Rules of Prey

this. My grandmother had a loom, I’ve known about weaving since I was a kid.”
    “How about this sculpture?” he asked, gesturing at the squidlike hangings.
    “I don’t know. I think they were mostly an effort to catch a trend, you know? They seemed okay at the time, but nowI think I was playing games with myself. It’s all kind of derivative. I’m pretty much back to straight weaving now.”
    “Tough racket. Art, I mean.”
    “That isn’t the half of it, brother,” she said. The microwave beeped and she took the cups out, dumped a spoon of instant gourmet coffee into each cup, and stirred.
    “Cinnamon coffee,” she said, handing him a cup.
    He took a sip. “Hot. Good, though.”
    “I wanted to ask you something,” she said.
    “Go.”
    “I was thinking I did pretty well when I fought this guy off,” she said.
    “You did.”
    “But I’m still scared. I know what you said the other night, about him not coming back. But I was lucky the first time. He wasn’t ready for me. If he comes back, I might not be so lucky.”
    “So?”
    “I’m wondering about a gun.”
    He thought about it for a minute, then nodded.
    “It’s worth thinking about,” he said. “Most people, I’d say no. When most people buy a gun, they instantly become its most likely victim. The next-most-likely victims are the spouse and kids. Then the neighbors. But you don’t have a spouse or kids and you’re not likely to get in a brawl with your neighbors. And I think you’re probably cool enough to use one right.”
    “So I ought to get one?”
    “I can’t tell you that. If you do, you’d be the most likely victim, at least statistically. But with some people, statistics are nonsense. If you’re not the type of person to have stupid accidents, if you’re not careless, if you’re not suicidal or think a gun’s a toy, then you might want to get one. There is a chance that this guy will come back. You’re the only living witness to an attack.”
    “I’d want to know what to get,” Carla said. She took a sip of coffee. “I couldn’t spend too much. And I’d want some help learning to use it.”
    “I could loan you one, if you like, just until we get the guy,” Lucas said. “Let me see your hand. Hold it up.”
    She held her hand up, fingers spread, palm toward him. He pressed his palm against hers and looked at the length of his finger overlap.
    “Small hands,” he said. “I’ve got an older Charter Arms .38 special that ought to fit just about right. And we can get some semiwadcutter loads so you don’t get too much penetration and kill all your neighbors if you have to use it.”
    “What?”
    “Your walls here are plaster and lath,” Lucas explained. He leaned back and rapped on a wall, and little crumbs of plaster dropped off. “If you use too powerful a round, you’ll punch one long hole through the whole building. And anybody standing in the way.”
    “I didn’t think of that.” She looked worried.
    “We’ll fix you up. You live about a hundred yards from the St. Paul police indoor range. I shoot over there in competition. I could probably fix it to give you a few lessons.”
    “Let me sleep on it,” she said. “But I think so.”
    When he was leaving, she closed the door except for a tiny crack and said as he started down the hall, “Hey, Davenport?”
    He stopped. “Yes?”
    “Are you ever going to ask me out again?”
    “Sure. If you’re willing to put up with me.”
    “I’m willing,” she said, and eased the door closed. Lucas whistled on his way to the elevator, and she leaned against the door, listening to the sound of him and smiling to herself.
    Late that night, Lucas lay in the spare bedroom and looked at the charts pinned to the wall. After a while he stood and wrote at the bottom of the killer’s chart, “Hangs around courthouse.”

CHAPTER
8
    He was delighted by the newspapers.
    He knew he shouldn’t save them. If a cop saw them . . . But then, if a cop saw them, here in his apartment, it would be too late. They would know. And how could he not save them? The inch-high letters were a joy to the soul.
    The Star-Tribune had SERIAL KILLER SLAYS 3 CITIES WOMEN . The Pioneer Press was bigger and better: SERIAL KILLER STALKS TWIN CITIES WOMEN . He liked the word “stalks.” It reflected a sense of a continuing process, rather than a historical one; and work that was planned, instead of random.
    Purely by chance, on the night the story broke, he saw a