Wicked Prey

lot and he parks. Then this guy comes in, Charles . . .”
    “You knew him?”
    Joshua shrugged. “We knew who he was. They sometimes put him on school patrol. Anyway, he comes in, and he’s got this picture, and he says, ‘You ever seen this guy?’ We look at the picture, and Kyle says, ‘Whoa, dude, he looks just like that big tall dude.’”
    Kyle did a body-bob and said, “Yup.”
    “I don’t know what he’s talking about, but Kyle says this guy was down in one-twenty, which is the one that’s burned, so I guess he was,” Joshua said. “Charles asked Kyle if he was sure, and Kyle said, ‘Dude, I don’t know. Maybe not.’”
    Kyle said, “I said, ‘Maybe not. But maybe yes.’ Not or yes, I said them both.”
    Joshua picked it up. “So, Charles went out of here, and Kyle went to watch him. I went to counting the money again.”
    “You watched him?” Lucas asked Kyle.
    “Yeah, kinda. I didn’t want him to see me, but I stuck my head out. He went down there and knocked on the door, and then he went inside. That’s all I saw. I came back and got my plunger, ’cause we’ve got a bad toilet, some asshole woman stuck a whole roll of toilet paper down it . . . anyway, I came back, and we heard this . . . Vooooommmm . We ran outside and saw the fire and called nine-one-one.”
    “Didn’t see anybody else?” Lucas asked.
    “Not then,” Kyle said. “But, there was this chick . . .”
    He and Joshua exchanged glances again, and Joshua said, “She has, like, this amazing rack, you know? I mean, we’re talking Hollywood, and she’s showing them off. We think she went into that room, when we both saw her that once. We didn’t see her go in, but she was headed that way, and she wasn’t checked in here.”
    “You boys know a hooker when you see one?” Lucas asked.
    Kyle did: he shook his head and said, “Not a hooker. Hookers always carry these big bags. She wasn’t carrying anything. Maybe car keys. She was coming back from somewhere and I think she went in that room.”
    “Would you recognize her if you saw her again?” Lucas asked.
    “Oh, yeah,” Joshua said. “I’d recognize her.”
    Lucas took down the description: mid-thirties, blond, long hair, mid-height. Hollywood tits.
    “Looked me right in the eyes for a long time,” Joshua said. “Really sorta . . .” His voice trailed away.
    “. . . stroked your rod,” Kyle finished.
    Lucas was walking out of the office, then paused and turned back. “Kyle . . . you said you came in here to get your plunger, and then you heard the explosion. How much time between the time you came back in and the explosion?”
    Kyle said, “Well . . .”
    He walked over to the door, pushed it open, then stepped back through and stomped around the desk and down a short hallway to a closet, opened it, got out a plunger, and walked back to the desk. “How long was that?”
    Lucas said, “Thirty seconds.”
    “Then that’s how long it was. Wasn’t long.”
    “You didn’t stop to chat or anything . . .”
    “Nope. Went right back to the closet and got the plunger,” he said.
    “He did,” Joshua said.
    “When Officer Dee pulled into the parking lot, did he hang around outside, or did he come right in?”
    “He came right in. You know, however long it takes to walk from his car to here.”
    Dee’s car was thirty feet from the door. Fifteen seconds.
    “And how long did you talk to him in here?” Lucas asked.
    “Showed us the picture, Kyle said that thing about the corner room. We talked about it, and he walked out. Just, you know . . . not too long.”
    “No conversation . . .”
    “Not really. Not long, anyway.”
    Lucas nodded, gave them business cards and said, “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”
    * * *
    OUTSIDE AGAIN, Lucas walked back to the crowd of cops, sorted out an arson guy.
    “Is there any personal stuff in there? Anything left behind? Anything? Toothbrush?”
    “Not that I’ve seen so far. But everything that wasn’t nailed down, fell down, so there could be something under all the crap.”
    “Call me when you’ve worked through it; I need to know,” Lucas said, and handed over a business card.
    The arson guy nodded and stuck the card in his wallet. “What’s up with that?”
    “The kids up at the office say the fire started a couple of minutes after Dee went through the door—probably less than five minutes. The question is, since they can’t see the office from their room, how’d they know