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They ate and went to Lucas' house. Cassie flopped on the living room couch.

"You know what the worst part of being poor is? You have to work all the time. You're rich, you can take six weeks to veg out. That's what I need: about six weeks of daytime TV."

"Better'n watching the news, anyway," Lucas said. He lifted her legs, sat down on the couch and dropped them in his lap. "At least with the soaps, you know you're getting bullshit."

"Hmph. Well, we could get really philosophical about the media and have an intelligent conversation, or we could go fool around," Cassie said. "What'd you want to do?"

"Guess," Lucas said.

Later in the evening, Del called. "Sorry about the other day…"

" 'S okay," Lucas said. "What's happening?"

"I've been out with Cheryl twice and she's starting to talk," he said. "I keep telling her I don't want to hear it, and she keeps talking."

"Told you," Lucas said.

"Asshole," said Del. "I actually kind of like her… Anyway, she thinks Bekker might be on some kind of drug. Speed or coke or something. She said he'd sometimes act nuts, he'd be fuckin' her and he'd go a little crazy, start raving, spitting…"

"Sex freak?"

"Well, not exactly. The sex, I guess, was pretty conventional, it's just that he'd kind of lose control. He'd come after her with this really ferocious rush, and then afterwards, it was almost like she was a piece of furniture. Didn't want to hear her talk, didn't want to cuddle up. Usually he'd bring something to read, until he got it up again, and then he'd start freaking out all over."

"Hmph. That's not exactly the worst thing I've ever heard…"

"Well, I'm gonna see her again tomorrow."

"Is there any way we can let Bekker know you're seeing her?"

Del sounded surprised. "What for?"

"Maybe push him a little? We got the surveillance running, so there shouldn't be any problem for her."

"Well… yeah, I guess we could work something out. Maybe I could get her to call him, let it slip somehow…"

"Try," Lucas said.

CHAPTER 19

The phone rang at three in the morning.

Cassie lay on her back, barely visible in the light from a streetlamp filtering through the blinds, the sheet pulled up around her throat, clutched there with two fists, as though she were dreaming sad dreams.

Lucas tiptoed into the kitchen and picked it up.

The dispatcher, with an overlay of personal concern: "Lucas, this is Kathy, at Dispatch. Sorry to wake you up, but there's a guy on the phone, says he's a doctor, says it's about your daughter…"

His heart stopped. "Jesus. Patch him through."

"I'll push the button…"

There was a moment of electronic vacancy, then the sound of somebody breathing, waiting.

"This is Davenport," Lucas snapped.

There was no immediate response, but the feeling of a presence, a background sound that might have been a distant highway.

"Hello, God damn it, this is Davenport."

A man's voice came back, low, gravelly, atonal, artificially clipped, the words evenly spaced, as though a robot were reading from a script: "There is nothing wrong with your daughter. Do you know who this is?"

Lucas had listened to the tapes. Loverboy. "I… yes, I think so."

"Give me your phone number." The voice was from Star Wars, from Darth Vader. No contractions. No sloppy constructions. Scripted and pared to the bone. "Do not make a call. I will call you back within five seconds. If your line is busy, I will be gone. I have a pencil."

Lucas gave him the phone number. "You're gonna call…"

"Five seconds." There was a click and Lucas said, "Kathy, Kathy? Are you still on the line? God damn it." The dispatcher was gone, and Lucas hung up. A second or two later, the phone rang once.

Lucas snatched it up. "Yeah."

"I want to help, but I can not help directly," the voice grated, still on the script. "I will not come out. How can I help?"

"Did you send us a picture? I gotta know, just for identification."

"Yes. The cyclops. The killer does not look like the cyclops. The killer feels like the cyclops. His head looks like a pumpkin. There's something wrong with it."

"Not to say you're lying, but that sounds like the one-armed man, in that TV show a long time ago," Lucas said, letting a tint of skepticism color his voice. Reaching for control. Cassie came into the kitchen, sleepy, rubbing her eyes, drawn by the tone of his voice.

"Yes, The Fugitive," Loverboy said. "I thought of that. Where did you get an artist's drawing of me?"

Loverboy had seen Carly Bancroft on TV3. "Let me ask the questions for a minute, okay? If you get spooked, I don't want you ditching me before I get them out. Do you know of any connection between either of the Bekkers and Philip George?"

"No." There was a moment of hesitation, and then, off the script, voiced a notch higher, inflection: "I've speculated…" He changed his mind, and his voice, in midsentence: "No." The robot control again.

"Look," Lucas said. "You've got a conscience. We've got a fuckin' monster out there killing people and he might not be done yet. We need every scrap we can get on the case."

"Get Michael Bekker."

"We don't know he's involved."

Back on script, all inflection gone: "He is a monster. But he did not kill Stephanie personally. I did not make that mistake."

"Look, give me the connection between you and George, if you think there is one," Lucas said, going soft. "If you want to stay out there, and you get caught later, I'll testify that you were feeding me information, that you helped, okay? Maybe help you out."

Another pause. Then: "No. I can not. You have thirty more seconds."

"Hold on… why?"

"Because you may trace the call. I budgeted two minutes. You have twenty-five seconds left…"

"Wait, wait, we've got to set up some way for me to reach you… If I need you, bad…"

"Put an advertisement in the Tribune personals… Say you are no longer responsible for the debts of your wife. Sign it 'Lucas Smith.' I will call about this time. Two minutes. Look at Bekker. Stephanie was scared of him. Look at Bekker."

"Gimme one more question, one more," Lucas pleaded. "Why's Bekker a monster? What'd he do to Stephanie…?"

Click.

"God damn it," Lucas said, looking at the phone.

"Who was it?" Cassie asked, moving up beside him. Her soft fingers trickled down his spine, warm, reassuring.

"Stephanie Bekker's lover," Lucas said. He poked a seven-digit number and the other end was picked up instantly: Dispatch.

"This is Davenport. Let me talk to Kathy."

"How's your daughter?" the woman asked a second later.

"That was all bullshit," Lucas said. "But it's okay, the guy had to get through to me. I'll need the tapes on your part of the call, so you might want to mark them."

"Well… there aren't tapes," the dispatcher said. "He came in on the nonemergency line, the thirty-eight."

"God damn it," Lucas said. He scratched his head. "Listen, write down what you remember he said and give it to Anderson in the morning. Write down everything you remember, what his voice sounded like, the whole nine yards."

"Heavy-duty?" she asked.

"Yeah. Very heavy."

When Lucas hung up, Cassie said, "I think…," but he waved her away and said, "Shhh… I've got to remember…" She followed him into the bedroom and he flopped onto the bed, lay back and closed his eyes. Remember. Not the words. The feel of the other man. The voice was deep, the words well paced, the sentences clear. When he was off script for a moment, he'd used the word "speculated." He watched TV3.