Rules of Prey

shoes.”
    The lack of direct evidence was infuriating. If Vullion had kept souvenirs of the kills, if Lucas had found a box of surgeon’s gloves in association with a box of Kotex, with a roll of tape next to them . . . or if the kitchen table had beenlittered with the shreds of a newspaper that one of his messages had been cut from . . .
    If he had kept those things, they could find a way to get a warrant and take him. But there was none of it. Standing arms akimbo, Lucas looked around the unnaturally neat living room, and then realized: it was unnaturally neat.
    “We scared the cocksucker and he cleaned the place out,” Lucas said aloud. If they had talked to Nester the previous week, before the incident at McGowan’s . . . No point in thinking about it. He started to turn out of the living room, when the videocassette recorder caught his eye. There were no tapes in evidence, but an empty tape carton sat beside the television. He reached down, turned the machine on, and punched the eject button. After a minute’s churning, the VCR produced a tape.
    “Where is he?”
    “Leaving the shoe store.”
    Lucas turned on the television and started the tape. It was blank. He stopped it, backed it up, ran it again, and was startled when his own face popped up on the screen.
    “God damn, the interview,” Lucas muttered to himself. The camera cut to Carla. He watched the interview through to the end, waited until the screen went blank, and turned off the recorder and the television.
    What little doubt he had had disappeared with the video recording. He walked back to the bedroom, lifted the bedspread, and pushed his arm between the mattress and box springs. Nothing.
    He dipped back in his jacket pocket and took out an envelope and shook out the pictures. Lewis, Brown, Wheatcroft, the others. Handling the photos by their edges, he pushed them under the mattress as far as he could reach. A thorough search would find them.
    When it was done, he straightened the bedspread and began moving out of the apartment, working as methodically on his way out as he had on the way in. Everything in place. Everything checked. All lights out. He peered out at the sidewalk. Nobody there. He put the chain back on the front doorand went into the garage. He took ten minutes to check the newspapers. None were shredded. He restacked the bundles as he’d found them, and let himself out through the garage door.
    Back on the sidewalk, he walked briskly away. He had almost reached the Ford Escort when the monitor beeped.
    “He’s out of the mall, headed toward his car. Three and five stay on the ground, lead cars saddle up now . . . .”
     
    Lucas and Daniel sat alone in Daniel’s dimly lit office, looking at each other through a yellow pool of light cast by a desk lamp. “So even if we got in, we wouldn’t find anything,” Daniel concluded.
    “I couldn’t swear to that, but it looks to me like he cleaned the place out. He may have hidden something—I didn’t have enough time to really tear the place apart,” Lucas said. “But I didn’t find anything conclusive. The Nikes are right, the rubbers are right, his size is right, the car is right. But you know and I know that we could find that combination in fifty people out there.”
    “Fifty people who are also lawyers and hang around the courthouse and have a Texas accent and would get a gun from Rice?”
    “But we’ve got no direct evidence that he got the gun from Rice. And all the other stuff is real thin. You’ve got to believe that he’d get the best attorney around, and a good attorney would cut us to pieces.”
    “How about voice analysis on the tapes?”
    “You know what the courts think of that.”
    “But it’s another thing.”
    “Yeah. I know. It’s tempting . . .”
    “But?”
    “But if we keep watching him, we should get him. He didn’t get his kill. He’s scared now, but if he’s compelled to kill, he’ll be going back out. Sooner or later. I’d bet in the next week. This time, we won’t lose him. We’ll get him entering some place and he’ll have all that shit with him, the Kotex and the potato and the gloves. We’ll have him cold.”
    “I’ll talk to the county attorney. I’ll tell him what we have now and what we might get. See what he says. But basically, I think you’re right. It’s too thin to risk.”
     
    Surveillance posts were set up in an apartment across the street from the maddog’s and one house down; and behind