Night Prey

like a dream.”
    “What about the actual entry?” Lucas asked. “Did he break the door?”
    There hadn’t been a sound, she said, and the door had been untouched, so he must have had a key. But she was the only one with a key—and the building manager, of course.
    “What’s he like? The manager?”
    “Older man. . . .”
    They went through the list: who had the key, who could get it, who could copy it. More people than she’d realized. Building employees, a cleaning woman. How about valet-parking places? A few valets—“But I changed the locks again after the burglary. He’d have to get my key twice.”
    “Gotta be somebody in the building,” Connell said to Lucas. She’d grabbed his wrist to get his attention. She was sick, but she was a strong woman, and her grip had the strength of desperation.
    “If somebody’s actually coming back,” Lucas said. “But whoever it was is a pro. He knew what he wanted and where it was. He didn’t rip the place apart. A cat burglar.”
    “A cat burglar?” Jensen said doubtfully.
    “I’ll tell you something: movies romanticize cat burglars, but real cat burglars are cracked,” Lucas said. “They get off on creeping in apartments while the residents are home. Most burglars, the last thing they want is to run into a home owner. Cat burglars get off on the thrill. Every one of them does dope, cocaine, speed, PCP. Quite a few of them have rape records. A lot of them eventually kill somebody. I’m not trying to scare you, but that’s the truth.”
    “Oh, God. . . .”
    “The way the attack happened would suggest that the guy knows about you and Mr. Hart,” Connell said. “Do you talk to anybody in your building about him?”
    “No, I really don’t have any close friends in the building, other than just to say hello to,” Jensen said. Then, “Last night was the first time Evan stayed over. It was actually the first time we’d slept together. Ever. It’s like whoever it is, knew about us.”
    “Did you tell anybody at work that he was coming over?”
    “I have a couple of friends who knew we were getting close. . . .”
    “We’ll need their names,” Lucas said. And to Connell: “Somebody at the office might have occasional access to her purse; they could get the keys that way. We should check all the apartments that adjoin hers, too. People in her hallway.” To Jensen: “Do you feel any attention from anybody in your apartment? Just a little creepy feeling? Somebody who seems sort of anxious to meet you, or talk to you, or just looks you over?”
    “No, no, I don’t. The manager is a heck of a nice guy. Really straight. I don’t mean, you know, repressed, or weird, or a Boy Scout leader or anything. He’s like my dad. God, it gives me the shakes, thinking about somebody watching me,” she said.
    “How about an outsider?” Lucas asked. “Is there a building across the street where you could be watched from? A Peeping Tom?”
    She shook her head. “No. There’s a building across the street—that’s the building where that woman was killed last week—but I’m on the top floor, which is higher even than their roof,” Jensen said. “I look right across their roof into the park, and the other side of the park is residential. There’s nothing as high as me on the other side of the park. Besides, that’s a mile away.”
    “Okay . . .” Lucas studied her for a moment. She was very different than the other victims. Watching her, Lucas felt a small chord of doubt. She was fashionable, she was smart, she was tough. There was no hint of deference, no air of wistfulness, no feeling of time and years slipping away.
    “I’ve got to get out of the apartment,” Jensen said.
    “Could a policeman come with me while I get some things?”
    “You can have a cop with you until we get the guy,” Lucas said. He reached forward to touch her arm. “But I hope you won’t leave. We could move you to another apartment inside the building, and give you escorts: armed policewomen in plain clothes. We’d like to trap the guy, not scare him off.”
    Connell joined in: “We don’t really have any leads, Ms. Jensen. We’re almost reduced to waiting until he kills somebody else, and hoping we find something then. This is the first break we’ve had.”
    Jensen stood up and turned away, shivered, looked down at Lucas, and said, “How much chance is there that he’d . . . get to me?”
    Lucas said, “I won’t lie to you: there’s always a chance.