Rules of Prey

CHAPTER 31

"You lost him?" Lucas' eyes were black with rage.

"For at least two hours," the surveillance chief admitted, hangdog. He was remembering Cochrane and the fight after the Fuckup. "We don't know whether he suckered us or just wandered away."

"What happened?" They were in the front seat of Lucas' car on the street outside Vullion's office. The maddog was inside, at work.

"He started out just like he always does, carrying his briefcase, except he wasn't wearing a coat or hat or anything."

"No coat?"

"No coat, and it's cold out. Anyway, he walks over two blocks to another law office. It's a big one. It's got a glassed-in reception area on the third floor of the Hops Exchange."

"Yeah, I know it. Woodley and something-something."

"That's it. So we set up to watch the door and the rest of the third floor, in case he came out the back. We had guys on the skyway level and on the first floor, watching the exits there. After an hour and a half or so, when he didn't come out, we started to get worried. We had Carol call-"

"I hope she had a good excuse."

"It was semihorseshit but it held up okay. She called and said she had an important message for Mr. Vullion and could the receptionist get him. The receptionist called somebody-we're watching this through the glass-and then she comes back on and tells Carol that he'd left a long time ago. Just stopped in to see some guy named Hart for five minutes."

"So Where'd he go?"

"I'm getting to that," the surveillance man said defensively. "So Carol says this message is important, and asks, like girl-to-girl, did she see him leave? He's so absentminded, she says, you know how lawyers are. The receptionist says no, she didn't see him leave, but she assumed he left through the fifth-floor exits. See, you can only get in through the reception area, but there are three floors, and you can get out on any of them. They've got an internal elevator, and we didn't know."

"He could have known that," Lucas said. "He probably did. Was it deliberate? Do you think he spotted you?"

"I don't think so. I talked to the people, they all think we're clean."

"Christ, what a mess," said Lucas.

"You think we ought to take him?"

"I don't know. How'd you get him back?"

"Well, we were freaking out and I was talking to everybody to see if there was anything, any trace. And then here he comes, bigger'n shit, right through the skyway. He's got his briefcase and a rolled-up Wall Street Journal and he goes motoring past the skyway man like he's in a hurry."

"He went right back to his office?"

"Straight back."

"So what do you think?"

The surveillance man nibbled his lip and considered the problem. "I don't know," he said finally. "The thing is, if he was deliberately trying to lose us, he could have gone out through the parking ramp from the fifth floor. But the other thing…"

"Yeah?" Lucas prompted.

"I hate to admit it, but he might have gotten by the skyway guy. Completely innocently. We had a lot of spots to block, in case he got by us, somehow. We had a guy in the skyway, watching both the elevators and the stairs. If the elevators opened at just the right minute, and our guy looked over at them, and Vullion popped out of the stairway just at that minute and turned the other way…"

"He could have gotten past?"

"He could have. Without ever knowing we were there."

"Jesus. So we don't know," Lucas said. He peered up at Vullion's office window, which was screened by Venetian blinds. The lights were still on.

"I kind of think…"

"What?" Lucas prompted.

"There's a bunch of fern-type restaurants down from where he was coming when we picked him up again. And he was carrying that paper all rolled up, like he already looked at it. I wouldn't swear to it in a court, but I think he just might've gone down to have lunch. He hadn't eaten lunch yet."

"Hmph."

"So? What do we do?"

Lucas raked his hair with his fingertips and thought about the Fuckup. It shouldn't influence him, he knew, but it did.

"Leave him," Lucas said. "I just hope no dead bodies show up under a counter in a skyway shop."

"Good," the surveillance chief said in relief. If they'd had to grab Vullion because the surveillance had screwed up, somebody could wind up working the tow-truck detail in February.

The game was done; the final night had been one of discussion, not play. It was deemed a great success. A few touches might be desirable…

Lee had been mauled by Meade's well-protected troops dug in along Pipe Creek. Meade himself had taken severe casualties. The three days of fighting were as confusing and bloody as the Wilderness or Shiloh. The worst of it had fallen on Pickett: as the first into Gettysburg, his division had held the high ground just south of town. In the pursuit of the Union forces as they retreated on Washington, Pickett's division had been last in the route of march. On the final day at Pipe Creek, Lee had thrown Pickett's relatively fresh division into the center of the line. It died there. The Union held the ground and the Confederates reeled toward a hasty recrossing of the Potomac. The southern tide was going out.

"Something's changed," Elle said to Lucas. They were standing near the exit, away from the others. Elle spoke in a low voice.

Lucas nodded, his voice dropping to match hers. "We think we know who he is. Maybe it was your prayers: a gift from God. An accident. Fate. Whatever."

"Why haven't you arrested him?"

Lucas shrugged. "We know who he is, but we can't prove it. Not quite. We're waiting for him to make a move."

"Is he a man of intelligence?"

"I really don't know." He glanced around the room, dropped his voice another notch. "A lawyer."

"Be careful," Elle said. "This is galloping to a conclusion. He's been playing a game, and if he's a real player, I'm sure he feels it too. He may go for a coup de maître."

"I don't see that one's available to him. We'll just grind him down."

"Perhaps," she said, touching his coat sleeve. "But remember, his idea of a win may not be a matter of avoiding capture. He's a lawyer: perhaps he sees himself winning in court. Walking off the board with impunity after an acquittal. This is a very tricky position all the way around."

Lucas left St. Anne's at eight o'clock, drove restlessly home, punched up his word processor, sat in a pool of light, and tried to put the finishing touches on the Everwhen scenario. The opening prose must be lush, must hint of bare-breasted maidens with great asses, sword fights in dark tunnels, long trips, and hale-and-hearty good friends-everything a fifteen-year-old suburban computer freak doesn't have and yearns for. And it had to do all that while scrupulously avoiding pornography or anything else that would offend the kid's mother.

Lucas didn't have it in him. He sighed and shut down the computer, tossed the word-processing disk into his software file, and walked down to the library and sat in the dark to think.

The missing two hours worried him. It could have been an accident. And if the maddog had slipped away deliberately, why had he done it? Where had he gone? How and when did he spot the watchers? He hadn't gone out to kill-he wouldn't have his equipment, unless he carried it around in his briefcase, and he wasn't that stupid.

The trip to the antiques shop on the previous day was also worrisome. True, the maddog had stopped first at the computer store and picked up a case of paper. But Lucas remembered a half-case of paper sitting under the printer. He really didn't need any more. Not badly enough to make a special trip for it. Then he'd gone into the antiques shop, and one of the watchers, who had been passing on the opposite side of the street, saw the shop owner take the fishing lure out of the window. That had been confirmed after the maddog left, when Sloan had been sent in to pump the woman.

An antique fishing lure. Why? The maddog's apartment was virtually bare of ornament, so Lucas couldn't believe he'd bought it for himself.

A gift? But for whom? As far as they could tell, he had no friends. He made no phone calls, except on business, and got none at home. His mail consisted of bills and advertisements.

What was the lure for?

Sitting in the dark, his eyes closed, he turned the problem in his mind, manipulated it like a Rubik's Cube, and always came up with mismatched sides.

No point in sitting here, he thought. He looked at his watch. Nine o'clock. He got up, put on a jacket, and went out to the car. The nights were getting very cold now, and the wind on his face triggered a memory of skiing. Time to get his downhill skis tuned and the cross-country skis scraped and hot-waxed. He was always tired of winter by the time it ended, but he kind of liked the beginning.

The maddog's apartment was five miles from Lucas' house. Lucas stopped at a newsstand to buy copies of Powder and Skiing.

"Nothing," the surveillance cop said when he came up the stairs. "He's watching television."

Lucas peered out the window at the maddog's apartment. He could see nothing but the blue glow of a television through the living-room curtains. "Move, you motherfucker," he said.