Night Prey

"What for?"

"I don't know. But she wants you back."

Co

Roux was smoking furiously. She glanced at Co

"What's going on?" Lucas asked.

Roux shrugged. "We're outa here, is what's going on. No crime committed in Mi

"Wait a minute," said Co

Roux shook her head. "Meagan, I promised to help you and I did. But we've got lots of trouble right now, and this is St. Paul's killing. Your killing, up in Carlos Avery, is either Anoka County's or Duluth's. Not ours. We're putting out a press release that says our investigation concludes the murder was not committed here, that we'll cooperate with the investigating authorities, and so on."

"WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE!" Co

"We'redone," Roux said, still friendly, but her voice sharpening. "You've still got some options. We'll get your research to St. Paul, and I'll ask that they let you assist their investigation. Or you could continue with the Smits case. I don't know what Duluth is doing with that anymore."

Co

Lucas stepped back. "It's an interesting case, but she's right. It's St. Paul's."

Co

"You might have found a better way to handle that," Lucas said.

"Probably," Roux said, looking after Co

"So now what?"

Roux waved her hand expansively. "Do what you want." She took a drag on her cigarette, then took it out of her mouth and looked at it. "Jesus, sometimes I wish I was a man."

"Why?" Lucas was amused by her excitement.

"'Cause then I could take out a big fuckin' Cuban cigar and smoke its ass off."

"You could still do that."

"Yeah, but then people who don't already think I'm a bull dyke would start thinking I'm a bull dyke. Besides, I'd barf."

Lucas talked briefly to Anderson and Lester about wrapping up the paper on the case. "St. Paul will probably want to talk to you," Lester said.

"That's fine. Give them my home phone number if they call. I'll be around," Lucas said.

"Co

"It is cheap," Lucas said.

"Man, we're hurting," Lester said. "We've never hurt this bad. And if you're looking for something to do, we've still got bodies coming out of our ears. Did Greave tell you about his?"

"He mentioned something, but it didn't sound very interesting."

Sloan wandered in, hands in his pockets. He nodded to them, yawned, stretched, and to Lester said, "You got a Coke or something? I'm a little dry."

"Do I look like a fuckin' vending machine?" Lester asked.

"What happened, Sloan?" Lucas asked, picking up the signs.

Sloan yawned again, then said, "A little pissant student named La

"What?" A smile broke across Lester's face, like the sun coming up.

"Got him on tape," Sloan said, ostentatiously studying his fingernails. "She was hooking, part-time. She fucked him once, but wouldn't do it twice, not even for money. They were arguing, walking across the bridge, and he tried to smooch her but she hit him with her fist, in the nose. It hurt and he got mad and when she walked away, he hit her on the back of the head with an economics textbook-big fat motherfucker-and knocked her down. She was stu

"Did you use the cattle prods?" Lucas asked.

"Told us the whole fuckin' thing in one long sentence," Sloan said. "We Miranda-ed him twice on the tape. Got Polaroids of his arms; we'll get a DNA match later. He's over in the lockup now, waiting for the public defender."

Lucas, Anderson, and Lester looked at each other, then back at Sloan. Lester stepped close, took him by the arm, and said, "Can I kiss you on the lips?"

"Better not," Sloan said. "People might think you favor me at promotion time."

A pizza arrived, too much for somebody's lunch, so they cut it up, got Cokes from the machine in the basement, had a little party, giving Sloan a hard time.

Lucas left smiling. Sloan was a friend, maybe his best friend. But at the same time, he felt… He looked for a word. Disgruntled? Yes. Sloan had his victory. But somewhere out there, a monster was roaming around…

CHAPTER

5

Koop was slick with sweat, eyes shut, counting: eleven, twelve, thirteen. His triceps were burning, his toes reaching for the floor, his mind holding them off. Fourteen, fifteen… sixteen? No.

He was done. He dropped to the floor between the parallel bars and opened his eyes, the sweat ru

Two Guy's Body Shop, with a misplaced apostrophe, was the end unit of a dying shopping center on Highway 100, a shopping center marked by knee-high weeds growing out of cracked blacktop, and peeling hand-painted signs for failing tax services and obscure martial arts. Koop had parked the truck in a litter of crumbling blacktop, locked it, and gone inside.

To the right, one of the Two Guys sat behind the front desk, reading an old Heavy Metal magazine. To the left, a woman and two men were working around a variety of free-weight racks. The Guy looked up when Koop came in, grunted, and went back to the magazine. Koop walked past him, down a hallway where fifty musclemen stared down from curling Polaroids thumbtacked to the paneling, into the men's locker room. He changed into a jock, cutoff sweatpants, and a sleeveless T-shirt, strapped on a lifting belt, pulled on goatskin gloves stiff with dried sweat, and went back out into the main room.

Koop had a system: He divided his body into thirds, and worked a different third each day for three days. Then he took a day off, and the day after that, started over.

Shoulders and arms, first day; chest and back, second day; and then lower body. This was shoulders and arms: he worked the delts, triceps, biceps. Unlike a lot of people, he worked his forearms hard, squeezing rubber rings until the muscles screamed with acid.

And he worked his neck, both on the neck machine and with bridges. He'd never seen anyone else at Two Guy's doing bridges, but that didn't bother Koop. He'd once gone to a University of Mi

Koop liked bench presses. Hell, everybody liked bench presses. He did pyramids, ten reps at 350, two or three at 370, one or two at 390. He did seated behind-the-neck presses; he did curls, topping out at eighty pounds on the dumbbells, working his biceps.

At the very end, soaked with sweat, he got on a stair climber and ran up a hundred stories, then, breathing hard, he went back to the posing room.