Chosen Prey

I…"

His words were coming faster and faster, and finally she held up her hand and said, "Okay, I'm sorry." She wrapped her arms around her knees. "I just, I don't know. I've been reading about this gravedigger guy, and he seems so… cruel. I thought you seemed a little cruel."

He heard the false note again. He was a historian and a critic, and he could pick up a false note as quickly as anyone. He said, "You're comparing me to this gravedigger person?"

"No, no. I just want people not to be cruel." Then she smiled at him and her hand wandered to his groin. "Well, maybe a little cruel sometimes," she said. "Have you been thinking about my call?"

His mind was clicking over now: She was interrogating him. But was she doing it on her own, or was there somebody with her? Could somebody hear them? For Christ's sakes, could somebody see them? He didn't dare look. He said, "I thought this afternoon, because of my mother… something gentle. Something that takes a long time."

She seemed disappointed, and that was, in his mind, confirmation. Something was going on, and he didn't know what it was. "Why don't we do something excessively oral?" He slipped his fingers between her legs. "I haven't been in here yet."

"HE SORTA WALKED away from that question," Del said.

"Doesn't look like she'll be asking any more for a while," said Gibson.

"Goddamnit," Marshall said to Gibson. "Somebody ought to kick your ass for you."

"Take it easy, pal," Gibson said. "When we get finished with this, you wanna take it outside, I'll go with you."

"Nobody's taking it outside," Lucas said. To Gibson he said, "Another comment about Barstad and you'll be directing traffic at a construction site." And to Marshall: "You keep your problems to yourself or I'll ship your ass back to Dunn County." And to both of them: "Everybody know where I'm coming from?"

LATER, WHEN THEY finished with a second round, Barstad asked, "What do you think of the gravedigger?"

"Well, I guess I think what everybody thinks," he said. "He's a crazy man. He needs care."

"I think they just ought to take him out and dump him in a hole somewhere, and cover it up and not tell anybody where he is," she declared. "That would teach him."

"That would," he said. "You're right." Qatar stood up and gathered his clothes. "Everything's getting wrinkled," he said fussily. "Let me go hang them up."

"The rack in the bedroom," she said lazily. "Hurry back."

"You are far too young for me, m'dear," he said.

Qatar was in a panic. She'd mentioned asphyxiation sex twice; she'd mentioned the gravedigger three times-she was interrogating him, he thought, but then…

Was it possible that it was all a symptom of her craziness, with her whole sexual experimentation regime? Was it possible that the gravedigger turned her on? That all of this was innocent?

Then why the false notes? And they were false, clanging like a leaden bell. And now some of her smiles seemed false, and her sexual commentary too dramatic.

The biggest problem, he thought, was that he'd stupidly brought his rope. If there were police around, if they were watching him, they would hang him with it. He didn't know the details of DNA, but he had a general idea of how it worked. And the rope looked dense: It must have soaked up blood-there had been blood almost every time-and skin, and who knows what else.

In the bedroom, he looked around quickly, but there seemed no place to hide anything. He carefully hung his clothes on the rack, then took the rope out of his pants pocket, coiled it tightly, and stepped out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. She had a large rack of towels, washcloths, and other bathroom equipment on a stainless-steel kitchen rack, pushed against one wall. He turned on the water, then slipped the rope under the bottom pile of towels. He washed himself, dried, and went back to the front room.

A camera? Who knew? It might even excite him if he knew…

She was waiting and asked, "What next? You don't want to try the necktie thing?"

"Some other time," he said. "It really makes me nervous, thinking about it."

Again the shadow of disappointment-but exactly how was she disappointed? Because a conspiracy was failing, or because she wanted a loop around her neck?

"James, you can be such a pill," she said.

A little after three o'clock, Qatar left.

"I thought we were gonna go wine shopping," Barstad complained. "I got some money out, I got a book on it-"

"Ellen, you have absolutely destroyed me. I couldn't go wine shopping today without risking a stroke. Next time, we'll go wine shopping before we start the sex. Honestly, you're a little bit… over the top."

"A pill," she said. "You really can be."

"NOTHING HERE," DEL said, as they watched him leave.

Marshall said, "But I think that little girl could use treatment."

Lucas said to Gibson, "I want the tapes-I'll take them with me. I don't want any copies made, I don't want any editing. I'll tell you guys, we're all playing with our jobs on this. If it turns out that Qatar is innocent, and he believes we set him up to make this tape… our gooses could be cooked."

"Hey, I just did what you told me," Gibson said.

"I know. But you'd be cooked anyway. That's why I'm taking the tapes. They're going in a safe, and if we don't need them in this case, I'll burn the sonsofbitches." He shook his head. "Little Miss Muffin may have fucked us up."

THEY STOOD BY the silvered window and watched Qatar walk across the parking lot and get into his car. He seemed a little beaten, and Lucas almost sympathized with him: Barstad was definitely, distinctly, too much. Lucas collected the tapes, and said to Del and Marshall, "We're back to Randy."