Rules of Prey (12 page)

“Okay. I’m going to do my hair. What else?”

“Wear a plain blouse. Not yellow. Light blue would be good if you’ve got one. Jeans are fine. Stay away from the makeup. Just a touch of lipstick. Jennifer’s pretty good. You’ll do fine.”

“I’m Jennifer Carey. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I see you on the news . . .”

Lucas watched them talk as Jennifer’s cameraman, the two newspaper reporters, and the two photographers looked curiously around the studio. Jennifer was watching Carla’s face closely, gauging her reactions, smiling, encouraging her to talk.

“Okay, listen, guys,” Jennifer said finally, turning to the newspaper people. “Why don’t we do it this way. I need camera time, so why don’t we have Carla tell her story for you guys and we’ll film that, and you can get your pictures. That’ll let Carla get what she wants to say in mind. Then we’ll do our interview.”

“I’ll want to stay around for your interview,” said the
Star-Tribune
reporter. The
Pioneer Press
reporter nodded.

“No problem, but no breaking in.”

Lucas watched as the two newspaper reporters extracted the story from Carla. She relaxed under the friendly attention, becoming almost ebullient as she told how the killer
had fled for his life. After fifteen minutes Lucas called for a time-out.

“We’ve got to make the press conference at nine o’clock,” he said to Jennifer. “You better get started.”

“We’d like to get you to walk through it, just show us where the guy grabbed you, and what happened from there. Use it for the art, the pictures,” said one of the newspaper photographers.

Carla re-created it, starting from the door, a mime of a woman carrying groceries and then suddenly attacked. As she walked about, becoming increasingly animated, the photographers danced around her, their strobes flickering like lightning.

When they were done, Jennifer led her through it again, acting the part of the attacker. When that was done, the two women sat and chatted, the cameraman taking frontal and reverse shots of both, with facial close-ups.

“Okay. Is there anything we missed?” asked Jennifer. She glanced at her watch.

“I don’t think so,” said Carla.

“We all done, guys?” she asked the other reporters. They both nodded.

“Okay, I’m shutting it down,” Lucas said. “Nobody gets back in for a last word. If you think of anything you
must
have, get it from your guys at the press conference. Okay? Everybody cool?”

He ushered them out five minutes later.

“What do you think?” he asked Carla after they were gone.

“It was interesting,” she said, her eyes bright.

“Yeah, well, the press conference will be different. Lots of very quick questions, maybe nasty. Don’t mention this interview or the other stations will go crazy. By the time they see TV3, we want you out of sight.”

On the way to the press conference, Carla said, “How long have you known Jennifer Carey?”

He glanced across at her. “Years. Why?”

“She stood in your space. And you didn’t notice. That usually means . . . intimacy at some level.”

“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Lucas said neutrally.

“Have you slept with her?”

“We don’t know each other well enough to talk about that kind of thing,” he said.

“Sounds like a big
yes
to me,” she said.

“Jesus.”

“Hmm.”

The press conference was short, loud, and finally nasty. The chief spoke after Carla.

“Do you have any suspects?” one reporter shouted.

“We are checking all leads—”

“That means no,” the reporter shouted.

“No, it doesn’t,” Daniel said. Lucas winced.

“Then you
do
have a suspect,” a woman called.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You want to tell us what you’re saying? In short words?”

An hour after the press conference, whipping north along I-35 in Lucas’ Porsche, Carla was still hyper.

“So you’ll have tapes of Jennifer’s interview?”

“Yeah, the recorder’s set. You can look at them when you get back.”

“It sure went downhill after the chief called that guy a jerk,” Carla said.

Lucas laughed. “I loved it. The guy
was
a jerk. But it chilled out Daniel, too. That’s good. He’ll be more careful.”

“And you’re not going to tell me about the suspect?”

“Nope.”

It was a three-hour drive to Lucas’ cabin. They stopped at a general store to stock up on groceries and Lucas chatted with the owner for a minute about fishing. “Two large last week,” the owner said.

“How big?”

“Henning, the doctor, the row-troller? He got one
forty-eight and a half inches off the big island in those weeds. He figured thirty-two pounds. Then some guy on the other side of the lake, tourist from Chicago, I think he was fishing out of Wilson’s, took a twenty-eight-pounder.”

“Henning release it?”

“Yeah. He says he’s not keeping anything unless there’s a chance it’ll go forty.”

“Could be a long wait. There aren’t that many guys in the North Woods with a forty-pound musky on the wall.”

“It’s beautiful,” Carla said, looking out at the lake.

“Doesn’t hurt to have the moon out there. It’s almost embarrassing. It looks like a beer ad.”

“It’s beautiful,” she repeated. She turned back into the cabin.

“Which bedroom should I take?” He pointed her back to the corner.

“The big one. Might as well take it, since I won’t be here. There’s a bike in the garage, it’s a half-mile out to the general store, three miles into town. There’s a boat down at the dock. You ever run an outboard?”

“Sure. I used to go north with my husband every summer. One thing he could do was fish.”

“There are a half-dozen rods in a rack on the porch and a couple of tackle boxes under the glider, if you want to try some fishing. If you go off the point out there, around the edges of the weed bed, you’ll pick up some northern.”

“Okay. You going back right now?”

“In a little while. I’ll stick the food in the refrigerator and then I’m going to have a beer and sit out on the porch for a while.”

“I’m going to get changed, take a shower,” Carla said.

Lucas sat on the glider and kept it gently swinging, his feet flexing against the low window ledge below the screen. The nights were getting cool and there was just enough wind to bring in the scent and the sound of the pines. A raccoon crossed through the yard light of a neighboring cabin,
heading back toward the garbage cans. From the other way, a few lots down the lake, a woman laughed and there was a splash. From the cabin behind him, the shower stopped running. A few minutes later, Carla came out on the porch.

“You want another beer?”

“Mmm. Yeah. One more.”

“I’m going to have one.”

She was wearing a pink cotton robe and rubber shower shoes. She brought back a Schmidt and handed it to him, sat next to him on the glider, and curled her legs beneath her. Her hair was wet and the drops of water glistened like diamonds in the indirect light from the windows.

“A little cool now,” she said. “You ever come up here in winter?”

“I come up here every chance I get. I come up in the winter and ski, cross-country. There are trails all over the place. You can ski for miles.”

“Sounds great.”

“You’re invited,” Lucas said promptly.

As they talked he could feel the warmth coming off her, from the shower.

“Are you getting cold?”

“Not yet. Maybe in a few minutes. Right now it feels fresh.” She turned and leaned backward, her head on his shoulder. “It doesn’t seem like a cop ought to have a place like this. I mean, a drug-and-vice guy with a Porsche.”

“Doctor’s orders. I got so I was doing nothing but work,” he said. He eased an arm behind her shoulder. “I’d be on the street all day and sometimes half the night, then I’d go home and work on my games. I’d get so cranked I couldn’t sleep even when I was so tired I couldn’t walk. So I went in to see the doc. I thought I ought to get some legal downers and he said what I really needed was a place not to work. I never work up here. I mean, never money-work. I chop wood, fix the garage, work on the dock, all that. But I don’t money-work.”

“Guess what?” Carla said.

“What?”

“I don’t have a goddamn thing on under this robe.” She giggled a beer giggle.

“Jeez. Absolutely buck naked, huh?”

“Yep. I figured, why not?”

“So can I consider this an official pass?”

“Would you rather not?”

“No, no, no no no.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the jaw just below her ear. “I was desperately figuring my chances. I’d been such a nice guy all along, it seemed sort of crass to suddenly start hustling.”

“That’s why I decided to come on to you,” she said. “Because you weren’t rushing me like some guys.”

Much later in the night, she said, “I’ve got to sleep. I’m really starting to feel the day.”

“Just one thing,” he said in the dark. “When we went through that routine up in your apartment the first time I interviewed you, you said the guy who jumped you felt softer than me. You still think that?”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “Yes. I have this distinct impression that he was a little . . . not porky, but fleshy. Like there was fat under there and that he wasn’t terribly muscular. I mean, he was a lot stronger than I am, but I only weigh a little over a hundred pounds. I don’t think he’s a tough guy.”

“Shit.”

“Does that mean something?”

“Maybe. I’m afraid it might.”

Early the next morning Lucas walked out to his car, fished under the seat, and retrieved a Charter Arms .38 special revolver in a black nylon holster and two boxes of shells. He carried them back to the house.

“What’s that?” Carla asked when he brought it in.

“A pistol. You thought you might need one.”

“Hmm.” Carla closed one eye and squinted at him with the other. “You brought it up with you, but didn’t bring it out last night. That suggests you expected to stay over.”

“A subject which does not merit further exploration,” Lucas declared with a grin. “Get your shoes on. We’ve got to take a hike.”

They went into the woods across the road from Lucas’ cabin, followed a narrow jump-across stream that eventually became a long damp spot, then turned into a gully that led into the base of a steep hill. They came out on a grassy plateau facing a sandy cutbank.

“We’ll shoot into the cutbank,” Lucas said. “We’ll start at ten feet and move back to twenty.”

“Why so close?”

“Because if you’re any further away, you ought to run or yell for help. Shooting is for close-up desperation,” Lucas said. He looked around and nodded toward a downed log. “Let’s go talk about it for a minute.”

They sat on the log and Lucas pulled the pistol apart, demonstrated the function of each piece and how to load and unload it. He was clicking the brass shells into the cylinder when they heard a chattering overhead. Lucas looked up and saw the red squirrel.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Now, watch this.”

He pivoted slowly on the log and lifted the weapon toward the squirrel.

“What are you going to do?”

“Show you what a thirty-eight will do to real meat,” Lucas said, his eyes fixed on the squirrel. The animal was half-hidden behind a thick limb on a red pine but occasionally exposed its entire body.

“Why? Why are you going to kill it?” Carla’s eyes were wide, her face pale.

“You just don’t know what a bullet will do until you see it. Gotta stick your fingers in the wounds. Like Doubting Thomas, you know?”

“Hey, don’t,” she commanded. “Come on, Lucas.”

Lucas pointed the weapon at the squirrel, both eyes open, waiting.

“Hit the little sucker right between the eyes, never feel a thing . . .”

“Lucas . . .” Her voice was up and she clutched at his gun arm, dragging it down. She was horrified.

“You look horrified.”

“Jesus Christ, the squirrel didn’t do anything . . .”

“You feel scared?”

She dropped her arm and turned cold. “Is this some kind of lesson?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said, turning away from the squirrel. “Hold on to that feeling you had. You felt that way for a squirrel. Now think about unloading a thirty-eight into a human being.”

“Jesus, Lucas . . .”

“You hit a guy in the chest, not through the heart, but just in the chest and you’ll blow up his lungs and he’ll lie there snorting out this bright red blood with little bubbles in it and usually his eyes look like they’re made out of wax and sometimes he rocks back and forth and he’s dying and there’s not a thing that anybody can do about it, except maybe God—”

“I don’t want the gun,” she said suddenly.

Lucas held the weapon up in front of his face. “They’re awful things,” he said. “But there’s one thing that’s even more awful.”

“What’s that?”

“When you’re the squirrel.”

He gave her the basics of close-in shooting, firing at crude man-size figures drawn in the sand of the cutbank. After thirty rounds she began hitting the figures regularly. At fifty, she developed a flinch and began to spray shots.

“You’re jerking the gun,” Lucas told her.

She fired again, jerking the gun. “No I’m not.”

“I can see it.”

“I can’t.”

Lucas swung the cylinder out, emptied it, put three shells in random chambers, and handed the pistol back to her.

“Shoot another round.”

She fired another shot, jerking the weapon, missing.

“Again.”

This time the hammer hit an empty chamber and there was no shot, but she jerked the pistol out of line.

“That’s called a flinch,” Lucas said.

They worked for another hour, stopping every few minutes to talk about safety, about concealment of the gun in her studio, about combat shooting.

“It takes a lot to make a really good shot,” Lucas told her as she looked at the weapon in her hand. “We’re not trying to teach you that. What you’ve got to do is learn to hit that target reliably at ten feet and at twenty feet. That shouldn’t be a problem. If you ever get in a situation where you need to shoot somebody, point the gun and keep pulling the trigger until it stops shooting. Forget about rules or excessive violence or any of that. Just keep pulling.”