a husband or ex-husband?”
    “I don’t know,” the reporter said.
    “If I were you, I’d ask,” Lucas said.
    The reporter held up his notebook, which was turned over to a page with a list of indecipherable scrawls. “First question on the list,” he said. Then he said, “Whoa.”
    Jan Reed was lounging in the hall, apparently waiting for the press conference to start. She saw Lucas and lifted her chin and smiled and started toward them, and the reporter, without moving his lips, said, “You dog.”
    “Not me,” Lucas muttered.
    “Lucas,” she said, walking up. Big eyes. Pools. She touched him on the back of his hand and said, “Are you in on this?”
    Lucas despised himself for it, but he could feel the pleasure of her company unwinding in his chest. “Hi. No, but it sounds like a good one.” He bounced on his toes, like a basketball player about to be sent into a game.
    She looked back toward the briefing room. “Pretty spectacular right now. It could wind up as a domestic.”
    “It’s right across the street from that other one.”
    She nodded. “That’s the angle. That’s what makes it good. Besides which, the people are white.”
    “Is that a requirement now?” Buzz Cut asked.
    “Of course not,” she said, laughing. Then her voice dropped to the confidential level, including him in the conspiracy. “But you know how it goes.”
    The reporter’s scalp flushed pink and he said, “I better get inside.”
    “What’s wrong with him?” she asked, watching him go. Lucas shrugged, and she said, “So, do you have time for a cup of coffee? After the press conference?”
    “Uhhmm,” Lucas said, peering down at her. She definitely wound his clock. “Why don’t you stop by my office,” he said.
    “Okay . . . but, your tie, your collar’s messed up. Here . . .”
    She fixed his collar and tie, and though he was fairly certain that there’d been nothing wrong with them, he liked it, and carried her touch down the hall.
     
     
     
    CONNELL WAS THE perfect contrast to Jan Reed: a big solid blonde who carried a gun the size of a toaster and considered