Silent Prey

his bed, studying it. Bekker needed money if he was buying drugs, and he almost certainly would be. In the Hennepin County Jail he’d begged for them, for chemical relief.
    Therefore: he had to be talking to dealers, or at least one dealer. Could he be working for one? Not likely as a salesman: even the dumbest of the dumb would recognize him as a time bomb, if they knew who he was. But if he was working as a chemist—methedrine was simple to synthesize, with the right training and access to the raw materials. If he were running a crank line, that would explain where he’d get money, and drugs, and maybe even a place to stay.
    The car was another problem. He was dumping the bodies, obviously from a vehicle. How would he get access? How would he license it? Everything pointed to an accomplice . . . .
    He stood, wandered into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The abrasion was stiffening. He probed it with a fingernail, lifting a flake of skin, and blood trickled down his cheek. Damn. He knew better. He got a wad of toilet paper, held it to his cheek, and went back to the bed.
    He looked at the chart again, but his mind drifted away from Bekker, toward the other case. Why had they jumped him? And had they really gone after him,or was something else happening? They could have taken him with guns: they had him cold. If they hadn’t wanted to kill him, they still could have gotten to him more quickly, with baseball bats. Why had they risked resistance? If he’d had a gun in his hand, he would have killed them . . . .
    Why had Lily looked out the window when she did?
    But the major puzzle was more subtle. He wasn’t getting anywhere, and Lily and O’Dell must see that. All he could do was look at paper, and listen to people talk. He had none of the insider information, the history, that could point him in the right direction. And yet . . . he was surrounded by people who might be involved: Fell, Kennett, O’Dell himself, even Lily. And not coincidentally.
    At eight-thirty he got up; he dressed, went out to the street, flagged a cab, and rode ten minutes to Lily’s apartment. She was waiting.
    “You still look rough,” she said as she opened the door. She touched his cheek. “Feels hot. Are you sure you want to do this? It’s a lot of running around.”
    “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Rich is set for nine?”
    “Yes. He’s nervous, but he’s coming.”
    “I don’t want him to see me,” Lucas said.
    “Okay. You can sit in the kitchen with the lights out, talk to him down the hall.”
    “Fine.” Lucas, hands in his pockets, wandered down toward the kitchen.
    “Anything new on Bekker?” she asked, trailing behind.
    “No. I was thinking, though, he must be out only at night.” Lucas perched on a tall oak stool and leaned on the breakfast bar. A handicraft ceramic bowl full of apples sat on the bar, and he picked one of them up and turned it in his fingers. “Even with stage makeup, his face would be too noticeable in daylight.”
    “So?”
    “Would it be possible to make random stops of single men driving inexpensive cars, after midnight, Midtown?”
    “Jesus, Lucas. The chance of picking him up that way would be nil—and we’d probably get three cops shot by freaks in the meantime.”
    “I’m trying to figure out ways to press him,” Lucas said. He dropped the apple back in the bowl.
    “Do we really want to chase him out of here? He’d just go somewhere else, start again . . . .”
    “I don’t know if he can. Somehow, I don’t know how, he’s got a unique situation here. He can hide, somehow,” Lucas said. “If he travels, he loses that—I mean, look, right now Bekker’s one of the most famous people in the country. He can’t go to motels or gas stations, he can’t take any kind of public transportation. He can’t really ride in a car without a lot of tension—if he gets pulled over by a cop, he’s done. And he needs his dope, he needs his money. If we pushed him out, if he tried to run, he’d be finished.”
    She thought about it, then nodded. “I suppose we could do something. I wouldn’t want to make a lot of stops, but we could announce that we are, and ask for cooperation from the public. Maybe make a couple of stops for the TV crews . . .”
    “That’d be good.”
    “I’ll talk to Kennett tomorrow,” she said. She perched on a stool opposite from him, crossed her legs and wrapped her hands around the top knee.
    “How’d he get on this