Rules of Prey

microwave remote dish mounted on top had backed into her yard and a half-dozen black cables snaked out of the back of the truck to the house and disappeared inside.
    A patrol lieutenant saw Lucas coming down the sidewalk and got out of his car.
    “Lucas. Thought you’d gone home,” the lieutenant said.
    “On my way. How’s it look?”
    “We’re covering everything. We got some footprints out of that ditch, looks like he fell right in it. Could have hurt himself.”
    “Any blood?”
    “No. But we put out a general alert to the hospitals with the description on the fliers and added some stuff about the clay. They should have an eye out for him.”
    “Good. Have you found anybody who saw him after he got out of the ditch? Further north?”
    “Nobody so far. We’re going to knock on doors six or seven blocks up—”
    “Concentrate on the street that leads out to the expressway. I’d bet my left nut that’s where he parked.”
    The lieutenant nodded. “We’ve already done that. Started while it was still dark, getting people out of bed. Nothing.”
    “How about the footprints? Anything clear?”
    “Yeah. They’re pretty good. He was wearing—”
    “Nike Airs,” Lucas interjected.
    “No,” the lieutenant said, his forehead wrinkling. “They were Reeboks. When we called in, we told the tech we had some prints and he brought along a reference book. They’re making molds, so they can look at them back at the lab, but there’s no doubt. They were brand-new Reeboks. No sign of wear on the soles.”
    Lucas scratched his head. “Reeboks?”
     
    Annie McGowan was sparkling. Seven o’clock in the morning and she looked as though she’d been up for hours.
    “Lucas,” she called when she caught sight of him by the door. “Come on in.”
    “Big show tonight?”
    “Noon, afternoon, and night is more like it. Right now we’re setting up for a remote for the Good-Morning Show. ” She glanced at her watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
    A producer came out of the living room, saw Lucas, and hurried over. “Lieutenant, what’s the chance of getting a few minutes of tape with you?”
    “On what?”
    “On the whole setup. How it worked, what went wrong.”
    Lucas shrugged. “We fucked up. You want to put that on the air?”
    “With this case, if you want to say it, I think we could get it on,” the producer said.
    “You going to use your tape of the fight?”
    The producer’s eyes narrowed. “It’s an incredible piece of action,” he said.
    “I won’t comment if you’re going to use it,” Lucas said. “Hold it back and I’ll talk.”
    “I can’t promise you that,” the producer said. “But I can talk to the news director about it.”
    “Okay,” Lucas said wearily. “I’ll do a couple of minutes. But I want to know what questions are coming and I don’t want any tricky stuff.”
    “Great.”
    “And you’ll see about holding the fight tape?”
    “Yeah, sure.”
     
    The taping took almost an hour, with a break for McGowan’s remote. When he got home, Lucas unplugged the telephones and fell facedown on the bed, not bothering to undress. He woke to a pounding noise, sat up, looked at the clock. It was a little before one in the afternoon.
    The pounding stopped and he put his feet on the floor, rubbed the back of his neck, and stood up. A sharp rapping sound came from the bedroom window and he frowned and pulled back the venetian blind. Jennifer Carey, out on the lawn.
    “Open the door,” she shouted. He nodded and dropped the blind and went out to the door.
    “I figured it out,” she said angrily. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it, but as soon as we heard about the attack, I figured it out.” She didn’t take off her coat, and instead of walking through to the kitchen as she usually did, she stood in the hallway.
    “Figured what out?” Lucas asked sleepily.
    “You set McGowan up. Deliberately. You were feeding her those weird tips to make the maddog angry and attract him to McGowan.”
    “Ah, Jesus, Jennifer.”
    “I’m right, aren’t I?”
    He waved her off and started back to the living room.
    “Well, she sure as hell paid you back,” Jennifer said.
    Lucas turned. “What do you mean?”
    “That awful tape of you confessing. You know, saying it was all your fault. And then the tape of the fight, with you beating up that poor kid.”
    “They weren’t going to show that,” Lucas said hollowly. “We had a deal.”
    “What?”
    “I gave them the interview