Wicked Prey

and a Lexus. A minivan and an SC430 convertible.”
    There wasn’t much more: Lucas stood in the doorway and looked in, but he wasn’t going to find anything the crime-scene crew hadn’t. He walked once around the house, and saw a tricycle in the canal, and wondered about it. A bicycle he’d have understood: you steal a bike, ride it, then throw it in the canal; that’s the way of the world. Had somebody hijacked a trike?
    * * *
    WHEN HE got back around to the front, Barr and Cason had gone inside, and Lucas looked around, then wandered across the street, where a pretty woman, maybe forty or forty-five, was standing in the doorway, watching.
    Lucas said, “Hi.”
    She nodded. “How’s it going over there?”
    “Not well,” Lucas said. “Somebody asked you if you had photos, right?”
    “Yes, but we don’t.”
    “How about photos of the street in general?” Lucas asked. “You know, something that might have their cars in it?”
    “I don’t think so, but I’ll check,” she said. “They killed some police officers?”
    The woman had a peculiar California look, a something-like-coral blouse and aqua slacks, which worked for her, and long blond slightly messy hair that she’d probably paid some guy two hundred dollars to mess up. Lucas took her in, and said, “Yeah, and they executed this woman. A political worker, you know, she worked for a community organizing group. Happened to be there, and bam! Killed her in cold blood.”
    That woke her up a little. “You got this from the Minneapolis police?”
    “I’m from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Lucas said. “I was at the scene—my guy was the guy who was murdered. The woman . . .” He lifted his hands. “. . . I mean, why?”
    “Ah, jeez, that’s awful,” she said, and she meant it. “Look, I’ll go check my pictures, but I’m ninety-nine percent that we don’t have any. We’re not really picture people. I don’t even know how to work my cell phone cam.”
    “Thanks.” Lucas turned and looked down the street. “Don’t see cars. Are any of the other people home?”
    “Dick and Carly live right there. I saw Dick a minute ago.” She pointed sideways across the street.
    “Thanks. Let me know,” Lucas said.
    He was halfway across the street when she called him, and she came down the ten-foot-long driveway, barefoot, and said, “You know, over on Venice Boulevard, there’s a place about four blocks that way”—she pointed—“called David Something, Wedding and Portrait Photography. That guy is supposedly documenting contemporary life in Venice. He’s always walking around in the evening taking pictures of the houses and the people . . .”
    “Great,” Lucas said. And, “You’re a very attractive woman.”
    “I know,” she said. “It makes me feel good.”
    “Are you in the movies?”
    “No, no, but thank you for asking,” and she twiddled her fingers at him and walked back up the driveway to her house.
    Lucas found Barr and asked, “Could I get a ride?”
    “Where?”
    “A place called David Something’s, a wedding and portrait photography place on Venice . . .”
    * * *
    DAVID HARELSON’S Wedding and Portrait Photography, By Appt., was tucked in a corner of a strip shopping center three blocks down the street. Lucas spotted it, Barr did an illegal U-turn to get into the parking lot, and a patrol car lit up its lights and came after him.
    “Ah, kiss my ass,” Barr groaned. “Traffic school, here I come.”
    Lucas said, smiling at it, “I’ll go talk to this guy, you talk to your guy.”
    * * *
    DAVID HARELSON was in, but the door was locked. Lucas saw him moving through to the back of the place, and rapped on the door, and then rapped louder, and then banged on it, and finally Harelson came steaming out of the back, waving a finger like a windshield wiper, and he shouted, “We’re closed.”
    “I’m a cop,” Lucas shouted back. “Open up.”
    Harelson looked at him for a minute, then past him at Barr and the patrol cop, and the flashing lights on the patrol car, then turned a latch.
    “What?” He was a short man, balding, running to fat, with a caterpillar-style brown mustache crawling across his upper lip, and a tiny soul patch on his round chin.
    “A house burned down over by the canals—Carroll Court,” Lucas said. “We hear you’ve been doing some documentary photography in the area.”
    Harelson looked astonished, stepped back to let Lucas inside. “A house on Carroll