Silent Prey

doctors—that’s what we think she was doing, whoever she is, calling out code names—he’d be noticed. So we’re pretty sure it’s a her.”
    “What if it’s just the switchboard?”
    “Then we’re fucked . . . although Carter thinks it probably isn’t. A switchboard might start recognizing names and voices . . . .”
    • • •
    The Whetstone had an old-fashioned knife-grinding wheel in the window, a dozen tables in front, a few booths in back. Between the booths was a wooden floor, worn smooth and soft by a century of sliding feet. A couple turned slowly in the middle of it, dancing to a slow, sleepy jazz tune from an aging jukebox.
    “Booth?” asked Lucas.
    “Sure,” said the waitress. “One left, in the no-smoking area.”
    Fell smiled ruefully at Lucas, and said, “We’ll take it.”
    They ate spaghetti and garlic bread around a bottle of rosé, talking about Bekker. Lucas recounted the Minneapolis killings:
    “ . . . started killing them to establish their alibis. They apparently picked out the woman at the shopping mall at random. She was killed to confuse things.”
    “Like a bug. Stepped on,” Fell said.
    “Yeah. I once dealt with a sexual psychopath who killed a series of women, and I could understand him, in a way. He was nuts. He was made nuts. If he’d had a choice, I’d bet that he’d have chosen not to be nuts. It was like, it wasn’t his fault, his wires were bad. But with Bekker . . .”
    “Still nuts,” Fell said. “They might look cold and rational, but to be that cold, you’ve got to be goofy. And look what he’s doing now. If we take him alive, there’s a good chance that he’ll be sent to a mental hospital, instead of a prison.”
    “I’d rather go to prison,” Lucas said.
    “Me, too, but there are people who don’t think that way. Like doctors.”
    A heavyset man in work pants and a gray Charlie Chaplin mustache stepped across to the jukebox andstared into it. The waitress came by and said, “More wine?”
    Lucas looked at Fell and then up at the waitress and said, “Mmmm,” and the waitress took the glasses.
    Behind her, the heavy man in work pants dropped a single quarter in the jukebox, carefully pressed two buttons, went back to his table and bent over the woman he had been sitting with. As she got up, the “Blue Skirt Waltz” began bubbling from the jukebox speakers.
    “Jesus. Blue Skirt. And it’s Frankie Yankovich, too,” Lucas said. “C’mon, let’s dance.”
    “You gotta be kidding . . . .”
    “You don’t want . . . ?”
    “Of course I want,” she said. “I just can’t believe that you do.”
    They began turning around the floor, Fell light and delicate, a good dancer, Lucas denser, unskilled. They turned around the heavy man and his partner, the two couples caught by the same rhythm, weaving around the dance floor. The waitress, who’d taken menus to another table, lingered to watch them dance.
    “One more time,” the heavy man said to Lucas, in a heavy German accent, as the song ended. He bowed, gestured to the jukebox. Lucas dropped a quarter, punched “Blue Skirt,” and they started again, turning around the tiny dance floor. Fell fit nicely just below his jaw, and her soft hair stroked his cheek. When the song ended, they both sighed and wandered back to the booth, holding hands.
    “Sooner or later, I’d like to spend some time in your shorts, as we say around the Ninth,” Fell said across the table as she sat down. “But not tonight. I’m too fuckin’ dirty and miserable and tired and I’ve got too many bad movies in my head.”
    “Well,” he said.
    “Well, what? You don’t want to?”
    “I was thinking, well, I’ve got a shower.”
    She cocked her head, looking at him steadily, unsmiling. “You think it’ll wash away that woman rolling over this morning, with those eyes?” she asked somberly.
    After a moment, he said, “No. I guess not. But listen . . . you interest me. I think you knew that.”
    “I didn’t really,” she said, almost shyly. “I’ve got no self-confidence.”
    “Well.” He laughed.
    “You keep saying that. Well.”
    “Well. Have some more wine,” he said.
     
    Halfway through the second bottle of wine, Fell made Lucas play it again and they turned around the room, close, her face tipped up this time, breathing against his neck, warm, steamy. He began to react and was relieved to get her back to the booth.
    She was drunk, laughing, and Lucas asked