Rules of Prey

that Smithe is guilty of the spectacular murders and that he fears the premature arrest could destroy Smithe’s burgeoning career with the welfare department . . .”
    “Burgeoning career? TV people shouldn’t be allowed to use big words,” Lucas muttered.
    “So now what?” Daniel asked angrily. “How in the hell could you do this?”
    “I didn’t know I was,” Lucas said mildly. “I thought we were having a personal conversation.”
    “I told you that your dick was going to get you in trouble with that woman,” Daniel said. “What the hell am I going to tell Lester? He’s been out there in front of the cameras making his case and you’re talking to this puss behind his back. You cut his legs out from under him. He’ll be after your head.”
    “Tell him you’re suspending me. What’s bad? Two weeks? Then I’ll appeal to the civil-service board. Even if the board okays the suspension, it’ll be months from now. We should be able to put it off until this thing is settled, one way or another.”
    “Okay. That might do it.” Daniel nodded and then laughed unpleasantly, shaking his head. “Christ, I’m glad that wasn’t me getting grilled. You better get out of here before Lester arrives or we’ll be busting him for assault.”
     
    At two o’clock in the morning the telephone rang. Lucas looked up from the drawing table where he was working on Everwhen, reached over, and picked it up.
    “Hello?”
    “Still mad?” Jennifer asked.
    “ You bitch. Daniel’s suspending me. I’m giving interviews to everybody except you guys, you can go suck—”
    “Nasty, nasty—”
    He slammed the receiver back on the hook. A moment later the phone rang again. He watched it like a cobra, then picked it up, unable to resist.
    “I’m coming over,” she said, and hung up. Lucas reached for it, to call her, to tell her not to come, but stopped with his hand on the receiver.
     
    Jennifer wore a black leather jacket, jeans, black boots, and driving gloves. Her Japanese two-seater squatted in the driveway like red-metal muscle. Lucas opened the inner door and nodded at her through the glass of the storm door.
    “Can I come in?” she asked. She was wearing gold-wire-rimmed glasses instead of her contacts. Her eyes looked large and liquid behind the lenses.
    “Sure,” he said awkwardly, fumbling with the latch. “You look like a heavy-metal queen.”
    “Thanks loads.”
    “That was a compliment.”
    She glanced at him, looking for sarcasm, found none, peeled off the jacket, and drifted toward the couch in the living room.
    “You want a coffee?” Lucas asked as he closed the door.
    “No, thanks.”
    “Beer?”
    “No, I’m fine. Go ahead, if you want.”
    “Maybe a beer.” When he got back, Jennifer was leaning back on a love seat, her knee up on the adjacent seat. Lucas sat on the couch opposite her, looking at her over a marble-topped coffee table.
    “So what?” he said, gesturing with the beer bottle.
    “I’m very tired,” she said simply.
    “Of the story? The maddog? Me?”
    “Life, I think,” Jennifer said sadly. “The baby was maybe an attempt to get back.”
    “Jesus.”
    “That little scene with you today . . . God, I don’t know. I try to put a good face on it, you know? Gotta be quick, gotta be tough, gotta smile when the heavy stuff comes down. Can’t let anybody push you. Sometimes I feel like . . . you remember that little Chevrolet I had, that little Nova, that I wrecked, before I bought the Z?”
    “Yeah?”
    “That’s how my chest feels sometimes. All caved in. Like everything is still hard, but all bent up. Crunched, crumbled.”
    “Cops get like that.”
    “Not really. I don’t think so.”
    “Look, you show me a guy on the street for ten or fifteen years—”
    She held up a hand, stopped him. “I’m not saying it’s not tough and you don’t get burned out. Awful stuff happens to cops. But there are slow times. You can take some time. I never have time. If things get slow, for Christ’s sake, I’ve got to invent stuff. You show me a slow day, where a cop might cruise through it, and I’ll show you a day when Jennifer Carey is out interviewing some little girl who got her face burned off two months ago or two years ago because we had to have something by six P . M ., or else. And we don’t have time to think about it. We just do it. If we’re wrong, we pay later. Do now, pay later. What’s worse, there aren’t any rules. You don’t find