Night Prey

"Her stuff does go well with a simple black dress," Lucas said. "'Course, you want to match the earrings."

Roux showed a thin smile. "You can talk that way because you don't give a shit," she said. "You're rich, you're in love, you buy your suits in New York. Why should you care?"

"I care," Lucas said mildly. "But it's hard to get too excited when the victims are already dead… What'd you want?"

There was a long moment of silence. Lucas waited it out, and she sighed again and said, "I've got a problem."

"Co

She looked up, surprised. "You know her?"

"I met her about an hour ago, over in Wisconsin, ru

"That's her," Roux said. "Ru

Lucas shrugged. "I don't know."

"Goddamnit, she's working people inside the department." She nibbled at a fingernail, then said, "Goddamnit," again and heaved herself to her feet, walked to her window. She stuck two fingers between the blades of her venetian blinds, looked out at the street for a moment. She had a big butt, wide hips. She'd been a large young woman, a good cop in decent shape. The shape was going now, after too many years in well-padded government chairs.

"There's no secret about how I got this job," she said finally, turning back to him. "I solved a lot of political problems. There was always pressure from the blacks. Then the feminists started in, after those rapes at Christmas. I'm a woman, I'm a former cop, I've got a law degree, I was a prosecutor and a liberal state senator with a good reputation on race relations…"

"Yeah, yeah, you were right for the job," Lucas said impatiently. "Cut to the chase."

She turned back to him. "Last winter some game wardens found a body up in the Carlos Avery reserve. You know where that's at?"

"Yeah. Lots of bodies up there."

"This one's name was Joan Smits. You probably remember the stories in the papers."

"Vaguely. From Duluth?"

"Right. An immigrant from South Africa. Walked out of a bookstore and that was it. Somebody stuck a blade in her just above the pelvic bone and ripped her all the way up to her neck. Dumped her in a snowdrift at Carlos Avery."

Lucas nodded. "Okay."

"Co

"Of course," Lucas said dryly.

Roux took a pack of Winston Lights from her desk drawer, asked, "Do you mind?"

"No."

"This is illegal," she said. "I take great pleasure in it." She shook a cigarette out of the pack, lit it with a green plastic Bic lighter, and tossed the lighter back in the desk drawer with the cigarettes. "Co

"Is there? A serial killer?" Lucas sounded skeptical, and Roux peered across her desk at him.

"You've got a problem with the idea?" she asked.

"Give me a few facts."

"There are several," Roux said, exhaling smoke at the ceiling. "But let me give you another minute of background. Co

"I know what it is."

"That's an important piece of my constituency, Lucas. AFSCME put me in the state senate and kept me there. And maybe sixty percent of them are female." Roux flicked a cigarette ash toward her wastebasket. "They're my rock. Now. If I pull off this chief's job, if I go four, maybe six years, and get a little lucky, I'll go up to the U.S. Senate as a liberal law-and-order feminist."

"Okay," Lucas said. Everybody hustles.

"So Co

Lucas nodded, said nothing.

"She gives me her research…" Roux tapped a thick file-folder on her desk. "I carried it down to homicide and asked them to make some checks. Co

"What'd homicide say?" Lucas asked.

"I got the eye-rolling routine, and I started hearing Dickless Tracy comments again. Two of the killings had already been cleared. The Madison cops got a conviction. There're local suspects in a couple other cases."

"Sounds like-"

He was about to say bullshit, but Roux tapped her desk with an index finger and rode her voice over his. "But your old pal Sloan dug through Co

"He mentioned that," Lucas admitted. He looked at the file folder on Roux's desk. "He didn't seem too happy with Co

"She scares him. Anyway, what Co

"Mmmm."

The chief nodded. "I know. She could be wrong. But it's a legitimate argument. And I keep thinking, What if I ditch it, and it turns out that I'm wrong? A fellow feminist, one of the constituency, comes to me with a serial killer. We blow it off and somebody else gets murdered and it all comes out."

"I'm not sure…"

"Besides, I can feel myself getting in trouble here. We're go

"MacLemore's a fuckin' Nazi."

"Yes, he is…" Roux took a drag on the cigarette, blew smoke, coughed, laughing, and said, "There's even more. She thinks the killer might be a cop."

"Ah, man."

"It's just a theory," Roux said.

"But if you start chasing cops, the brotherhood's go

"Exactly. And that's what makes you perfect," Roux said. "You're one of the most experienced serial-killer investigators in the country, outside the FBI. Inside this department, politically, you're both old-line and hard-line. You could chase a cop."

"Why does she think it's a cop?"

"One of the victims, a woman in Des Moines, a real estate saleswoman, had a cellular phone in her car. She had a teenaged daughter at home, and called and said she was going out with a guy for a drink, that she might be getting home late. She said the guy was from out of town, and that he was a cop. That's all."

"Christ." Lucas ran his hand through his hair.

"Lucas, how long have you been back? A month?"

"Five weeks."

"Five weeks. All right. I know you like the intelligence thing. But I've got all kinds of guys ru

"So you can run for the Senate."

"There've been worse senators," she said.

"I've got things-"

"Everybody's got things. Not everybody can stop insane killers," Roux said impatiently. She came and stood next to him, looking out the window, took another greedy drag on her cigarette. "I could give you some time if we hadn't had this Wa