Silent Prey

it.”
    “We can try pushing his friend, using the media again,” Lucas said. “If he depends on somebody else . . .”
    O’Dell, seated heavily on a shaky folding chair, interrupted. “Wait, wait. You guys are getting ahead of me. How do we think this, that he has a friend?”
    “We’ve papered the goddamn town with his picture and with simulations of what he’d look like if he dyed his hair or grew a beard or if he shaved his head,” said Kennett. “These aren’t identikit mock-ups, these are based on good-quality photographs . . . .”
    “Yeah, yeah . . .” O’Dell said impatiently.
    “So unless he’s invisible or living in the sewers, he’s probably being protected,” Lucas said, picking up the thread from Kennett. “He can’t be a regular tenant somewhere. He’d have to pay rent and people’d see him on a regular basis. He can’t risk landlords or nosy neighbors.”
    “And that means he’s living with somebody or he’s on the street,” Kennett said.
    “He’s not on the street,” Lucas said positively. “I can’t see him living like that. He just wouldn’t do it. He’s . . . fastidious. Besides, he’s got to have a vehicle. He didn’t call a cab to haul these bodies around.”
    “Unless he drives a cab himself,” said Huerta.
    “Not much there,” said Diaz, shaking his head. “We’ll push the stolen one . . . .”
    “And it’d still be pretty risky,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, but it answers a lot of questions: how he gets transportation, how he makes money and still keeps his face hidden,” Kennett said. “If he worked a couple of hours a night, late, and picked his spots . . . maybe concentrated on the tourist and convention areas, you know, the Javits Center, places like that. He’d mostly be dealing with out-of-towners, which would explain Cortese. People trust cabbies. Like if he pretended he had a parcel, gets out and asks somebody where an address was . . .”
    “I don’t know,” said Lucas.
    They all stared at the map some more. Too much city; single buildings that would hold the populations of two or three small towns.
    “But I still think you might be right, that he’s living with somebody,” Kennett said finally. “How he gets his money . . .”
    “He’s got skills,” Lucas said. “He’s got an M.D., he knows chemistry. A good chemist on the run . . .”
    “Methedrine,” said White, a bald man in gray knit slacks. “Ecstasy. LSD. It’s all back, almost like the old days.”
    “Be a good reason to protect him, too,” said Kuhn. “He’d be a cash cow.”
    “Assuming this isn’t just bullshit, what does it get us?” O’Dell asked impatiently.
    “We start looking for ways to put pressure on whoever he’s living with or who’s covering for him,” Lucas said. “We need some heavy-duty contact with the media.”
    “Why?” said O’Dell.
    “Because we have to move them around. Get them todo a little propaganda for us. We need to talk about how anybody who’s hiding Bekker is an accessory to mass murder. We need some headlines to that effect. That their only hope is to roll over on him, plead ignorance, get immunity. We’ve got to chase him out in the open.”
    “I could call somebody,” O’Dell said.
    “We need the right emphasis . . .”
    “We can figure something out,” O’Dell said. “Are you still talking to the reporters this morning?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Throw something in, then . . . .”
    When the meeting broke up, O’Dell lurched ponderously out of his chair, leaned toward Lucas, and said, “We’d like to sit in on the press thing. Me and Lily.”
    Lucas nodded. “Sure.” O’Dell nodded and headed toward the front of the room, and Lucas turned to Fell. “We’re going out this afternoon?”
    “Yeah. They’ve got us looking for fences,” she said. She had gray eyes that matched the touch of gray in her hair; she was five-six or so, with a slightly injured smile and nicotine-stained fingers.
    “Could I get copies or printouts of all the Bekker files, or borrow what I can’t copy?”
    “Right here,” she said, patting the stack of manila folders in her lap.
    From the front of the room, where he was talking to Kennett, O’Dell called, “Davenport.” Lucas stood up and walked over, and O’Dell said, “Dick has been telling me about your idea, the lecture thing, the Mengele. I’ll call around this afternoon and set it up. Like for next week. We’ll play it like it’s