Rules of Prey

worked at home. Nothing like a diary.
    Last check. Looked at the photos in the media room again. Happy, Lucas thought. That was what he looked like.
    Checked watch. Seventeen minutes. And out.
     
    He stopped at Daniel’s office.
    “What?” Daniel looked harassed.
    Lucas dipped into his pocket, took out the packaged ring of the prophylactic, tossed it on the desk. Daniel looked down without touching it, then back up.
    “ ‘Share,’ ” he read from the pack. He looked up at Lucas. “The notebooks have a list that the lab made up, the rubbers that use the kind of lubricant they found in the women.”
    “Yeah.”
    “This one on it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “God damn. We got anything we can make a warrant with?”
    “It’d be thin.”
    Daniel reached out and pushed an intercom button.
    “Linda, get Detective Sloan for me. Detective Anderson down in homicide should be able to reach him. I want to talk to him right away.”
    He took his finger off the button and looked at Lucas. “Any problems out there?”
    “No.”
    “I don’t want you on TV for the next few days. Stay out of sight at this press conference just in case somebody saw you on the street.”
    “Okay. But I got in clean.”
    “Christ, if this is the guy, we’re going to look good. Out in Los Angeles they can chase these guys for years, and some of them they never catch.” Daniel ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s gotta be him.”
    “Don’t think like that,” Lucas said urgently. “Think cool. When we pick somebody up, the media’s going to go berserk. If it’s not him, you’ll be dangling from a tree limb. By your balls. Especially with the gay politics around here.”
    “All right, all right,” Daniel said unhappily. He swung one hand in the air as though brushing away gnats. The phone rang and he snatched it up.
    “Yeah. We’ve been waiting.” He looked at Lucas and mouthed “Sloan.” “Did you ever check that list of houses Lewis sold? . . . Yeah. How many? . . . What about dates? . . . Huh. Okay. Stay with that, pick up any more you can find. Talk to her boyfriend, see what bars they went to, any that we might cross with Smithe . . . . Yeah. We might be going for a warrant . . . . What? . . . Wait a minute.”
    Daniel looked up at Lucas.
    “Sloan says the garbage pickup is tomorrow. He wants to know if he should grab the garbage if Smithe brings any out.”
    “Good idea. It’s not protected; we don’t need a warrant. If we find anything in it, that could build the warrant for us.”
    Daniel nodded and went back to the phone. “Grab the garbage, okay. And good work . . . . Yeah.” He slammed the phone back on the hook.
    “Lewis sold a house the next block over. Seven weeks before she was killed.”
    “Oh, boy, I don’t know—”
    “Wait, listen. Sloan’s been talking to people out there. Smithe is a jogger and he jogs down that same block almost every summer evening. Right past the house she sold.”
    “That’s weak.”
    “Lucas, if we get one more thing, anything, I’m going in for a warrant. We’ve got Laushaus on the bench, he’d give us a warrant to search the governor’s underwear. With the governor in it.”
    “It’s not getting the warrant I’m worried about. I’m worried about the reaction.”
    “I’ll handle it. We’ll be careful.”
    Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve got a feeling that everybody’s starting to run in one direction.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to make some calls on the Ruiz interview. Take it easy, huh?”
     
    Lucas talked to an assignment editor at the Pioneer Press:
    “Wally? Lucas Davenport.”
    “Hey, Lucas, how’s the hammer hangin’?”
    “Wonderful expression, Wally. Where’d you hear that?”
    “I thought the pigs talked like that. Excuse me, I meant cops. Just trying to be friendly.”
    “Right. You got one of your hacks who can meet me on the front porch of the St. Paul cop shop, say about six o’clock?”
    “What’s up?”
    “Well, to tell you the truth, we got a survivor from a maddog attack and we’re going public.”
    “Whoa. Hold on.”
    There was a series of muffled exclamations on the other end of the line, then a new voice, female. Denise Ring, the city editor.
    “Lucas, this is Denise. Where’d this woman come from?”
    “Hey, Denise. How’s the hammer hangin’?”
    “What?”
    “Wally just asked me how the hammer was hangin’. I thought it was newspaper talk.”
    “Fuck