Rules of Prey

real-estate agent. She’d had a midafternoon appointment, and when she didn’t show up, the other agent got worried and went looking for her. When Lucas had arrived, pushingthrough the gloomy circle of neighbors who waited beside the house and on the lawns across the street, Swanson briefed him on Lewis’ background.
    “Just trying to sell the house,” he concluded.
    “Where are the owners?”
    “They’re a couple of old folks. The neighbors said they’re down in Phoenix. They bought a place down there and are trying to sell this one.”
    “Anybody gone out to Lewis’ house yet?”
    “Oh, yeah, Nance and Shaw. Nothing there. Neighbors said she was a nice lady. Into gardening, had a big garden out back of her house. Her old man worked for 3M, died of a heart attack five or six years ago. She went to work on her own, was starting to do pretty good. That’s what the neighbors say.”
    “Boyfriends?”
    “Somebody. A neighbor woman supposedly knows him, but she hasn’t been home and we don’t know where she is. Another neighbor thinks he’s some kind of professor or something over at the university. We’re checking. And we’re doing all the usual, talking to neighbors about anybody they saw coming or going.”
    “Look in the garage?”
    “Yeah. No car.”
    “So what do you think?”
    Swanson shrugged. “What I think is, he calls her up and says he wants to look at a house, he’ll meet her somewhere. He tells her something that makes her think he’s okay and they ride down here, go inside. He does her, drives her car out, dumps it, and walks. We’re looking for the car.”
    “Anybody checking her calendars at her office?”
    “Yeah, we called, but her boss says there’s nothing on her desk. He said she carried an appointment book with her. We found it and all it says is, ‘Twelve-forty-five.’ We think that might be the time she met him.”
    “Where’s her purse?”
    “Over by the front door.”
    Now, wandering around the house, Lucas saw the purseagain and stooped next to it. A corner of Lewis’ billfold was protruding and he eased it out and snapped it open. Money. Forty dollars and change. Credit cards. Business cards. Lucas pulled out a sheaf of plastic see-through picture envelopes and flipped through them. None of the pictures looked particularly new. Looking around, he saw Swanson standing by the bedroom door talking to someone out of sight. He slipped one of the photos out of its envelope. Lewis was shown standing on a lawn with another woman, both holding some kind of a plaque. Lucas closed the wallet, slid it back in the purse, and put the photograph in his pocket.
     
    It was cold when he left the murder scene. He got a nylon jacket from his car, pulled it on, and sat in the driver’s seat for a moment, watching the bystanders. Nobody out of place. He hadn’t really thought there would be.
    On the way back to the station, he crossed the river into St. Paul, stopped at his house, changed into jeans, and traded the nylon jacket for a blue linen sport coat. He thought about it for a few seconds, then took a small .25-caliber automatic pistol and an ankle holster from a hideout shelf in his desk, strapped it to his right ankle, and pulled the jean leg down to cover it.
     
    The television remote-broadcast trucks were stacked up outside City Hall when Lucas got back to police headquarters. He parked in the garage across the street, again marveled at the implacable ugliness of City Hall. He went in the back doors and down to his office.
    When he’d been removed from the robbery detail, administration had to find a place to put him. His rank required some kind of office. Lucas found it himself, a storage room with a steel door on the basement level. The janitors cleaned it out and painted a number on the door. There was no other indication of who occupied the office. Lucas liked it that way. He unlocked it, went inside, and dialed Carla Ruiz’ phone number.
    “This is Carla.” She had a pleasantly husky voice.
    “My name is Lucas Davenport. I’m a lieutenant with the Minneapolis Police Department,” he said. “I need to interview you. The sooner the better.”
    “Jeez, I can’t tonight . . .”
    “We’ve had another killing.”
    “Oh, no. Who was it?”
    “A real-estate saleslady over here in Minneapolis. The whole thing will be on the ten-o’clock news.”
    “I don’t have a TV.”
    “Well, look, how about tomorrow? How about if I stopped around at one