Chosen Prey by John Sandford Read Free Book Online Page A

of blue in the sky, then decided that he'd been wrong. There was no blue; there never would be. He grinned at his own mood, and a woman he was passing nodded at him.
    Lucas had a full-sized Xerox of the Aronson drawing in his pocket, along with partial copies of the other three drawings; in those three, the faces had been carefully scissored out. He met Jennifer Carey in the Channel Three parking lot, where she was smoking a cigarette. She was tall and blond and the mother of Lucas's only child, his daughter, Sarah. Sarah lived with Carey and her husband.
    "Lucas," Carey said, snapping the cigarette into the street. A shower of sparks puffed out of the wet blacktop.
    "You know those things cause cancer," Lucas said.
    "Really? I'll have to do a TV show on it." She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. "What's happening? Where'd you get the hickey?"
    "That's it, I'm buying a turtleneck," Lucas said.
    "You'd look like a French thug," Carey said. "I could kind of go for it. . . . So you're back with Weather?"
    "Yeah. Looks like," he said.
    "Gonna do the deed?"
    "Probably."
    "Good for you," she said. She looped her arm in his and tugged him along toward the door of the building. "I always liked that woman. I can't imagine how a little thing like a shooting came between you."
    "She had the guy's brains on her face," Lucas said. "It made an impression."
    "The brains? Or the incident? I mean, like a dent? Or did you mean impression, as a metaphor? Because I don't think brains would really--"
    "Shut up."
    "God, I love that tone," she said. "Why don't we get your handcuffs and find an empty van?"
    "I got a story for you," Lucas said.
    "Really?" The bullshit stopped. "A good one? Or am I doing your PR?"
    "It's decent," Lucas said.
    "So walk this way," she said. He followed her into the building and through a maze of hallways to her office. A stack of court transcripts occupied her visitor's chair; she moved them to her desk and said, "Sit down."
    "This is a purely unofficial visit," Lucas said. He took the Xerox copy of the Aronson drawing out of his pocket.
    "The best kind," Carey said. "What's that paper?"
    "There are a couple of conditions."
    "You know the kind of conditions we can accept . . . . Can we accept them?" she asked.
    "Yeah."
    "Then . . . gimme."
    Lucas pushed the paper across the desk and Carey unfolded it, looked it over, and said, "She could lose a few pounds."
    "She has," Lucas said. "Death will do that for you."
    "She's dead?" Carey looked at him over the drawing.
    "That's Julie Aronson. Her body--"
    "Found her down south, I know the story," Carey said. She turned her lips down. "We've sorta hashed that over. Not that we can't use it."
    "Hang on, for Christ's sakes. Goddamn movie people," Lucas said. "The thing is, several women have gotten drawings like this--three more that we know of. Two got them in the mail, and a third set was posted on a bulletin board over at the U. We got a freak."
    She brightened. "You got more pictures?"
    He gave her the other three. She looked at them one at a time, said, "Man," and then, "These might possibly make a story. It'd be better if we could interview the victims."
    "I'd have to check. You won't get them today."
    "Could we hold off until we get them? Until tomorrow? That'd really pump the story."
    "No. If you don't want to use these today, I'll take them to Eight," Lucas said.
    "No no no . . . this is fine," she said hastily. "The biggest thing we've got going tonight is a promo for a soap opera. We'll do the drawings tonight, and then if we could get interviews tomorrow . . . that might even be better. Carry the story longer."
    "Good. And you've got to use them at both five and six o'clock. We want all the other stations screaming for them, scrambling around to catch up, playing them big at ten o'clock. We're really trying to plaster them around."
    Carey was no dummy. She looked at him closely and said, "You could do that by calling a press conference. Why the exclusive for