Phantom Prey

sidewalk, zipped up his jacket, and walked away from them, wobbling a bit. Lucas put the glasses on him, the way he walked—was that the cowboy from the mall? No. This guy was shorter, with long hair, and seemed to be younger, but still had that wobbling, pointy-toed walk.
    Lucas took the glasses down. “Sonofabitch.”
    “What?”
    “I just had an epiphany,” Lucas said.
    “You can get some ointment for that.”
    “No—I’m serious,” Lucas said. “I’ve been seeing all these guys in cowboy boots, and I remember—I told people this at the time—the guy who shot me seemed to have a limp. He didn’t have a limp—he was running in cowboy boots.”
    “Yeah? Is that a big deal?”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and punched up Austin’s cell.
    She came up and said, “Hello, Lucas. Are you still mad at me?”
    “Yup—but that’s not why I’m calling,” he said. “The other day when you were loading those cartons of Frances’s clothes into the pickup truck for Goodwill—did you hire that driver? Did you know him?”
    “That was Ricky Davis, Helen’s boyfriend. Why?”
    “What’s he do?”
    “I think, uh, he works nights for a wrecker service in South St. Paul. Then he’s got a plow blade for his pickup and he plows snow in the winter. He sells firewood . . . that kind of thing.”
    “Okay,” he said.
    “So tell me . . .”
    “Nope. Last time I told you, you blabbed. I don’t think this is anything, anyway, just that the guy was wearing cowboy boots, and I find that interesting,” Lucas said. “But, let me ask you a favor. I don’t know how to put this, delicately . . .”
    “You don’t have to be delicate,” Austin said.
    “Okay. Could you please keep your fuckin’ mouth shut about this? That I asked about Helen’s boyfriend? Just keep it shut.”
    “I swear to God, I will,” she said. “Besides, with Frank, I didn’t exactly blab—it was business.”
    “And don’t start looking sideways at Helen,” Lucas said.
    “I promise . . . I sometimes go days without even seeing her. I’ll just stay away for a while.”
    “Do that,” Lucas said. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow or the next day.”
    Del was curious. When Lucas got off the phone, he asked, “Break the case?”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “Something might have happened.” He dialed Carol. When she came up, he said, “Hey—we’ve got another job for Jackson and his camera.”
    Heather came into her apartment carrying grocery sacks, as Lucas was on the phone, and then went back out, and came back a minute later with more sacks as Lucas got off, and Del said, “That’s a lotta food for Momma and baby.”
    “I’m telling you, Siggy is coming,” Lucas said. “If he was in Chattanooga last night, he’ll be in northern Illinois tonight, and up here tomorrow afternoon or evening, depending on how hard he’s pushing it. Not too hard, I think, because he wouldn’t want to get stopped for speeding.”
    “He wouldn’t be driving under his own ID,” Del said.
    “Still, he wouldn’t speed. He didn’t last as long as he did, dealing big-time dope, being careless.”
    Del, with the glasses, said, “Uh-oh.”
    “What?”
    “She just unloaded a six-pack of Heineken.”
    Lucas could see the green bottles with his naked eye. “There you go,” he said. “She hasn’t had a drink since the bump showed up.”
    “Whoops . . . looks like a bottle of Stoli.”
    Lucas said, “Siggy-Siggy-Siggy . . . come to Mama.”
    The lab tech called a little after noon, about the blood on the blade. “It’s human and it’s A-positive. No prints on the knife. I’ve started the DNA, we got a good sample, we’ll crush it, but it’ll be a couple of days.”
    “Thirty-six hours, I was told,” Lucas said.
    “That’s two days, unless you want the results at midnight,” the tech said.
    Lucas called Harry Anson, the Minneapolis homicide cop: “We’re looking at a guy who was an employee of Alyssa Austin’s. Hit his house this morning.”
    “I heard.”
    “Yeah, sorry about that, but things were moving. Anyway, we got human blood on the knife, no prints. The blood is A-positive. I don’t have the paper right here on the three who were killed in Minneapolis.”
    “It’s Patricia Shockley. A-pos,” Anson said. “Sonofabitch. You started the DNA?”
    “Thirty-six hours. We got the guy locked up in Ramsey on a California warrant, it’s probably good for two