Rules of Prey

CHAPTER 25

The maddog called in sick from Eau Claire. He lay in bed watching cable television from the Cities and finally left the motel just before the noon checkout time. He got back to his apartment in the early afternoon, cleaned up, drove down to his office, and said he was feeling better. He tried to work. He failed.

The fiasco at the McGowan house was the big news. The entire office was talking about it. The maddog took no pleasure in the talk, felt no power flowing from it. He had been mousetrapped. Davenport had done it, had lured him to McGowan. Davenport understood him that well. Had stalked him. Had failed only through a set of circumstances so bizarre that they could never be repeated.

The maddog knew he had been lucky. So lucky. It was time to reconsider the game. Perhaps he should stop. He was far ahead. He had the points. But could he stop? He wasn't sure. If he couldn't, perhaps he could move somewhere else. Back to Texas. Get away from the cold. Rethink the game.

It took him until well after five to clear his desk, finish the routine real-estate and probate work. When he left, a television was flickering in one of the associates' offices, an indulgence not permitted during the regular workday. Lucas Davenport's face was on the screen, the camera tight on his features. There were dark marks under his eyes, but he was well-controlled. The picture froze momentarily and then the cameras switched to the anchorwoman.

He stepped closer to listen. "… the complete interview with the survivor Carla Ruiz and Lieutenant Lucas Davenport tonight on an expanded edition of TV3's Ten-O'Clock Report."

He was torn between Channel Eight and TV3. Channel Eight had been breaking all the most interesting news during the game, but the interview on TV3 might tell him more about the man who mousetrapped him. He finally decided, after consulting his video recorder's instruction book, that he could tape TV3 while he watched Channel Eight. He tried it with a network comedy. It worked.

McGowan, so beautiful, led the evening news, dominated it. She recounted the surveillance, showed off the alert beeper she'd worn on her belt. Told of sitting in her bedroom alone at night, listening to every sound, wondering if the maddog was coming. She was taped as she made a single woman's portion of stir-fry. Unused copper skillets hung from the walls. An old-fashioned pendulum clock ticked in the background.

With the scene set, she recounted the attack, running through the night with a camera bouncing behind her, ending with a camera-activated reenactment of the shootings, McGowan playing all parts. Then across the final fence to the sewer ditch, where she pointed out the maddog's footprints in the yellow clay.

It was brilliant theater, and like all brilliant theater, ended with a punch: the fight in the harsh light, Davenport destroying the rookie cop, his hands moving so fast they could barely be seen. Then Davenport starting toward the cameras, murder in his eye, until stopped by McGowan's voice.

Brutal. Davenport was not just a player. He was an animal.

When the show ended, the maddog stared at the television for a few moments, then punched up the tape of the TV3 interview.

Davenport again, but a different one. Cooler. Calculating. A hunter, not a fighter. The maddog recognized the quality instinctively, had seen it in the ranchers around his father's place, the men who talked about my deer and my antelope.

Ruiz still drew him, her face, her dark eyes. The connection was not essential, was not the connection he felt with a Chosen -she had passed beyond that privilege. But there was an undeniable residue of their previous relationship, and the maddog felt it and thought about it.

Was he being manipulated again? Was this another Davenport trick? He thought not.

The maddog had never had a two-sided relationship with a woman, but he was acutely sensitive to the relationships between others. Halfway through the interview, he realized that Davenport and Carla Ruiz were somehow involved with each other. Sexually? Yes. The more he watched, the more he was convinced that he was right.

Interesting.