Eyes of Prey

" 'These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul…' " Lucas quoted.

"Who said that?"

"Can't remember. I once took a poetry course at Metro State, I remember it from that."

"Well, he's apparently got a thing for them. He still scares her, when she sees him around the hospital."

"Does she have any idea what he's doing now?"

"No. Want me to ask?"

"Yeah. You'll be seeing her again, huh?"

"Sure, if you want me to pump her some more," Del said.

"I wasn't thinking about that," Lucas said. "I was thinking… you look pretty good."

Bekker learned about the police surveillance from Druze. He half expected a call, to warn of a third killing, and every few hours he checked the answering machine.

"TV report on Cha

What? Bekker couldn't focus, and played it again.

"TV report on Cha

Surveillance? Bekker reset the tape, his mind working furiously. If they were watching Druze and had seen him make this call, would they be able to trace it? He thought not, yet he wasn't sure. But it was unlikely that they would be watching Druze-how would they get to him? The alleged picture? Perhaps.

It was more likely that he was the one being watched, if it wasn't just some kind of TV fantasy. The image of the student in the men's room came to him, and the second one at the library…

Not military shoes, he said to himself. Cop shoes…

CHAPTER 22

The weather patterns were seesawing across the state, Canadian cold and Gulf heat. Druze felt as if he was breathing water. Thunderstorms prowled western Mi

Maplewood Mall was the northeastern shopping anchor for St. Paul, out in the suburbs. Low crime, high affluence. Boys in letter jackets, teenage girls trying out their new slinks.

Druze cruised the parking lot, watching the shoppers. He wanted a woman leaving the mall. Forties, so she'd fit the profile. If he could get her at the right place, he wouldn't have to move her. Do it right in the parking lot, leave her there. The quicker she was found, the quicker the cops would be turned.

He stopped at a cross-drive and a woman walked in front of his headlights; she wore a cardigan, slacks and high heels, held a purse with both hands, a determined look on her face. A little too old, Druze thought, and not in the right place.

He parked, got out and sauntered toward the mall. A bronze rent-a-cop car rolled slowly through the lot, and Druze headed inside. He'd worked on his face with Cover Mark cosmetics and wore a felt hat with a snap brim, so he wouldn't be particularly noticeable from a range of more than a few feet. Not unless they saw the nose. He pulled the hat farther down on his forehead.

Druze was worried. In the begi

Was George the right one? He looked like the man in the hall, but the man in the hall had been wearing only a towel, his thi

Bekker… He was no longer sure of Bekker. They'd met after a show, in a theater cafe, Bekker there with Stephanie and some kind of doctors' group from the university. Bekker had been out on the edge of the group, left alone. Druze had come in, also alone, looking for a drink. He'd seen the beautiful man immediately, couldn't take his eyes away: Bekker had so much…

Bekker had been equally fascinated. He'd made the first approach: Hello there, I think I saw you on the stage a few minutes ago…

And later, much later, after they were… friends? was that right?… Bekker had said, "We're the opposite sides of the same coin, my friend, trapped by our looks."

But it hadn't been their appearances that held them together. It had been something else: the taste for violence? what?

He stood next to the atrium rail in the mall, looking down to the lower floor. Shoppers strolled down the length of the mall, some still in careful winter dress, dark, somber, protective, gloves sticking out from coat pockets. Others, the younger ones, had shifted with the Gulf winds, going into summer, T-shirts under light nylon windbreakers, a few of them in shorts, surfers for the boys, te

He started picking out women. Forties. Somebody attractive. Somebody who might catch the eye of a psycho. There were dozens of them, singles, twos and threes, tall, small, heavy, slender, scowling, laughing, intent, window-shopping, strolling, paying cash, checking receipts, holding up blouses… Druze unconsciously flipped his car keys in the air with one hand, picked them out of the air with the other, tossed them back to the first, and did it again.

And he chose: Eenie meenie minie moe…

Nancy Dunen couldn't believe the price of jeans. She never believed. Every time she came in, she thought the last time must have been an aberration, a nightmare. The twins always managed to wear out the back-to-school jeans, bought in September, at the same time in the spring. Two twelve-year-olds, four pairs of jeans, thirty-two dollars a pair… she stared blankly into the middle distance, her lips moving, as she calculated. A hundred twenty-eight dollars. My God, where would it come from? Maybe Visa would have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

She held the pants up, checking for flaws in the fabric. Noticed the feminine cut. Twelve years old, and they were getting curves in their pants already. Must be hormones in the breakfast cereal.

A man meandered past the open front of the store. Something wrong with his face, though it was hard to tell exactly what it was. He was wearing an old-fashioned brown felt hat, with the brim snapped down. She was looking past the pants when she saw him; she felt the light clink of eye contact, turned away as the man turned away, and she scraped at a knot in the denim with a fingernail. Good eye, Dunen, she thought. She put that pair of jeans back, got another.

Nancy sometimes thought she might be pretty, and sometimes she was sure she wasn't. She kept her dark hair cut short, skimped on the makeup, stayed in shape with a three-time-a-week jog around the neighborhood. She didn't spend a lot of time worrying about whether she was pretty or not, although she claimed she had the best forty-three-year-old butt in the neighborhood. She was settled in her body, in her life. Her husband seemed to like her, and she liked him, and they both liked the kids…

She took the jeans to the cashier's counter, groaned when she saw the Visa charge slip, folded it, dropped it in her purse.

"If my husband finds it, he'll wring my neck," she said to the girl behind the counter.

"Yeah, but…" The blonde salesgirl tossed her hair with a smile and made a piano-playing gesture with her hand as she put the jeans in a bag. Husbands can be handled, she was saying. "They're nice pants."

Nancy left the store and, bag in hand, window-shopped at a women's store, but she kept moving. The man with the hat was behind her on the escalator, heading toward the same exit. She noticed but didn't think about it. Let's see, I was out the exit by the cookie stand…