Rules of Prey

room with the bellhop, he pulled back my sheet and there was a rat under it and the guy freaked out. I freaked out. This is supposed to be a nice hotel. I went down to the desk and they gave me a new room, but I bet they remember that rat. You can check it with phone calls. And Mr. McCarthy has the bills and plane tickets at his office.”
    “You should have told us,” Lucas said.
    “I was scared. Mr. McCarthy said . . .” They both turned and looked at McCarthy.
    “It was too much all at once. You were grilling him, everybody was running around yelling, we had to cool out or we could make a mistake,” McCarthy said.
    “Well, we sure made a mistake doing it this way,” Smithe said. “My family knew I was gay, my parents and my brothers and sisters and a few friends back home, but most people in my high school didn’t, most of the people around the home place . . .”
    He suddenly sat down and started to sob. “Now they all know. You know how hard it’ll be to go back to the farm? My home?”
    McCarthy stood up and kicked his chair.
     
    In the lobby of the detention center, Lucas stopped at a phone and made a single call.
    “Lucas Davenport,” he said. “Can you meet me someplace discreet? Quickly?”
    “Sure,” she said. “Name the place.”
    He named a used-book store on the north side of the loop. When she arrived, he thought how out-of-place she looked. With her perfect hair and faultless makeup, she wandered through the stacks like Alice in Wonderland, stunned by the presence of so many baffling artifacts. Annie McGowan. Pride of Channel Eight, the Now Report.
    “Lucas,” she whispered when she saw him.
    “Annie.” He stepped toward her and she reached out with both hands, as though she expected Lucas to take her in his arms. He instead took her hands and pulled her close to his chest.
    “What I’m going to tell you now must be kept a secret. You must give me journalistic immunity or I can’t tell you,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder. Introduction to Method Acting 1043, two credits.
    “Yes, of course,” she blurted. Her breath smelled like cinnamon and spice.
    “This gay fellow arrested for the maddog murders? He didn’t do it,” Lucas whispered. “He has two excellent alibis that are being checked out even as we speak. He should be released late this afternoon. No one, but no one, knows this outside the police department, except you. If you wait until three-thirty or so, you can probably catch his attorney—you know McCarthy, the public defender?”
    “Yes, I know him,” she said breathlessly.
    “You can catch him outside the detention center, signing Smithe out. Better stake the place out around three o’clock. I don’t think it could happen earlier than that.”
    “Oh, Lucas, this is enormous.”
    “Yeah. If you can keep it exclusive. And I’ll give you another tip, but this also has to come from ‘an informed source.’ ”
    “What?”
    “These women were supposedly raped, but nobody ever found any semen. They think the killer may be using some kind of . . . foreign object because he’s impotent.”
    “Oh, jeez. Poor guy.”
    “Uh, yeah.”
    “What kind of object?”
    “Uh, well, we don’t know exactly.”
    “You mean like one of those huge rubber cocks?” The words came tripping out of her perfect mouth so incongruously that Lucas felt his chin drop.
    “Uh, well, we don’t know. Something. Anyway, if you handle this right and protect me, I’ll have more exclusive tips for you. But right now I’ve got to get out of here. We can’t be seen together.”
    “Not yet, anyway,” she said. She turned to go, and then stepped back.
    “Listen, when you call me at the station, they’ll know who my source is if you keep leaving your name. I mean, if you can’t get me.”
    “Yeah?”
    “So maybe we should use a code name.”
    “Good idea,” Lucas said, dumbfounded. He took a card from his wallet, wrote his home phone number on the back of it. “You can call me at the office or at home. I’ll be one place or the other when I call you. When I call, I’ll say ‘Message for McGowan: Call Red Horse.’ ”
    “Red Horse,” she whispered, her lips moving as she memorized the phrase. “Red Horse. Like the horse in chess?”
    More like the fish, the red horse sucker, Lucas thought. McGowan stepped forward another step and kissed him on the lips, then with a flash of black eyes and fashionable wool coat was gone down the stacks.
    The