Sudden prey

SIX

WEATHER KARKINNEN WORE A WHITE TERRY-CLOTH robe, with a matching terry-cloth towel wrapping her hair. Through the back window she was a Vermeer figure in a stone house, quiet, pensive, slow-moving, soft with her bath, humming along with a Glenn Gould album.

She got a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top, found a glass and started pouring. The phone rang, and she stepped back and picked it up, propped it between her ear and her shoulder, and continued pouring.

''Yes, he is,'' she said.

Lucas was sitting in his old leather chair, eyes closed. He was working on a puzzle-a tactical exercise involving both a car chase and a robbery.

Lucas had once written strategy board games, had moved them to computers, then, pushed temporarily off the police force, had started a company doing computer simulations of police problems.

He'd made the change at just the right time: His training software did well. Now the company was run by a professionalmanager, and though Lucas still held the biggest chunk of the stock, he now worked mostly on conceptual problems. He was imagining a piece of software that spliced voice and data transmissions, that would layer a serious but confused problem beneath an exciting but superficial one, to teach new dispatchers to triage emergency calls.

Triage. The word had been used by the programmers putting together the simulation, and it had been rattling around his brain for a few days, a loose

BB. The word had a nasty edge to it, like cadaver.

''Lucas?''

He jumped. Weather was in the doorway, a glass of dark beer in her hand. She'd brewed it herself in a carboy in the hall closet, from a kit that Lucas had bought her for her birthday.

''You've got a phone call…''

Lucas shook himself awake, heaved himself out of the chair. ''Who is it?'' he asked, yawning. He saw the beer. ''Is that for me?''

''I don't know who it is. And get your own,'' she said . ''We sound like a TV commercial.''

''You're the one who was snoring in the chair after dinner,'' she said.

''I was thinking,'' he said. He picked up the phone, ignoring her dainty snort.

''Yeah?''

The man's voice was oily, a man who gave and took confidences like one-dollar poker chips. ''This is Earl. Stupella. Down at the Blue Bull?''

''Yeah, Earl. What's happening?''

''You was in that shoot-out a week or so ago, in the papers. The credit union.''

He wasn't asking a question.

''Yeah?''

''So this chick came in here tonight and said she'd seen the husband of one of these girls, who like supposedly bustedout of prison and killed somebody. It was like La Chase?''

Lucas was listening now. ''LaChaise,'' he said. ''That's right. Where'd she see him?''

''A laundromat down on Eleventh. She said she saw him going in and he talked to a guy in the window for a minute and then he left.''

''Huh. Who's the chick?'' Lucas asked.

''Don't tell her I talked to you,'' Stupella said.

''No problem.''

''Sally O'Donald. She lives somewhere up the line, by the cemetery, I think, but

I don't know.''

''I know Sally,'' Lucas said. ''Anything else?''

''Nope. Sally said she didn't want to have nothing to do with LaChaise, so when she saw him, she turned right around and walked away.''

''When was all this?''

''Sally was in about an hour ago,'' Stupella said. ''She saw the guy this morning.''

''Good stuff, Earl. You'll get a note in the mail.''

''Thanks, dude.''

LUCAS DROPPED THE PHONE ON THE HOOK: LACHAISE. So he was here. And out in the open. Lucas stood staring at the phone for a second, then picked it up again.

''Going out?'' Weather asked from the hallway.

''Mmm, yeah. I think.'' He pushed a speed-dial button, listened to the beep-beep-boop of the phone.

Del answered on the second ring. ''What?''

''I hope that's not a bedside phone you're talking on.''

''What happened?'' Del asked.

''Nothing much. I thought we might go for a ride, if you're not doing anything.''

''You mean, go for a ride and get an ice cream? Or go for a ride and bring your gun?''

''The latter,'' Lucas said, glancing at Weather. She had a little rim of beer foam on her upper lip.

''Latter, my ass,'' Del said. ''Give me ten minutes.''

THE BACK STREETS WERE RUTS OF GNARLED ICE. THE EXPLORER'S heater barely kept up, and Del, who didn't like gloves, sat with his hands in his armpits. The good part was, the assholes and freaks got as cold as anyone else. On nights like this, there was no crime, except the odd domestic murder that probably would have happened anyway.

When the radio burped, Del picked it up: ''Yeah.''

''O'Donald is the third house on the left, right after you make the turn off

Lake,'' the dispatcher said.

''All right. We'll get back.''

Lucas cruised the house once, rattling the white Explorer down the ruts. The house showed lights in the back, where the kitchen usually was, and the dim blue glow of a television from a side window. ''The thing is,'' Lucas said, ''she has a terrible temper.''

''And she's about the size of a fuckin' two-car garage,'' said Del. ''Maybe we should shoot her before we talk to her.''

''Just a flesh wound, to slow her down,'' Lucas agreed. ''Or shoot her in the kneecap.''

''We shot the last one in the kneecap.''

''Oh yeah; well, that's out, then.'' Lucas parked and said, ''Don't piss her off, huh? I don't want to be rolling around in the yard with her.''