'Naw, he did it a couple, three times.'
They'd stopped walking outside a cutlery store. In the window, a two-foot-long model of a Swiss Army knife continuously and silently folded and unfolded. 'What do you do for a living, kid?' Lucas asked. 'Still in school?'
'Yeah.'
'You got a good eye,' Lucas said. 'You might make a cop someday.'
The kid looked away. 'Naw, I couldn't do that,' he said. His mother prodded him, but he went on. 'Cops gotta fuck with people. I couldn't do that for a living.' • • • Lucas left the kid and his anxious mother with a Maplewood cop and used a pay phone to call Cassie. She was supposed to be off, but there was no answer at her apartment. He tried the theater, but no one answered the phone.
'God damn it.' He needed her. He went back outside and found Shearson and Barber standing at the mall entrance. Shearson had a sack under his arm that might have contained a necktie. Rain swept across the lot beyond them, and the floodlights around the death car had been turned off.
'Find everything you needed?' Lucas asked Shearson, tapping the sack with a finger.
'Hey, I'm out here on my own time,' Shearson said. He was wearing a dark cashmere knee-length coat over a pearl-gray suit, with a white shirt, a blue tie with tiny crowns on it, and black loafers. His breath smelled of Juicy Fruit.
'You talk to the kid?' Barber asked.
'Yeah. I'd like to get a stenographer over to his place tomorrow, take a statement,' Lucas said. 'He told me the guy was juggling his keys, and doing a little dance step when he caught them. I'd like to get him on record for that.'
'Give us a call with questions…' said Barber.
'You get something?' Shearson asked, eyebrows up.
'I don't know,' Lucas said. He trusted Shearson about as far as he could spit a rat. 'What's happening with this shrink you've been looking at?'
'He's the Loverboy, all right,' Shearson said. 'He's hiding something. There aren't a lot of loose ends to pull on. I think we oughta just sit back for a couple days. Until something new comes up. But Daniel's got me covering him like whip on cream.'
'Okay… Well, I gotta get one last look at this car,' Lucas said.
Barber went with him, the two of them hurrying through the rain with a kind of broken-field lope, shoulders hunched, as though they could dodge the raindrops.
'Your buddy's got a great wardrobe,' Barber said, tongue in cheek.
'And he'd lose an IQ contest to a fuckin' stump,' Lucas said.
The body was being moved out of the car, wrapped in sheets. Another Maplewood cop came over and said, 'Nothing in the car that looks like a weapon. Nothing but paper-ice cream bar wrappers, candy wrappers, Ding Dong wrappers. The woman lived on junk.'
'All right,' said Lucas. To Barber, he said, 'Can you keep me up-to-date?'
'I'll fax you everything we got in the morning, first thing. We don't need this clown killing people out here.'
Lucas hadn't expected much from the scene itself. If a killer had no relationship with the victim, no apparent motive, no rational method of operation, the only things left to find were witnesses or traceable physical evidence. Because a serial killer could pick the time and place, he could pick a situation that minimized his exposure to witnesses. And evidence left behind-semen, in sex-related cases, or blood or skin samples-didn't help until after the killer was caught.
This attack had been almost perfect. Almost…
The storm was dying as Lucas headed west. There was another thunderstorm cell far down to the south, but from I-35W he could see distant jetliner landing lights, going into Minneapolis-St. Paul International from the south, so he knew the storm must be well out downstate.
By the time he got to Cassie's apartment, the rain had diminished to a barely perceptible drizzle. He went into the entry and rang the bell for her apartment, but there was no answer. He continued up the street to the theater, but the windows there were dark.
Damn. He needed her.
And he found her. She was sitting on his porch steps, a gym bag between her feet.
'How long have you been here?' he asked from the car, as she strolled out to the driveway. 'How'd you get here?'
'About twenty minutes-I came on the bus. I would have broken in, but the woman next door keeps watching me out her window,' Cassie said, grinning. She tipped her head toward a lighted window in the next house. An elderly woman peeked out a lighted window in a side door, and Lucas waved at her. She waved back and disappeared.
'She keeps an eye out,' Lucas said. 'Besides, you'd need a sledge to get through the doors… Let me get the car inside.'
Cassie waited behind the car as he put it in the garage next to his battered Ford four-by-four.
'Sweatsuit and shoes,' she said, holding up the gym bag as he dropped the garage door. 'I thought we could run along the river.'
'In the rain?'
'You could see it going over on the TV radar,' she said.
'Okay,' he said. He took her elbow in his hand and kissed her on the mouth. 'Did you hear?'
'Hear what?' she asked, puzzled by his somber tone.
'We had another killing. Out in Maplewood.'
'Oh, no,' she said, pressing her fingertips to her lips. 'Is it a theater person?'
Lucas shook his head. 'Not as far as we know. It's a woman who worked at the mall. They're checking, but she doesn't seem like she'd be a playgoing type. Certainly didn't look like an actress.'
'Jesus… Like he just picked her out at random?'
'Eenie meenie minie moe,' Lucas said. 'And I've got something to ask you… later.'
'What's the mystery?'
'I can't tell you. I want your brain to be fresh. Let's run.'
Cassie set the pace along the river until Lucas, puffing, slowed her down. 'Take it easy,' he said. 'Remember, I'm old.'
'Six years older than me,' she said. 'At your age, you ought to be able to run a marathon under four, just to be in fair shape.'
'Bullshit,' he grunted. 'If you can run a marathon under six, you're in great shape, for a normal human being, anyway.'
'See, you're not hurtin',' she said. 'You can still talk.' But she slowed the pace and they stopped at a scenic overlook, walked in circles for a minute, then took off again, this time running away from the river.
'I have to stop at a video store,' Lucas said. 'I want to pick up a movie.'
'A movie?'
'A kid at the mall saw the killer. Said he looked like Darkman, in the movie. You see it?'
'No. Heard about it. Supposed to be pretty bad.'
'So we watch it for a few minutes.'
When they got back to the house, Lucas leaned against the garage door, gasping for breath, dangling the plastic bag with the videocassette in one hand.
'I gotta do this more often,' he said. 'How far do you think we ran?'
'Three miles, maybe. Enough to crack a sweat.'
'I hate to tell you, but I cracked a sweat about two hundred yards out,' he said.
'Better take a shower,' she said in a low voice. She was standing next to him, and she slipped a hand under his sweatshirt and lightly drew her nails from his nipples to his navel. Lucas shivered and moved against her.
'We've got serious business here,' he said, patting her on the butt with the plastic bag.
'Hey-what difference does it make if we look at it now or an hour from now?'
He seemed to think about it, stroking his chin. 'Hmm. An argument with a certain persuasive force…'
'So let's take the shower…'
