Rules of Prey

he only talked to Mr. Rice for a minute and left. Never saw any gun, doesn’t know about the gun.”
    “So?” asked Daniel. “You think he might be the guy?”
    “No, no, he’s too tall, must be six-five, and he’s real skinny. And he’s too old for the profile. Must be fifty. One of those really snotty assholes who wear those scarves instead of ties?”
    “Ascots?”
    “Whatever, yeah. I don’t think he’s the guy, but he was nervous and he was lying to me. He probably doesn’t know anything about the maddog, but there’s something he’s nervous about.”
    “Look around, see what you can find out,” Daniel said. “What about the other people?”
    “We’ve got six more to do,” he said. “They’re the least likely ones.”
    “Do them first. Who knows, maybe somebody’ll jump up and bite you on the ass.” He looked around. “Anything else?”
    “I’ve got nothing,” Lucas said. “I can’t think. I’m going out on the street this afternoon, catch up out there, then I’m going up north. I’m not doing any good here.”
    “Hang around for a minute, will you?” Daniel asked. “Okay, everybody. And I’m sorry, Andy. Didn’t mean to yell.”
    “Didn’t mean to myself,” Anderson said, smiling ruefully. “The maddog is killing us all.”
     
    “Anderson doesn’t want to talk about the media,” Daniel said, rapping the pile of newspapers on his desk. “But we’vegot to do something. And I’m not talking about saving our jobs. We could see some panic out there. This might be routine in Los Angeles, but the people here . . . It just doesn’t happen. They’re getting scared.”
    “What do you mean by panic ? People running in the streets? That won’t happen. They’ll just hunker down—”
    “I’m talking about people carrying guns in public. I’m talking about a college kid coming home from the U when his parents don’t expect him, in the middle of the night, and having the old man take off his head with the family Colt. That’s what I’m talking about. You’re probably too young to remember when Charlie Starkweather was killing people out in Nebraska, but there were people walking around in the streets of Lincoln carrying shotguns. We don’t need that. And we don’t need the National Rifle Association cranking up its scare campaign, a gun in every house and a tank in every garage.”
    “We should talk to the publishers and the station managers or the station owners,” Lucas said after a moment’s reflection. “They can order the heat turned down.”
    “Think they’ll do it?”
    Lucas considered for another moment. “If we do it right. Media people are generally despised, but they’re like anybody else: they want to be loved. Give them a chance to show that they’re really good guys, they’ll lick your shoes. But it’s got to come from you. Like, top guy to top guy. And maybe you ought to take the deputy chiefs with you. Maybe the mayor. That’ll flatter them, show them that you respect them. They’re going to ask some stuff like, ‘You want us to censor ourselves?’ You’ve got to say, ‘No, we don’t. We just want to apprise you of the dangers of public panic; we want you to be sensitive to it.’ ”
    “Do I have to share those thoughts with them?” Daniel asked sarcastically.
    Lucas pointed a finger at him. “Quit that,” he said harshly. “No humor. You’re dealing with the press. And yeah, say share. They talk like that. ‘Let me share this with you.’ ”
    “And they’ll buy it?”
    “I think so. It gives the newspapers a chance to be responsible. They can do that because they aren’t making any money off the deal anyway. You don’t get more advertisers because you’re carrying murder stories. And they don’t care much about short-term circulation gains. They can’t sell those, either.”
    “What about the TV?”
    “That’s a bigger problem, because their ratings do shift, and that does count. Christ, I think I read in the paper last week that the sweeps are coming up. If we don’t cut some kind of a deal with TV, they’ll go nuts with the maddog stuff.”
    Daniel groaned. “The sweeps. I forgot about the sweeps. Jesus, this is supposed to be a police department. We’re supposed to catch crooks, and I sit here sweating about the ratings sweeps.”
    “I’ll get the names of everybody you want to talk to,” Lucas said. “I’ll give them to Linda in an hour. With phone numbers. Best to call them directly. Then