Prey: Night Prey Part 28

"Could be a real slow leak," Koop said. "Check it this morning before you went out?"

"Can't say as I did," the driver said, scratching his head. "Listen, thank you much, and I think I'll get our b.u.t.ts into town before it goes flat again."

SO HE HAD receipts and he'd been seen fishing on the ramp; and he took the boat registration number. He'd have to think about that: maybe he shouldn't be able to remember all of it, just that it was a red Lund and the last two registration letters were LS . . . Or maybe that the first number on it was 7. He'd have to think about it.

On his way through town, he stopped at the store that issued the register receipt he'd found in the trash can, bought a Slim Jim and a can of beer, and stuffed the receipt and the sack under the seat. Maybe they'd remember his face in the store, maybe not-but he'd been there, he could describe the place, and he could even describe the young woman who'd waited on him. Too heavy. Wore dark-green fashion overalls.

A little before five, he started back to the Cities. He wanted to be within radio range, to pick up the news. To see if they were looking for him. . . .

THEY WERE NOT, as far as he could tell. One of the evening talk shows was devoted to the attack, and the attack the week before, but it was all a bunch of crazies calling in.

Huh.

They were looking for the wrong guy. . . .

He went back to the park, got the knife and keys. Felt better for it.

At one o'clock in the morning, Koop wasn't quite drunk, but he was close. Driving around, driving around, up and down the Cities, Jensen was more and more on his mind. At one, he drove past her apartment. A light shone behind her window. A man was walking down the street, walking a small silvery dog. At one-fifteen, Koop cruised it again. Still the light. She was up late; couldn't sleep, after the fight-Koop thought about it as a fight. Blondy'd asked for it, f.u.c.king Koop's woman; what was a guy supposed to do?

Koop's mind was like a brick, not working right. He knew it wasn't working right. He could not pull it away from Jensen. He had other things to think about-he'd been cruising his next target, he was ready to make an entry. He couldn't think about it.

At one-thirty, the light was still on in Jensen's apartment, and Koop decided to go up to his spy roost. He knew he shouldn't risk it; but he would. He could feel himself being pulled in, like a nail to a magnet.

At one thirty-five, he went into the apartment across the street from Jensen's and climbed the stairs. Physically, he was fine, moving as smoothly and quietly as ever. It was his mind that was troubling. . . .

He checked the hall. Empty. Had to be quiet: everybody would be spooked. He went to the roof entry, climbed the last flight, pushed through the door, and quickly closed it behind himself. He stood there for a moment, the doork.n.o.b still in his hand, listening. Nothing. He stepped to the edge of the door hutch and looked up at Jensen's window. The light was on, but at the angle, he couldn't see anything.

He crossed to the air-conditioner housing, grabbed the edge, and pulled himself up. He crawled to the vent and looked around the corner. n.o.body in sight. He leaned back behind the vent, put his back to it. Looked up at the stars.

He thought about what he'd become, caught by this pa.s.sion. He would have to stop. He knew he would have to stop, or he was doomed. He could think of only one way to stop it-and that way touched him. But he would like to have her first, if he could.

Before he killed her.

Koop looked around the corner past the vent, and, shocked, almost s.n.a.t.c.hed his head back. Almost, but not quite. He had the reflexes and training of a cat burglar, and had taught himself not to move too quickly. Across the street, in Jensen's window, a man was looking out. He was six feet back from the gla.s.s, as though he were taking care not to be seen from the street. He wore dark slacks and a white dress shirt, without a jacket.

He wore a shoulder holster.

A cop. They knew. They were waiting for him.

24.

WEATHER CURLED UP on the couch. The television was tuned to CNN, and Lucas watched it without seeing it, brooding. "Nothing at all?" she asked.

"Not a thing," he said. He didn't look at her, just pulled at his lip and stared at the tube. He was tired, his face gray. "Three days. The media's killing us."

"I wouldn't worry so much about the media, if I were you."

Now he turned his head. "That's because you don't have to worry. You guys bury your mistakes," Lucas said. He grinned when he said it, but it wasn't a pleasant smile.

"I'm serious. I don't understand. . . ."

"The media's like a fever," Lucas explained. "Heat starts to build up. The people out in the neighborhoods get scared, and they start calling their city councilmen. The councilmen panic-that's what politicians do, basically, panic-and they start calling the mayor. The mayor calls the chief. The chief is a politician who is appointed by the mayor, so she panics. And the s.h.i.t flows downhill."

"I don't understand all the panic. You're doing everything you can."

"You have to look at Davenport's first rule of how the world really works," Lucas said.

"I don't think I've heard that one," Weather said.

"It's simple," he said. "A politician will never, ever, get a better job when he's out of office."

"That's it?"

"That's it. That explains everything. They're desperate to hang on to their jobs. That's why they panic. They lose the election, it's back to the car wash."

After a moment of silence, Weather asked, "How's Connell?"

"Not good," Lucas said.

CONNELL' S FACIA LSKIN was stretched, taut; dark smudges hung under her eyes, her hair was perpetually disarranged, as though she'd been sticking her fingers into an electric outlet.

"Something's wrong," she said. "Maybe the guy knows we're here. Maybe Jensen was imagining it."

"Maybe," Lucas said. They waited in Jensen's living room, stacks of newspapers and magazines by their feet. A Walkman sat on a coffee table. A television was set up in the second bedroom, but they couldn't listen to the stereo for fear that it would be heard in the hallway. "It sure felt good, though."

"I know . . . but you know what maybe it could be?" Connell had a foot-high stack of paper next to her hand, profiles and interviews with apartment employees, residents of Jensen's floor, and everyone else in the building with a criminal record. She had been pawing through it compulsively. "It could be, like, a relative of somebody who works here. And whoever works here goes home and lets it slip that we're in here."

Lucas said, "The keys are a big question. There are any number of ways that a cat burglar could get one key, but two keys-that's a problem."

"Gotta be an employee."

"Could be a valet service at a restaurant," he said. "I've known valets who worked with cat burglars. You see the car come in, you get the plate number, and from that, you can get an address and you've got the key."

"She said she hadn't used a valet since she got the new key," Connell said.

"Maybe she forgot. Maybe it's something so routine that she doesn't remember it."

"I bet it's somebody at her office-somebody with access to her purse. You know, like one of the messenger kids, somebody who can go in and out of her office without being noticed. Grab the key, copy it. . . ."

"But that's another problem," Lucas said. "You've got to have some knowledge to copy it, and a source of blanks."

"So it's a guy working with a cat burglar. The burglar supplies the knowledge, the kid supplies the access."

"That's one way that it works," Lucas admitted. "But n.o.body in her office seems like a good bet."

"A boyfriend of somebody in the office; a secretary picks up the key, lays it off. . . ."

Lucas stood up, yawned, wandered around the apartment, stopped to look at a framed black-and-white photograph. It wasn't much, a flower in a roundish pot, a stairway in the background. Lucas didn't know much about art, but this felt like it. A tiny penciled signature said Andre something, something with a K. He yawned again and rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Connell going through the paper.

"How'd you feel this morning?"

She looked up. "Hollow. Empty."

"I don't understand how it works, the whole chemotherapy thing," Lucas said.

She put down the paper. "Basically, the kind of chemo I get is poisonous. It knocks down the cancer, but it also knocks down my body," she said. Her voice was neutral, informed, like a medical commentator on public television. "They can only use it so long before the chemotherapy starts doing too much damage. Then they take me off it, and my body starts recovering from the chemo, but so does the cancer. The cancer gains a little every time. I've been on it for two years. I'm down to seven weeks between treatments. I've been five. I'm feeling it again."

"Lots of pain?"

She shook her head. "Not yet. I can't really describe it. It's a hollow feeling, and a weakness, and then a sickness, like the worst flu in the world. I understand, toward the end, it'll get painful, when it gets into my bone marrow . . . I expect to opt for other measures before then."

"Jesus," he said. Then: "What are the chances that the chemo will knock it down completely?"

"It happens," she said with a brief, ghostly smile. "But not for me."

"I don't think I could handle it," Lucas said.

The balcony door was closed, and Lucas moved over toward it, staying six feet back from the gla.s.s, and looked out at the park. Nice day. The rain had quit, and the light-blue sky was dappled with fair-weather clouds, cloud shadows skipping across the lake. A woman dying.

"But the other problem," Connell said, almost to herself, "besides the key, I mean, is why he hasn't come up here. Four days. Nothing."

Lucas was still thinking about cancer, had to wrench himself back. "You're talking to yourself," Lucas said.

"That's because I'm going crazy."

"You want a pizza?" Lucas asked.

"I don't eat pizza. It clogs up your arteries and makes you fat."

"What kind don't you eat?"

"Pepperoni and mushroom," Connell said.

"I'll get one delivered to the manager. I can run down and get it when it comes in," he said, yawning again. "This is driving me nuts."

"Why doesn't he come?" Connell asked rhetorically. "Because he knows we're here."

"Maybe we just haven't waited long enough," Lucas said.

Connell continued: "How does he know we're here? One: he sees us. Two: he hears about us. Okay, if he sees us, how does he know we're cops? He doesn't-unless he's a cop, and he recognizes people coming and going. If he hears about us, how does he hear about us? We've been over that."

"Pepperoni and mushroom?"

"No f.u.c.kin' anchovies."

"No way." Lucas picked up the phone, frowned, hung it up, and walked back to the gla.s.s door. "Did somebody check the roof on the other side of the street?"

Connell looked up. "Yeah, but Jensen was right. It's below the level of her window. She doesn't even bother to pull the drapes."

"It's not below the level of the air-conditioner housing," Lucas said. "C'mere. Look at this."

Connell stood up and looked. "There's no way to get up on it."

"He's a cat burglar," Lucas said. "And if he got up on it, he'd be looking right into the apartment. Who went over the roof?"

"Skoorag-but he just strolled around the roof. I saw him do it. Said there wasn't anything up there."

"We ought to take a look," Lucas said.

Connell looked at her watch. "Greave and O'Brien'll be here in an hour. We could go over then."

O'BRIEN CARRIED A brown paper sack with a magazine inside, and tried to hide it from Connell. Greave said, "I've been thinking: how about if we picked up all three of them, the brothers and Cherry, separate them, tell them we've got a break, and tell them the first one who talks gets immunity."

Lucas grinned but shook his head. "You're thinking right, but you've got to have something. If you don't, they'll either tell you to go f.u.c.k yourself, or, which is worse, the guy who actually did the killing is the one who talks. He walks, and Roux hangs you out the window by your nuts. So, you gotta get something."

"I've gotten something," Greave said.

"What?"

"I've gotten desperate."

"O'BRIEN HAD A Penthouse," Connell said.

"It's a very boring job," Lucas said mildly.

"Think about this," Connell said. "What if women brought p.o.r.no magazines to work, pictures of men with huge p.e.n.i.ses? And the women sat there and looked at the pictures, then looked at you, then looked at the picture. Wouldn't you find that just a little demeaning?"

"Not me, personally," Lucas said, face straight. "I'd just see it as another career opportunity."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Davenport, you always weasel away."

"Not always," Lucas said. "But I do have a well-developed sense of when to weasel." Then, as they crossed the street, "This is where the woman was killed and the guy f.u.c.ked up."

They climbed the steps and buzzed the manager. A moment later, a door opened in the lobby and a middle-aged woman looked out. Her hair was not quite blue. Lucas held up his badge, and she let him in.

"I'll get somebody to let you up on the roof," the woman said when Lucas explained what they wanted. "That was awful, that poor guy stabbed."

"Were you here when those two people were attacked outside?"

"No, n.o.body was here. Except tenants, I mean," she said.

"I understand the guy was between the inner and outer doors when he was attacked."