Phantom Prey

going on.”
    “He doesn’t have another friend?” Lucas asked.
    “Roy? No. Not recently.”
    “An odd couple,” Greg said, pensively.
    “Why odd?” Lucas asked.
    “Well, she’s pretty hot,” Greg said. He snapped a sideways glance at his girlfriend and then said, “Roy . . . I’ve never heard a woman call him hot.”
    “He doesn’t ring a lot of bells,” Wolfie agreed.
    “Tell me about the woman.”
    The fairy woman was short, lithe, dark-haired, pale-complected, probably in her early twenties. Well-dressed, in the Goth style. Leather jacket, with what Sharon said was a “really nice top. Her skirt was cheapish, though. It looked cheap. Too short.”
    “Nice shoes,” said Wolfie.
    “Older than early twenties,” Sharon said. “Too self-possessed. Knows what she wants, and making friends isn’t one of them.”
    Dave grinned and said, “She had an early-twenties ass.”
    “Where does Roy get off running around with a chick like that?” Greg asked. He seemed offended. “I mean, she is somewhat out of his league, don’t you think?”
    The Goths all nodded at one another.
    “Too good,” Dave said. “Why’s somebody that good hanging with Roy?”
    “He’s actually a good guy,” Jean said.
    “Yeah, but good like Charlie Brown . . .”
    They were still talking when Shockley and Price, the Goths whom Lucas had interviewed earlier, came through the door with a long-haired man in a field jacket and blue jeans bloused over combat boots. Lucas asked one of the Goths, “See the fairy over there? Does she look like the one with Roy?”
    “Leigh? Oh . . . she’s over in that direction, but it wasn’t Leigh. I mean . . .” He raised his voice. “Hey! Leigh!”
    Price turned their way, spotted Lucas, came over: “Find her?”
    “Just missed her,” Lucas said.
    “She was here with Roy,” one of the Goths in the booth said.
    Price shook her head: “I don’t know him.”
    “The guy who started the chicken dance.”
    Price smiled: “Okay.” To Lucas: “I know who he is now. But I don’t know him.”
    “Chicken dance?” Jean asked.
    “At the Halloween party. He started people doing the chicken dance. That’s not something that Goths do every day.”
    On the way out with Jean, Price hooked him by the elbow and pulled him aside, and asked, “So what do you do when you’re not copping? ”
    He felt a little ridiculous when he said it, but he said it anyway: “Taking care of my wife and kids.”
    “Don’t cops have rocky marriages?”
    “Some do.” He smiled. “I could introduce you to some, if you want. I got this guy Virgil . . .”
    “Virgil Flowers?” Her face lit up. “You know Virgil? I knew he was a cop.”
    Lucas smiled, stepped back. “He works for me.”
    “Well, shoot. If you see him, tell him that Leigh says hi.”
    “He’s been married so often that he’s got a ‘Just hitched’ sign in his closet,” Lucas said.
    “I don’t want to marry him,” she said. “He’s just a really . . . interesting guy.”
    Lucas nodded, said, as though jilted, “Well. Maybe see you around,” and headed out the door.
    “What was that all about?” Jean asked, as she trailed behind.
    “Just this guy,” Lucas said. “That fuckin’ Flowers.”
    Lucas left Jean at her apartment. She said she’d stay up until Roy got back.
    “I’ll be up late. When he comes in, call my cell,” Lucas said, as he scribbled the number on the back of one of his business cards. “So. Call me.”
    “You think Roy’s all right?”
    “I wish they hadn’t disappeared like that,” Lucas said. “It was so quick, it was like they were running. I wish she hadn’t been too good for Roy. That worries me.”
    “That kind of judgment . . .”
    “. . . Is almost always right,” Lucas said. “Not fair, but right.”
    Weather was still awake when he got home, sitting in the kitchen, public radio playing around her as she sorted through a box of junk mail. As a physician, she got fifty pieces a week, and there was no way to turn it off. When Lucas came in, she looked up and asked, “Do any good?”
    Before he could answer, the phone rang, and they both turned to look at it: late for a phone call, and that was hardly ever good. Lucas picked it up and said, “Hello?”
    Harold Anson, the Minneapolis homicide cop, said, “We got another one. I’m headed over there—down on the riverfront, two blocks from the last one.”
    “If you tell me it’s a guy named Roy Carter, I’m gonna shoot