Certain prey

'What's that for?'

'It levels the table,' Lucas said.

Malone pushed the lever with her foot, and the table stopped tipping. 'Where'd you learn that?' she asked.

'I used to be a waitress,' he said. 'Before the operation.'

Over coffee and grilled-cheese sandwiches, Malone filled Lucas in on everything the FBI had figured out about Clara Rinker – they had her biography from childhood, but still no good pictures. 'She was in trouble a few times when she was a teenager, but nothing serious. Never got mugshot or printed. She was a runaway, and she might have had reason to be. We think she was probably raped a few times by her stepfather, who disappeared, by the way. And maybe by one of her brothers.'

'Did he disappear, too?'

'No, he's still around, but he doesn't talk much about her. He claimed he couldn't remember her.'

'That's helpful.'

'The picture sort of fills out, though. She's a sociopath, I think, but not a psychopath. She never showed that much enthusiasm for her work, she just did it very effectively. She had to take SAT tests to get into Wichita State, and she did okay: quite well on verbal skills, less good on math. About 700-550, which is pretty exceptional when you understand that she ran away from home in the ninth grade.'

'I knew she was smart,' Lucas said. 'She got out of here so cleanly that I expect she's got a hidey-hole somewhere. Digging her out could be tough, especially with those horseshit photos we've got so far. Say: I think I know from somewhere that the SAT people require photo IDs for their tests.'

'I don't know,' Malone said. 'But we'll check.'

'If that's blood you found on the ground behind the dumpster, and it comes from more than one person, then she's still out there. Otherwise, I don't know. It's hard to think that she's dead and gone. Outa reach.'

'Worse things have happened,' Malone said. 'At least the killing would stop, until they find somebody else. But I know what you mean; it'd be good to have her.'

'She got any foreign languages?' Lucas asked.

'Spanish,' Malone confirmed. 'She's in her fourth year of college Spanish, got

A's all the way through. One of our guys talked to her Spanish instructor, who said that if she goes South, across the border, she'll be speaking it like a native in six months. Said she was already pretty good, and had a good ear for the accent.'

'I wouldn't be surprised if she's already down there,' Lucas said. 'Goddamnit: we were an inch short about five times in a row.'

'What about the woman in Minneapolis – Garmel Loan?' Malone asked. She ate her cheese sandwich in small, tidy bites, pausing every second or third bite to dab her mouth with a napkin; she looked like a history professor, Lucas thought, but an oddly sexy one. Maybe that somehow explained how she'd been married four times, but none of the marriages lasted. Maybe her husbands-to-be expected a nice, reserved history professor, and got an animal instead; or, maybe, it was the other way around.

'I need to lay in my bed and think about Carmel,' Lucas said. 'Maybe I could z out in the back of the car this evening, going back home. But let me ask you this: given what we have right now, how convincing a case could you make against

Clara Rinker?'

Malone rolled her eyes up, and to one side, thinking. After a moment, still silent, she scratched the back of her neck, and wiggled in her seat. Finally, she said, 'We could probably get her. Sooner or later; give us enough trials, we could get her.'

'But it sure isn't open-and-shut.'

'Not quite,' Malone said. 'We'll probably get some prints, sooner or later. Find something she forgot about. But even if we put them with the prints you got off that bar of soap, all we'd do was prove that she was in Minneapolis. We have a mountain of evidence, we just don't have any direct tie. But I think the mountain would get her. Given the right jury.'

'So the same evidence could be applied to somebody else – it's not impossible that Clara's the wrong person,' Lucas said.

'Well, it's pretty improbable.'

'But…'

'… not impossible,' she agreed.

'You've got a lawyer with your group, don't you? Besides you?'

'Couple of them,' Malone said.

'Would it be possible to send one up to Minneapolis – the smartest one – with the whole Rinker file, and get with one of our assistant country attorneys and make a case against Louise Clark? That she was the shooter? I mean, we found the gun, we found all kinds of evidence that she committed at least one murder; I'd like to see what other evidence we could put together from other cases. If there is any.'

Malone was puzzled: 'But you said that was a put-up job. Why would you want to make that case?'

'Because, just between you, me, and the doorpost, I know damn well that Carmel

Loan helped set up these killings. I don't know exactly why, although sex might have had something to do with it – or it might not have. Maybe it was money, or just for fun. But she's in it, up to her neck. And I can tie Carmel to Clark. If

I can make a case that Clark is the shooter, and I can tie Carmel to her, maybe

I could talk a jury into sending Carmel away.'

'Oh, man, I don't know – that doesn't sound overly ethical.'

'I ain't a fuckin' lawyer I'm just a humble cop,' Lucas said. 'So I don't know about ethics. But could you send a lawyer up? We can work out the details -the ethics – later.'

She was peering at him over the diner table, and said, 'I'm not sure I want to know the details.'

'But you'll send somebody up?'

'I guess.' She had one small crumb of toast sitting on the left corner of her mouth, and Lucas picked up her napkin and dabbed it off for her.

'You had a crumb,' he said.

She shrugged and met his eyes. 'The story of my life…'

Chapter Twenty-Five

Sherrill agreed with Malone. 'That is the goofiest thing I've ever heard.'

Black disagreed: 'How about the Tracy Triplets and the thing with the gourd? You said that was the goofiest thing you'd ever heard. That you'd never see that peak again.'

Sherrill's eyes stayed with Lucas, but she spoke to Black. 'Okay, this is the second goofiest thing I've ever heard. The Tracy Triplets are still first, but only because of the midget. If it wasn't for the midget, this would be goofier.'

Lucas wasn't smiling. 'This is not goofy. You're starting to piss me off.'

Sherrill was waving her arms. 'Lucas, how'n the hell can you convict an innocent dead woman of something she didn't do?' -

'Shouldn't be too tough,' Lucas said. 'We do it a few times a year with innocent live people. How hard could it be to do it with a dead one? She certainly won't care. And we will get Carmel.'

'Jesus, man, I don't know,' Black said. 'This ain't a game.'

'I know. But maybe we'll break something loose.

So what I want, is I want everybody out working on connections between Louise

Clark and Carmel. They were about the same age – did they ever go to the same school? Did they ever hang out at the same place? They must've known each other, so let's make them into friends. Let's put together some ideas that'll tighten up the story on Clark, something we could take her to court on. ..'

'If she were alive,' Black said.

'Yeah. If she was alive.'

'This won't work if Carmel doesn't hear about it. We want her to react,' Lucas said. A half-dozen detectives were crowded into Lucas' office: Sherrill, Black,

Sloan, a guy from drugs, two from sex. Lucas wanted people he'd worked with and could trust. 'We know she's got at least a couple of sources inside the department, so we want you to blab. Gossip. Homicide is tying Carmel Loan to

Louise Clark, and through her, to the killings.'