Rules of Prey

CHAPTER 24

Before he went home, Lucas returned to McGowan's. There were a half-dozen squad cars, three city cars, and a technician's van at the Werschel house. Two more squads were parked in the street at McGowan's. A Channel Eight truck with a microwave remote dish mounted on top had backed into her yard and a half-dozen black cables snaked out of the back of the truck to the house and disappeared inside.

A patrol lieutenant saw Lucas coming down the sidewalk and got out of his car.

"Lucas. Thought you'd gone home," the lieutenant said.

"On my way. How's it look?"

"We're covering everything. We got some footprints out of that ditch, looks like he fell right in it. Could have hurt himself."

"Any blood?"

"No. But we put out a general alert to the hospitals with the description on the fliers and added some stuff about the clay. They should have an eye out for him."

"Good. Have you found anybody who saw him after he got out of the ditch? Further north?"

"Nobody so far. We're going to knock on doors six or seven blocks up-"

"Concentrate on the street that leads out to the expressway. I'd bet my left nut that's where he parked."

The lieutenant nodded. "We've already done that. Started while it was still dark, getting people out of bed. Nothing."

"How about the footprints? Anything clear?"

"Yeah. They're pretty good. He was wearing-"

"Nike Airs," Lucas interjected.

"No," the lieutenant said, his forehead wrinkling. "They were Reeboks. When we called in, we told the tech we had some prints and he brought along a reference book. They're making molds, so they can look at them back at the lab, but there's no doubt. They were brand-new Reeboks. No sign of wear on the soles."

Lucas scratched his head. "Reeboks?"

Annie McGowan was sparkling. Seven o'clock in the morning and she looked as though she'd been up for hours.

"Lucas," she called when she caught sight of him by the door. "Come on in."

"Big show tonight?"

"Noon, afternoon, and night is more like it. Right now we're setting up for a remote for the Good-Morning Show." She glanced at her watch. "Fifteen minutes."

A producer came out of the living room, saw Lucas, and hurried over. "Lieutenant, what's the chance of getting a few minutes of tape with you?"

"On what?"

"On the whole setup. How it worked, what went wrong."

Lucas shrugged. "We fucked up. You want to put that on the air?"

"With this case, if you want to say it, I think we could get it on," the producer said.

"You going to use your tape of the fight?"

The producer's eyes narrowed. "It's an incredible piece of action," he said.

"I won't comment if you're going to use it," Lucas said. "Hold it back and I'll talk."

"I can't promise you that," the producer said. "But I can talk to the news director about it."

"Okay," Lucas said wearily. "I'll do a couple of minutes. But I want to know what questions are coming and I don't want any tricky stuff."

"Great."

"And you'll see about holding the fight tape?"

"Yeah, sure."

The taping took almost an hour, with a break for McGowan's remote. When he got home, Lucas unplugged the telephones and fell facedown on the bed, not bothering to undress. He woke to a pounding noise, sat up, looked at the clock. It was a little before one in the afternoon.

The pounding stopped and he put his feet on the floor, rubbed the back of his neck, and stood up. A sharp rapping sound came from the bedroom window and he frowned and pulled back the Venetian blind. Jennifer Carey, out on the lawn.

"Open the door," she shouted. He nodded and dropped the blind and went out to the door.

"I figured it out," she said angrily. "I don't know why I didn't see it, but as soon as we heard about the attack, I figured it out." She didn't take off her coat, and instead of walking through to the kitchen as she usually did, she stood in the hallway.

"Figured what out?" Lucas asked sleepily.

"You set McGowan up. Deliberately. You were feeding her those weird tips to make the maddog angry and attract him to McGowan."

"Ah, Jesus, Jennifer."

"I'm right, aren't I?"

He waved her off and started back to the living room.

"Well, she sure as hell paid you back," Jennifer said.

Lucas turned. "What do you mean?"

"That awful tape of you confessing. You know, saying it was all your fault. And then the tape of the fight, with you beating up that poor kid."

"They weren't going to show that," Lucas said hollowly. "We had a deal."

"What?"

"I gave them the interview and the producer said he'd call the news director about not using the tape of the fight."

Jennifer shook her head. "My God, Lucas, sometimes you are so naive. You're supposed to know all about this media stuff, right? But there was no way they wouldn't use that tape. Man, that's terrific action. Big gunfight and two people dead and a police lieutenant beating the crap out of his brother cop who caused it? That tape will probably make the network news tonight."

"Ah, fuck." He slumped on the couch and ran his fingers through his hair.

Jennifer softened and touched him on the crown of the head.

"So I came over here to see if we could use you one more time. And I do mean use."

"What?"

"We'd like to get a joint interview with you and Carla Ruiz. You talking about what you know about the killer, with Ruiz chipping in about the attack. Ellie Carlson will do the interview. I'm producing."

"Why now?"

"The truth? Because if we don't have something heavy to promo for tonight, McGowan and Channel Eight are going to kick us so bad that we'll hurt for weeks. They'll do it anyway, but with a joint interview we might keep a respectable piece of the audience, for at least one of the news shows. Especially if we promo it right."

"Is this sweeps week?"

"You got it."

"I'll have to talk to the chief."

Daniel was gloomy, withdrawn. He gestured Lucas to a chair and turned his own chair, staring out his office window at the street.

"I saw the interview tape on Channel Eight. Taking the blame. Nice try."

"I thought it might help."

"Fat chance. I gave Cochrane two weeks' administrative leave with pay, told him to stay away from the media, get his face fixed up. You really clobbered him."

"I'll try to find him, talk to him," Lucas said.

"I don't know," Daniel said. "Maybe it'd be better if you just stayed away for a while."

Lucas shifted uncomfortably. "This is a bad time to talk about it, but Jennifer Carey wants a joint interview with me and Carla Ruiz. She's up-front about it. It's because of the sweeps this week. But she thinks if they can get some tape, promo it, it might cut down on Channel Eight's impact. At least we'd get something positive out there."

"Go ahead, if you want," Daniel said. He didn't seem to care much, and continued staring out at the street.

"Did the guys out at the scene get anything we can use?"

"Not that they told me about," Daniel said. They sat in silence for a moment, then Daniel sighed and swung his chair around.

"Homicide isn't going to catch the guy, unless it's by accident," he said. "With this close call, we might scare him off for a week, or two weeks, but he'll be back. Or maybe he'll leave town and start somewhere else. You know something? I don't want him to do that. I want to nail him here. And you're going to have to do it. The McGowan thing was a disaster, all right, but I keep thinking, not a total disaster. I keep thinking that Davenport figured the guy out. And if he did it once, maybe he can do it again. Maybe… I don't know."

"I don't have an idea in my fuckin' head," Lucas said.

"You're messed up," Daniel said. "But it'll go away. Your head will start working again."

"You're wrong about the way we'll break it," Lucas said. "It won't happen because I figured him out, because I haven't. When we get him, we'll get him on a piece of luck."

"I hate to depend on luck; I'd hoped we could come up with something a little more reliable."

"There isn't anything reliable, not in this world," Lucas said. "The maddog's had a fantastic game. Ruiz should have been able to tell us more than she did-I mean, she actually had her hands on him. If she'd pulled away his mask… We should have gotten a better description out of the attack on Brown. I keep thinking: If only Sparks had been on the other side of the street. He might have seen him full-face. I keep thinking: If only Lewis had written the guy's name on her calendar. Or if she had written anything about him. We should have nailed him at McGowan's; when he got away, we should have been able to freeze his car, if it really is a Thunderbird. He's been incredibly lucky. But there's one certainty in the world of game-playing: luck will turn. It always does. When we get him, we'll get him on a piece of luck."

"Christ knows it's our turn for some," Daniel said.

Jennifer had already talked to Carla about an interview, and when Lucas called to agree, she told him that Carla was ready. They would shoot it at three o'clock and run an early, tight version at six o'clock. A longer version would be promoed for the ten-o'clock news, which the station had decided to expand to accommodate the interview.

Wear a suit, she said, and a blue shirt.

Shave again.

The interview lasted an hour, Lucas cool and distracted, Carla warm and insistent. With a proper cut, it would look good. Jennifer watched the interviewer talking with them, and halfway through, realized that Lucas and Carla were sleeping together. Or had slept together.

When the interview was over, she left with Lucas, trailing behind the cameraman and sound technician, who were carrying gear down to the van. Alone in the elevator she said, "I thought you might have been sleeping with McGowan. I see I was wrong. It was Carla Ruiz."

"Ah, man, Jennifer, I can't deal with this today," Lucas said, staring at the elevator floor.

"I don't mind so much," she said sadly. "I knew it was going to happen. I was hoping it wouldn't be this soon."

"I think it's done with," Lucas said dispiritedly.

"Just slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am?"

Lucas shook his head. "She gave me a little talk a few days ago. She likes me okay, but she's ready to cut me off when I conflict with her work."

"Oh, my, that hasn't happened before, has it?" Jennifer asked. Her tone was light, even sarcastic, but a tear rolled down her cheek.

Lucas reached out and thumbed it away. "Don't do that, for Christ's sake."

"Why not? You can't tolerate real emotion?"

He looked at the floor between his feet, then cocked his head at her. "Sometimes people don't know each other as well as they think they do. You're giving me shit and I'm supposed to take it like a man, right? You know what I feel like? I feel like going home and sticking my forty-five in my mouth and blowing my brains out. I've been beat up by a madman. I might recover. I might not. But I'll never forget it. Not in this life."

The elevator door opened and he walked away and never looked back.

Elle watched him across the expansive game board. The bookie and attorney had gone together, the two students followed a few minutes later. The grocer was still staring at the map, figuring.

Meade was no dummy. After a day's fighting, in which the South controlled most of the heights south of Gettysburg, he cautiously withdrew to the south, toward Washington. There were prepared positions waiting. Now the ball was in Lee's court. Lee-Elle, with advice from Lucas, as Longstreet-could continue his invasion of the North. That looked increasingly untenable. Or he could go after Meade's army to the south. That army would have to be destroyed in any case. But if Lee went after Meade, it would mean the kind of Napoleonic attack that failed at the real Gettysburg. Once he got down to close-quarters fighting around Washington, with the mountains to his west and a flooding Potomac to his south, it would be kill or be killed. Lucas' game could end the Civil War two years early…

"You can't keep thinking about it," Elle said.

"What?" Lucas had been balancing on the back two legs of his chair, staring at the ceiling.

"You can't keep brooding about the tragedy out at the reporter's house. It's pointless. And you almost had him. You drew him in. If you'd stop feeling sorry for yourself, you'd come up with something new."

Lucas dropped the chair to the floor and stood up.

"My problem is, I can't think of anything. My head is frozen. I think he's gone."

"No. Something is going to happen," Elle said. "You know how there's a rhythm to these games? When we all know something is about to happen, even when it doesn't have to? I feel the same kind of rhythm here. The rhythm says this whole thing is about to resolve itself."

"The problem is, how?" the grocer interjected.

"That is the problem," Lucas said, snapping a finger at the grocer. "Exactly. Suppose the guy resolves it by leaving? He could start all over somewhere else, and we wouldn't even know it. And we've really got nothing to go on. Not a real clue in the bunch. If he wants to leave, he can walk."

"He won't," Elle said positively. "This thing is rushing to a conclusion. I can feel the wheels."

"I hope so," Lucas said. "I don't think I can take much more of it."

"We're praying for you," Elle said, and Lucas realized the second nun was also watching him. She nodded. "Every night. God will answer. You've got to get him."