Rules of Prey

the house that he could reach it in a minute or so, at a run, but far enough away that it would not be immediately remembered as being a strange car near the site of a killing.
    Five blocks? What would five blocks be? He got out a sheet of paper and drew streets and blocks. All right, if he parked five blocks away, the cops would have to check some fifty blocks before they got as far out as his car.
    If he parked six blocks out from McGowan’s house, they’d have to check seventy-two blocks. It would be double that if it weren’t for that damned creek across the street.
    He looked at his map and figured. If he parked north of her house, he could get six blocks out along the end blocks, which were narrow. He would also have access to alleys that came out of the end blocks, good places to hide, if hiding became critical.
    The plat books had indicated that the lots were seventy feet deep, with a fifteen-foot alley. The streets were thirty feet. He figured on his piece of paper. A little over two hundred yards. He should be able to run that in less than a minute. He got up, went back into the kitchen, found a city map in a drawer, and counted up six blocks.
    Not six blocks, he thought. Five blocks would be better. If he parked five blocks up, he’d be on a street that had access to Interstate 35. Once in the car, he could be on the highway in less than a minute, even driving at the speed limit.
    He closed his eyes and visualized it. At a dead run, panic situation, it was two minutes from her house to the highway. Once on the highway, eight minutes to his garage. He would have to think.
     
    The maddog got McGowan’s phone number from a city cross-reference directory. Called her at home, spoke to her: “Phyllis? . . . Sorry, I must have misdialed,” he said. Calledback. Called back again. An answering machine, but never a strange voice.
    The maddog did one reconnaissance. He did it in his midnight-blue Thunderbird.
    Sunday afternoon. Annie McGowan was visiting her parents in Brookings, South Dakota. She was due back to work on Monday. There were still cops watching her house, one in front, from the architect’s, one in back, from the retired couple’s house. The cops out on the wings, in cars, had been temporarily withdrawn while McGowan was out of town.
    With McGowan gone, it was hard to take the surveillance seriously. The cop at the post in back was reading through a stack of 1950’s comic books he’d found in the attic, wondering about the possibility of stealing them. God only knew what they were worth, and the old couple certainly didn’t seem to care about them or even remember they were there. Every two or three minutes the cop would glance out the window at the back of McGowan’s house. But everyone knew the maddog never attacked on a weekend. He wasn’t paying much attention.
    He was reading a Superman when the maddog rolled past in front. If the maddog had driven down the alley behind the house, the cop would have seen him for sure—would have heard the car going by—and might have caught him or identified him right there. But a garbage can had fallen over at the far end of the alley. When the maddog started to turn in, he saw it, considered it, and backed out. No point in being seen outside the car, in daylight, fooling around with somebody else’s garbage can.
    The cop in the architect’s house, across the street from McGowan’s, should have seen him go by in front. He knew the maddog might be driving a dark-colored Thunderbird. But when the maddog went past, he was downstairs, his head in the refrigerator, deciding between a yogurt and a banana to go with the caffeine-free Diet Coke. He was in no hurry to get back to the attic. The attic was boring.
    All told, he was away from the window for twentyminutes, although it seemed like only four or five. When he got back, he opened the yogurt and looked out the window. A kid up the street was washing his old man’s car. A dog was watching him work. Nothing else. The maddog had come and gone.
    And the maddog thought to himself: Tomorrow night.

CHAPTER
21
    When Lucas pulled in, Carla was sitting in the yard, wrapped in an old cardigan sweater with a drawing pad in her lap. He got out of the car, walked through the dry leaves, deep-breathing the crystalline North Woods air.
    “Great day,” he said. He dropped beside her and looked at the pad. She was drawing the forms of the fallen leaves with sepia chalk on blue-tinted paper. “And