Certain prey

'Too much curiosity might be dangerous,' Rinker said.

'I can walk that line,' Carmel said confidently.

Carmel went straight to Lucas:

'I understand you found them,' she said. 'I mean, you personally.'

'Yeah. Not one of the brighter moments in my day,' Lucas said. He was tipped back in his new office chair, his feet up, reading the Modality Report. He'd bought the chair himself, a grey steel-and-fabric contraption that felt so good that he was thinking of marrying it.

'I'll tell you what,' Carmel said. 'We got one upper-class woman and three spies dead, and I would suggest to you that there's something going on besides some guy trying to kill his wife for her money. I'm reasonably sure that you're smart enough to have figured it out.'

'I figured it out, all right,' Lucas said. 'Your goddamn client's a snake. He was financing the local cocaine cartel with his old lady's money – and she found out. After he killed her, he rolled up the rest of the group before they could talk about it.'

'You can't…' Carmel started. Then she stopped herself. She ticked her finger at Lucas and said, 'You're teasing me.'

'Maybe,' Lucas said.

'I just don't know why we haven't slept together,' Carmel said. 'Except that my heart belongs to another.'

'So does mine,' Lucas said. 'I just wish I'd meet her.'

Carmel laughed. Let herself laugh a little too long, even indelicately. Then, 'So

I can tell my client that he can stop the heavy drugs, and try to get some normal sleep.'

'He's had a problem?' Lucas asked. He yawned and looked at his watch.

'He sees himself involved in traumatic rectal enlargement, at the hands – well, not the hands – of biker gangs at Stillwater.'

'Yeah, well…' Lucas said dismissively. 'Don't tell him he's clear, because we're still looking at everybody. But between you and me…'

'Yeah?'

'… he seems unlikely. And if we get him into court on a murder charge, and you ask me if I said that, I'll perjure myself and say "No, of course not.'"

'That'd be a big fuckin' change, a cop committing perjury,' Carmel said. 'AH right. I'll tell him you'll be easing up.'

'That'd probably be right,' Lucas said.

Carmel turned, as though to leave, then asked, ingenuously, 'You got anything on the new killings? Like potential clients I can chase?'

'Well, we got this, out of a kid,' Lucas said. He dropped his feet off the new chair, pulled open a desk drawer and took out a computer-generated photo. 'We're putting it in the paper.'

He passed it to Carmel, who looked at it for a minute and then asked, 'What is this?'

'What the kid saw.'

'This is shit,' Carmel said. 'This is nothing.'

'I know. But it's what we got.'

'It looks like two aliens, a tall one and a short one.'

'I thought they looked like grim reapers, the head things they have on.'

The silk scarves had helped. Carmel would've spent a moment giving thanks, if she'd had any idea who she might give thanks to. In the picture, the scarves gave their heads a tall, slender profile. The kid must have seen them as silhouettes. The faces within the silhouettes were generic enough to be meaningless.

'What are the head things?' Carmel asked.

'The kid didn't know. Maybe some kind of hat. Maybe they were nuns.'

'Good thought,' Carmel said.

'They're women, anyway,' Lucas said. 'At least the kid says they are.'

"The shooter in the stairwell was a woman,' Carmel said.

'The triumph of feminism,' Lucas said. 'We got equal-opportunity hitters.'

'Well…' Carmel flipped the photo back on the desk. 'On second thought, if you find her, call somebody else. She might be a little dangerous to know.'

'Especially if you lose the case.'

Carmel snorted as she went through the door. 'As if that might happen,' she said.

When Carmel got back to the apartment, she found Rinker's suitcase in the front hall, and Rinker just getting out of the bathroom, freshly showered, scrubbing her hair dry.

'So what happened?'

'We're clear,' Carmel said. She gave Rinker a short account of her talk with

Lucas. Rinker was pleased with the outcome. 'I'm outa here,' she said. 'I've got to get back to my business.'

'Do you have a reservation?'

'Yeah, for four o'clock,' Rinker said.

'I'll drive you out to the airport,' Carmel said. 'Listen, what do you do in the winter?'

'Mostly work,' Rinker said, fluffing her hair. 'Where I live, there's not a hell of a lot to do outside.'

'Same here… You ever go to Cancun? Or Cozumel?'

'Cozumel. Acapulco. A couple of times. Practice my Spanish.'

'I try to get out of here for at least three weeks after it gets cold – a week in November, a week in January and a week in March,' Carmel said. 'We ought to go together. I've got connections, in the hotels and so on. It's a good time.'

'Jeez,' Rinker said. She seemed oddly pleased, and Carmel got the impression she wasn't often invited places. 'That's sounds nice.'

'So call me in October, and if you can get away, I'll set up the hotels and everything, and you can set up your own plane reservations, and we'll meet down there.'

'I'd like that,' Rinker said. 'What do you do? Lay on the beach? Shop? I kinda like to boogie…'

'Listen, I know some guys there, and there are always guys around

… we'd be going around.'

Rinker held up a finger: 'Hold that thought, but this just popped into my mind, before I forget. The guns are in the closet. You gotta take them down and throw them in the river, or bury them somewhere. Also the box of shells – the shells are with the gun. They're the only things left that can hang us.' 'I sorta like them,' Carmel said. 'Fine. Spend a few hundred bucks and get a nice clean gun of your own. I can make a call, and have one sent to you: brand new, cold, no registration to worry about. If you want a silencer, I can handle that, too. But the guns in the closet have gotta go. I'm nervous having them here, even hidden.

You gotta do it; I'll call you every ten minutes until it's done.'

'We can dump them in the river by the airport,' Carmel said. 'I know a place – then you won't have to worry.'

'Excellent,' Rinker said. She cocked her head. 'Listen, if we go to Cancun, what about my hair? I've always had the feeling that it's a pretty small-town cut, you know, like I'm already middle-aged or something. I thought…'

Carmel did cartoon breath-intake, and held her fingers to her breast: 'There's this woman down there, I've had my hair done every time I've gone down, she's a genius…'

Talking about Mexico, they almost forgot the guns. With the door open, and

Rinker's suitcase in the hall, Carmel snapped her finger and whispered, 'The guns.' She went back to get them, and fumbled the box of shells. There were still thirty-odd shells in the box, and they flew everywhere. Carmel hastily scooped them up, pushed them back in the box, and hurried to the door.

Before going to the airport, Carmel took Rinker to the flats below Fort Snelling on the Minnesota River. 'The fort's just a relic,' Carmel said, as they looked up the bluff at the revetments. 'The first thing ever built here, that's still around, anyway. The Army had a death camp for Indians right where we're standing. This was after the big revolt… they hanged thirty-eight Indians in a single drop, down in Mankato. This area, this is where they kept the survivors, especially the woman. Half of them died during the winter; most of the women were raped by soldiers.' 'Happy story,' Rinker said.

'I don't know what I'd do if I got raped, but it'd be something unpleasant, if I got my hands on the guy,' Carmel said.

'I bet,' Rinker said. She didn't mention the guy named Dale-Something. They found a quiet path along the river, checked to make sure there was nobody watching, and pitched the guns into a deep spot.

'That's it,' Rinker said. 'We're all done.'

On the way back from the airport, Carmel called Hale Allen.

Allen said, 'God, I was trying to get you earlier in the afternoon. Are you coming to the funeral tomorrow?'