Night Prey

"Wasn't me," Hillerod said. "The woman I left with, she's still alive. And she must've told you that I couldn't have done it, 'cause I was with her."

"What's her name?" asked Co

Hillerod scratched his face, glaring at her, but Co

"Where does she live?"

Hillerod shrugged. "I don't know the address, just how to get there. But you can get her at the university."

"She works at the university?" Lucas asked.

"She's a professor," he said. "In fine art. She's a painter."

Lucas looked at Co

"Wasn't there with nobody," Hillerod said. "I went in to get a book on my bike, if they had one, which they didn't."

"How long were you in there?"

Hillerod shrugged. "Hour."

"That's a long time to look for a book that they didn't have," Lucas said.

"I only spent five minutes looking for the book. Then I saw Abby giving me the eye, and I hung around to bullshit her a little bit. She had the big…" He glanced at Co

"She went home with you?" Co

"We went to her place."

"You spent the night?"

"Shit, I spent about four nights," Hillerod said with a small smile, talking to Co

"What cop?"

"The cop at the store."

Lucas looked at him for a long beat, then said, "You have a 666 on your hand."

Hillerod looked at the tattoo, shook his head. "Goddamnit, I knew that was stupid, the fuckin' 666. Everybody was getting them. I told people, the cops'll use them against us."

"Did you see anybody in the store that looked like this?" Co

Hillerod looked it over, then looked curiously from Co

"What? What'd you mean, anyone else?" Lucas asked.

He shrugged. "You should know. It looks like your cop."

"The cop?" Co

"The way he looked at me. He was a cop, all right. He looked at my hand, then at me, and then my hand. He knew what it was."

"Could have been a con," Lucas said.

Hillerod thought about it, then said, "Yeah. Could have been, I guess. But I felt like he was a cop."

"And he looked like this picture," Co

"Yeah. It's not quite right, I don't think. I can't remember that well, but his beard's wrong," he said, studying the drawing. "And there's something wrong about the mouth. And the guy's hair was flatter… But that's who it mostly looks like."

"The cop," Lucas said.

"Yeah. The cop."

"Sonofagun," Co

"Don't panic yet," Lucas said. "We've still got some lab work to do. We've got the knife."

"You know as well as I do… Are we sure the St. Paul cop is out of it?"

"St. Paul says he is."

"There's no way they'd cover for a guy on something like this," she said, not quite making it a question.

"No way," Lucas agreed. "I talked to one of their guys, and they worked him over pretty good."

"Goddamnit," Co

Co

Lucas rode along for a minute, then said, "He asked about you. Marital status, that kind of thing."

"What?"

Lucas gri

"You are lying to me, Davenport."

"Honest to God," Lucas said. After a minute, he said, "He wanted your phone number."

"Did you give it to him?"

Lucas said, "I didn't know what to do, Meagan. I didn't know whether to tell him you were sick, or what. So I… yeah, I gave it to him."

"You didn't tell him I was sick?"

"No. I didn't."

They drove on for another minute, in silence, and then Co

CHAPTER

18

Evan Hart stood with one hand in his pocket, his voice low, concerned. His back was to the balcony, so he was framed in the dark square; he wore a blue suit with a conservative striped shirt, and carried a square Scotch glass in his left hand. He'd taken his necktie off and thrust it in his pocket. Sara could see just the point of it sticking out from under the flap of his coat pocket. "Have you talked to the police?"

She shook her head. "I don't know what I'd tell them." She crossed her arms over her chest, rubbed her triceps with her hands, as though she were cold. "It's like having a ghost," she said. "I feel somebody, but I've never seen anything. I had the burglary, and since then… nothing. They'd say it's paranoia-paranoia brought on by the burglary. And I hate being patronized."

"They'd be right about the paranoia. You can't be a good trader if you're not paranoid," Hart said. He sipped the Joh

"'Cause somebody is out to get you," she said, finishing the old Wall Street joke. She drifted across the front room toward him. She also had a glass, vodka martini, three olives. She looked out across the balcony, over the building across the street, toward the park. "To tell the truth, I am a little scared. A woman was killed just across the street, and the guy with her is still in a coma. This was just a few days ago, a couple of days after my burglary. They haven't caught anybody yet-they say it was gang kids. I've never seen any gang kids here. It was supposed to be safe. I used to walk around the lake in the evenings, but I've stopped."

Hart's face was serious again. He reached out and brushed her arm with two fingertips, just a light touch. "Maybe you should think about moving out of here."

"I've got a lease," Sara said, away from the balcony, toward him. "And the apartment is really handy to work. And it should be safe. It is safe. I've changed the locks, I've got a steel door. I don't know…"

Hart stepped over to the balcony, looked out, his back toward her. She wondered if she made him nervous. "It's a pretty neighborhood. And I guess no place is really perfectly safe. Not anymore."

There was a moment of silence, and then she asked, "Do I make you nervous?"

He turned, a weak, slowly dying smile on his face. "Yeah, a little."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I like you too much. You're very attractive… I don't know, I'm just not very good at this."

"It is awkward," she said. "Look, why don't you come over and sit down, and I'll put my head on your shoulder, and we'll go from there."

He shrugged again. "All right." He put down his glass, crossed the room, sat quickly, put his arm around her shoulder, and she let her head sink onto his chest.

"Now, is this bad?" she asked, and suddenly broke into a giggle.