Rules of Prey

The real-estate woman was a widow. The waitress was a rock-’n’-roller, a punk. The real-estate lady went to classical-music concerts with her boyfriend. It goes like that. The only pattern seems to be that they’re all women.”
    Everybody thought about it for a minute.
    “What’s the interval between murders?” asked Lucas.
    “The first one, Bell, was July 14, then Morris was on August 2, nineteen days between them; then the next was Ruiz on August 17, fifteen days after Morris; then Lewis on August 31, fourteen days later,” said Anderson.
    “Getting shorter,” said one of the cops.
    “Yeah. That’s a tendency with sadistic killers, if he is one,” said Wullfolk.
    “If they start coming faster, he’ll be doing them off the top of his head, not so careful-like,” said another of the cops.
    “We don’t know that. He may be picking them out six months ahead of time. He may have a whole file of them,” Anderson said.
    “Any other pattern to the days?” asked Lucas.
    “That’s one thing, they’re all during the week. A Thursday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, and another Wednesday. No weekends.”
    “Not much of a pattern,” Daniel said.
    “Anything about the women?” asked Lucas. “All tall? All got big tits? What?”
    “They’re all good-looking. That’s my judgment, but I think it’s right. All have dark hair, three of them black—the Bell girl, who dyed hers black, Ruiz, and Lewis. Morris’ hair was dark brown.”
    “Huh. Half the women in town have blonde hair, or blondish,” said one of the other detectives. “That might be something.”
    “There are all kinds of possibilities in this stuff, but we gotta be careful, because there’s also coincidence to think about. Anyway, look for those patterns. I’ll make a special list of patterns,” Anderson said. “Bring in your notebooks every afternoon and I’ll give you updates. Read them.”
    “What about the lab, they sittin’ on their thumbs, or what?” asked Wullfolk.
    “They’re doing everything they can. They’re running down the tape he used to bind them, they’re sifting through the crap they picked up with the vacuum, they’re looking at everything for prints. They haven’t come up with much.”
    “If any of these notebooks get to the media, there are going to be some bodies twisting in the wind,” said Daniel. “Everybody understand?”
    The cops all nodded at once.
    “I don’t doubt that we’re going to spring some leaks,” Daniel said. “But nobody, nobody is to say anything aboutthe notes the killer is leaving behind. If I find somebody leaks to the media on these notes, I’ll find the son of a bitch and fire him. We’ve been holding it close to our chests, and it’s going to stay that way.”
    “We need a surefire identifier that the public doesn’t know about,” Anderson explained. “They knew they had the Son of Sam when they looked through the window of his apartment and saw some notes like the ones he’d been sending to the cops and the media.”
    “There’s going to be a lot of pressure,” Daniel said. “On all of us. I’ll try to keep it off your backs, but if this asshole gets one or two more, there’ll be reporters who want to talk to the individual detectives. We’re going to put that off as long as we can. If we get to the point where we’ve got to do it, we’ll get the attorney in to advise you on what to say and what not to say. Every interview gets cleared through this office in advance. Okay? Everybody understand?”
    The heads bobbed again.
    “Okay. Let’s do it,” he said. “Lucas, hang around a minute.”
    When the rest of the cops had shuffled out, Daniel pushed the door shut.
    “You’re our pipeline to the media, feeding out the unofficial stuff we need in the papers. You drop what we need on one of the papers and maybe one TV station as a deep source, and when the others come in for confirmation, I’ll catch that. Okay?”
    “Yeah. I’m a source for people at both papers and all the TV stations. The biggest problem will be keeping them from figuring out I’m sourcing all of them.”
    “So work something out. You’re good at working things out. But we need the back door into the media. It’s the only way they’ll believe us.”
    “I’d just as soon not lie to anybody,” Lucas said.
    “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But if you gotta burn somebody, you burn him. This is too heavy to fool around with.”
    “Okay.”
    “You got an