Certain prey

'Uh-huh, uh-huh.'

Carmel pulled the tape off his face and he turned toward her, his eyes glazed, and groaned. 'I'm dying,' he said. 'My heart busted.'

'Look, if you're gonna bullshit us, I'll put the tape back on and start the drill again. I could do this all night.'

'Tape's in the car,' Rolo said. 'In with the spare.'

Carmel looked at Rinker and she said, 'Oh, shit. How could we be that stupid?'

'I'll go get it,' Rinker said. 'You've got some blood…' Carmel looked down at her blouse: the droplets of blood looked like fine embroidery.

Rinker went out; another nice evening. She could hear music playing up the block, through an open window somewhere. She stopped to listen, but couldn't identify the music, then went to Rolo's car, popped the trunk, and pulled the cover off the limited-use spare. The tape was tucked behind it. She looked at it, weighed it in her hands, sighed, and went back inside.

'Get it?' Carmel asked.

'Got a tape,' Rinker said. She pushed it into the VCR. The picture came up immediately: and Carmel came to watch.

'Good light,' Rinker grunted.

'He had all the windows open. That's another thing I should have noticed. He's not an open-windows guy.'

'Boy…' Rinker said, as the tape wound out. 'You were gone, if the cops got this.'

"That's why I had to get it back.,' Carmel said.

'You think this is it?' Rinker asked.

'I don't know. I could go drill him some more,' Carmel said.

Rinker looked toward the bedroom. 'He looked pretty rough in there

… I don't think he could take any more, and I don't think we'll get any more out of him.

More'n what we've got.'

'So we gotta call it,' Carmel said.

'It's your face on the tape.'

Carmel looked at the bedroom door for a moment, then said. 'All right. We're done. If there's a copy, we'll have to deal with it later. But I think we're still gonna have to kill him. After the drill, he might be so pissed he'd go to the cops,' Carmel said.

'You wanna do it?' Rinker asked. 'I mean, you yourself?'

'Sure. If you want,' Carmel said.

'Not if you'd feel bad,' Rinker said.

'No, no, I don't think I would, not really,' Carmel said. "What do I do?'

Rinker explained as they went back into the kitchen. Rolo saw them coming with the gun and didn't bother to struggle. 'See you in hell,' he said.

'There's nothing as silly as hell,' Carmel said. 'Don't you know that yet?' And then to Rinker, 'What, I just put it at his head, and pull the trigger?'

'Easy as that.'

Rolo turned his head away, and Carmel put the muzzle of the pistol at his temple and then waited a few seconds.

'Do it,' Rolo said.

'Made you sweat, didn't I?' Carmel asked. Rolo started to turn his head back; a little hope? She could see it in his eyes.

Carmel shot him six times; then the bullets ran out.

Rinker and Carmel spent another ten minutes in the house, closing up, obscuring anything that might even theoretically provide evidence against them.

'We can drop the guns in the Mississippi – I know a good spot down by the dam,'

Carmel said.

'And burn the tape,' Rinker said.

'As soon as we get back to my place. We oughta go back to my place and change, and get rid of these clothes, and get showered off and everything.'

'Maybe we could go out someplace tonight,' Rinker said. 'My plane isn't until the day after tomorrow.'

'That'd be fun,' Carmel said. 'Maybe we could rent a movie or…"

She stopped in mid-sentence, looking back at the kitchen. 'What?' Rinker asked.

Without answering, Carmel went back to the kitchen, squatted next to the video camera that Rinker had tossed on the floor. Touched it, turned it over.

'What?' Rinker asked again.

'That fuckin' Rolo. This camera is a VHS-C. This tape…' She held up the tape they'd found. '… this tape is a full-sized VHS tape. If you were making a copy using your cheap-ass VCR and the camera, this is what you'd use to pick up the copy. So there's another tape – aVHS-C

'You're sure?' Rinker asked.

'Look,' Carmel said. She picked up the camera, turned it over, opened the cartridge compartment. The tape they had was at least twice as big as the compartment.

'Bad news,' Rinker said.

Carmel glanced at her, sideways and quickly: if Rinker were to shoot her now, at least all of Rinker's troubles would be over. She could walk away and not have to worry at all.

'You worry too much,' Rinker said.

'I anticipate,' Carmel said. She looked at Rinker. 'Let's get back to my place.

Do you still have those address books?'

'Yeah.'

'And let's get his wallet and the phone book and whatever else that might have names in it… I've got to think about this.'

'You don't think it's in a safe-deposit box?'

'He's a drug dealer. He'd never have a safe-deposit box, not under his own name, anyway. We didn't find any fake IDs that he could use to get to a box under a different name, and we didn't find any keys… I suspect he did what drug dealers usually do: he left it with somebody he trusts.'

'Like who?'

'Like a lawyer. Except that I'm his lawyer. He could have another one, I suppose; I can find out. But he's a spic, so it's probably a relative. Anyway, we've got to do some research. In a hurry…'

'I'll cancel my plane ticket,' Rinker said. 'I guess we keep the guns.'

On the way back to Carmel's, Rinker glanced at her and asked, 'How much did you enjoy that? Back there?'

Carmel started to answer, then changed directions and asked a question of her own: 'Have you been to school? To college?'

'Well, yeah.'

'Really? I didn't think… you know'

'Professional killer and all,' Rinker said.

'Yeah.' Carmel nodded. 'What'd you major in?'

'Psychology. Actually, I'm about eight credits away from my B.A. I should have it finished next spring.'

'Good school?'

'Okay school.'

'But you're not going to tell me which.'

'Well…'

'That's okay,' Carmel said. 'Anyway, I did sort of enjoy it, just a little bit, maybe. Whether I did or not, he had to go.'

'You enjoyed it just a little bit? Maybe?'

'Didn't you?' Carmel asked.

'No. I couldn't stand that sound he was making. That smell when he

… you know.

I didn't like it at all.'

Now Carmel took her eyes off the road for a moment, to look at Rinker. 'Don't worry, I'm just a sociopath. Like you. I'm not a psychopath or anything.'

'How do you know I'm not a psychopath?'

'From what Rolo told me – what he'd heard about you. Quiet, professional, clean.

You do it because you can, and because you can make money at it, and because you're good at it; not because you have some slobbering lust to kill people.'

'Slobbering lust?'

'Listen, I've handled a couple of cases…'

Carmel had Rinker laughing by the time they got back to her place. And as they got out of the car, Rinker looked at her over the roof and said, 'Wichita

State.'

'What?'

'That's where I go to school.'

Carmel had the sense that Rinker had told her something important. After a few moments, realized that she had. She'd told Carmel where she could be found.

Where home was.

Chapter Six

Three St. Paul cop cars and a crime-scene van were parked outside the Frogtown house when Lucas arrived. Up and down the street, people sat on their short wooden stoops, looking down at Rolo's house, watching the cops come and go.

Lucas parked, climbed out of the Porsche, and started toward the house. A St.

Paul uniformed cop saw him coming and squared off to stop him, but a plainclothes cop stuck his head out the door and yelled, 'Hey, Dick. Let that guy in.'

'You're in,' Dick said, and Lucas nodded and went up the steps. Sherrill was standing just inside the door. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed madonna in a crisp yellow blouse, with a grey skirt in place of her usual slacks, and a black silk jacket to cover the. 357 she carried under her arm.