“Kid like it?” The thin cop didn’t really care. He thought the fat cop’s kid was overly protected and maybe even a fairy, though he’d never say so.

“Yeah. Brought it back into the shop and asked him to sign it. Right on the box, Lucas Davenport.”

“Well, the guy’s no couch,” said the thin one. He paused expectantly. A minute later the fat one got it and they started laughing. Laughing doesn’t help the bladder. The fat cop squirmed again.

“Listen, I gotta go or I’m gonna pee down my leg,” he said finally. “If Davenport takes off for somewhere besides the shop, he’ll have to get his car. If you’re not here when I get back, I’ll run get you outside the ramp.”

“It’s your ass,” said his partner, looking through the long lens. “He just started the Racing Form. You maybe got a few minutes.”

Lucas saw the fat cop slip out of the van and dash into the Pillsbury Building. He grinned to himself. He was tempted to stroll away, knowing the cop in the van would have to follow and strand the fat guy. But it would create complications. He would rather have them where he was sure of them.

When the fat cop got back, four minutes later, the van was still there. His partner glanced over at him and said, “Nothing.”

Since Lucas hadn’t done anything yet, the photos they took had never been developed. If they had been, they would have found that Lucas’ middle finger was prominent on most of the slides and they might have decided that he had spotted them. But it didn’t matter, since the film would never be developed.

As the fat cop scrambled back into the van and Lucas sprawled on the grass, paging through the poetry again, they were very close to the end of the surveillance.

Lucas was reading a poem called The Snake, and the fat man was peering at him through the lens of the Nikon when the maddog killer did another one.

CHAPTER

3

He had first talked to her a month before, in the records department of the county clerk’s office. She had raven-black hair, worn short, and brown eyes. Gold hoop earrings dangled from her delicate earlobes. She wore just a touch of scent and a warm red dress.

“I’d like to see the file on Burhalter-Mentor,” she told a clerk. “I don’t have the number. It should have been in the last month.”

The maddog watched her from the corner of his eye. She was fifteen or twenty years older than he was. Attractive.

The maddog had not yet gone for the artist. His days were colored with thoughts of her, his nights consumed with images of her face and body. He knew he would take her; the love song had already begun.

But this one was interesting. More than interesting. He felt his awareness expanding, reveled in the play of light through the peach fuzz of her slender forearm . . . . And after the artist, there had to be another.

“Is that a civil filing?” the clerk asked the woman.

“It’s a bunch of liens on an apartment complex down by Nokomis. I want to make sure they’ve been resolved.”

“Okay. That’s Burkhalter . . .”

“Burkhalter-Mentor.” She spelled it for him and the clerk went back into the file room. She’s a real-estate agent, the maddog thought. She felt his attention and glanced at him.

“Are you a real-estate agent?” he asked.

“Yes, I am.” Serious, pleasant, professional. Pink lipstick, just a touch.

“I’m new here in Minneapolis,” the maddog said, stepping a bit closer. “I’m an attorney with Felsen-Gore. Would you have a couple of seconds to answer a real-estate question?”

“Sure.” She was friendly now, interested.

“I’ve been looking around the lakes, down south of here, Lake of the Isles, Lake Nokomis, like that.”

“Oh, it’s a very nice neighborhood,” she said enthusiastically. She had what plastic surgeons called a full mouth, showing a span of brilliantly white teeth when she smiled. “There are lots of houses on the market right now. It’s my specialty area.”

“Well, I’m not sure whether I want a condo or a house . . .”

“A house holds its value better.”

“Yeah, but you know, I’m single. I don’t really want to hassle with a big yard . . .”

“What you really need is a bungalow on a small lot, not much yard. You’d have more space than you would in an apartment, and you could sign up for a lawn service for thirty dollars a month. That’d be cheaper than the maintenance fee on most condos, and you’d maintain resale value.”

The maddog got his file and waited until she got a photocopy of the liens. They drifted together along the hall to the elevators and rode down to the first floor.

“Well, hmm, look, in Dallas we had this thing, it was called the multiple list, or something like that?” said the maddog.

“Yes, multiple listing service,” she said.

“So if I were to drive around and find a place, I could call you and you could show it to me?”

“Sure, I do it all the time. Let me give you my card.”

Jeannie Lewis. He tucked her card into his wallet. As soon as he turned away and stepped out of her physical presence, he saw the artist again, her face and body as she walked through the streets of St. Paul. He hungered for her, and the real-estate agent was almost forgotten. But not quite.

For the next week, he saw the card each time he took his wallet out of his pocket. Jeannie Lewis of the raven hair. A definite candidate.

And then the fiasco.

He woke the next morning, bruised and creaking. He took a half-dozen extra-strength aspirin tablets and carefully twisted to look at his back in the bathroom mirror. The bruises were coming and they would be bad, long black streaks across his back and shoulders.

The obsession with the artist was broken. When he got out of the shower, he saw a strange face in the mirror, floating behind the steamed surface. It had happened before. He reached out and wiped the mirror with a corner of his towel. It was Lewis, smiling at him, engaged in his nudity.

Her office was in the south lake district, in an old storefront with a big window. He drove the neighborhood, looking for a vantage point. He found it on the parking boulevard kitty-corner from Lewis’ office. He could sit in his car and watch her through the storefront window as she sat in her cubicle, talking on the telephone. He watched her for a week. Every afternoon but Wednesday she arrived between twelve-thirty and one o’clock, carrying a bag lunch. She ate at her desk as she did paperwork. She rarely went back out before two-thirty. She was stunning. He best liked the way she walked, using her hips in long fluid strides. He dreamt of her at night, of Jeannie Lewis walking nude toward him across the desert grass . . . .

He decided to collect her on a Thursday. He found a nice-looking home on a narrow street in a redeveloping neighborhood six blocks from her office. There were no houses directly across the street from it. The driveway was sunken a few feet into the lawn, and stairs led behind a screen of evergreens to the front door. If he rode with Lewis to the house and she pulled into the driveway, and he got out the passenger side, he would be virtually invisible from the street.

The house itself felt empty. He checked the cross-reference books used by investigators at his office, found the names of the neighbors. He called the first one in the book and got a nosy old man. He explained that he would like to make a direct offer for the house, cutting out the real-estate dealers. Did the neighbor know where the owners were? Why, yes. Arizona. And here’s the number; they’re not due back until Christmas, and then only for two weeks.

Scouting the neighborhood, the maddog found a small supermarket across from a Standard station a few blocks from the house.

On Thursday, he packed his equipment into the trunk of his car and wore a loose-fitting tweed sport coat with voluminous pockets. He checked to make sure Lewis was in, then drove to the supermarket, parked his car in the busy lot, and called her from a pay phone.