Chosen Prey

by John Sandford

  He looked down at her, flabbergasted again. “You want to try women? Lesbianism?”

  “Maybe the first time . . . but we’ve talked about it and I’d like you to meet her. We’re discussing the possibility of the three of us . . . if you and she can be friends.”

  The three of them? He sat up. “You told her who I am?”

  “Not exactly. Just that you were a professor. I had to do that much. She wanted to know your bona fides. She wouldn’t have wanted to sleep with a street person, or a musician or something.”

  “You told her.” He was enraged.

  “Yes.”

  “Goddamnit, I told you I can’t be brought into this. I teach at a Catholic school. My whole career, my whole livelihood . . .”

  She put a finger out to his lips to shut him up, and said, “She’s very discreet. She understands all of that. She’s married, and her husband has no idea.”

  “You fuckin’ moron. You fuckin’—”

  She said, “Hit me, James. In the face. Hard. C’mon, hit me.”

  He said, “You’re nuts.”

  “I’m a seeker, James.” Her face was placid, lit from within. “Hit me.”

  He slapped her.

  “Harder, James.”

  The second time, he hit her hard. He’d counted on killing her, but that was now an impossibility—impossible, at least, until he had time to better figure out what she’d told the other woman. He hit her with an open hand, hard enough to knock her flat. She looked up at him, blood on her lips, her eyes glittering. “Rape me.”

  He shook his head: “Listen . . . I . . .” He looked down at himself: He was shaking like a Jell-O mold.

  “James. C’mon, James, please . . .”

  HE WAS AT home that evening, eating a bowl of Froot Loops, reading the back of the box, when his mother called. She sounded ill: “James, I need to see you.”

  “Something wrong? You sound . . . afflicted.”

  “I am afflicted,” she said. “Sorely. I need to talk to you immediately.”

  “All right, then,” he said, “Let me finish my cereal and I’ll be over.”

  She rang off and he sat down again, but rather than go back to the text on the box, he began considering the tone of her voice. She had definitely sounded ill—and there was an unaccustomed urgency in her tone. Maybe she really was ill. Her mother had died of pancreatic cancer at a younger age than she was now. . . .

  His mother, he thought, all those years with a good salary; a woman born at the end of the Great Depression, of parents who’d suffered through chronic unemployment and the loss of a house, who had inflicted her with the fear that she’d wind up alone and penniless and too old to help herself. That fear had kept her working beyond the normal retirement age.

  And kept her piling money into her Fidelity account and into her 201K plan. She had a half-million in Fidelity, God-only-knew-what in the 201K, and the college provided excellent medical, so the estate wouldn’t be soaked up by medical costs or nursing care.

  A half-million. His mother, gone. He put his head in his hands and wept, the tears streaming down his face, his chest heaving, a catch in his voice box. After a minute, he gathered himself.

  A half-million. A Porsche Boxster S could be had for fifty thousand.

  The image of himself in a Boxster, a tan leather jacket—not suede, he thought, suede was passé, but something reflective of the suede idea, with light driving gloves of a darker brown—lifting a hand to a small, blond, admiring coed on a street corner: The image was so real that he nearly experienced the reality itself, sitting in his kitchen chair. A cool clear fall afternoon, leaves scuttling along the street, the smell of yard smoke in the air, a day perfectly fitting for the not-suede jacket, the girl in a plaid skirt and white long-sleeve blouse, a cardigan over her shoulders. . . .

  His mother had said she was afflicted. He hurried out to his car.

  HE PARKED IN the driveway, climbed the stoop at the side door, and stopped for a second to look at the house—he hadn’t even considered the house, but in this neighborhood, in this condition, the house itself had to be worth a quarter-million. And they had done no estate planning: none. The thought of losing it, even a piece of it, to taxes, again brought the welling tears. He squared his shoulders and rang the doorbell.

  Helen came to the door, pushed open the storm door, said curtly, “Come in.” She didn’t sound ill, he thought.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “No.” She led the way back to an L-corner where she had her television, and sat in her rocker. Qatar trailed along, and when she sat down, perched on the couch. She took a remote control from her reading table, pointed it at the television, and a moment later Qatar found himself looking, with some puzzlement, at an old movie. The movie ran for two or three seconds, and she paused it. A nice-looking actor was caught full-face.

  “The police have come to see me three times,” she said. “It has to do with this man who buried all those girls on that hill. They have learned that this man had some training in art; that he spent time at Stout, in Wisconsin; that he has some connection with St. Patrick’s and myself; that he probably murdered Charlotte Neumann . . .”

  Qatar had tightened the grip on himself as she began to speak. He was an exceptional liar, always had been, his face loose and observant, questioning, wondering where the speaker was going, ready with the surprise and denial.

  “And,” his mother concluded, “they have learned that he looked like this man.”

  “Yes?”

  “James. That is you, ten years ago. Even five. That is you,” she said.

  His chin dropped. Then he said, voice rising, “You think, you think . . . Mother, you think it’s me? My God, this man is a monster. You think it’s me?”

  Her head bobbed. “I’m afraid that’s what I think, James. I want you to convince me that it’s not true. But I remember all those poor cats, with their heads twisted.”

  “That was not me. That was Carl Stevenson, I told you then it was Carl.”

  She shook her head, “James . . .”

  “What can I tell you?” He was on his feet. “Mother, I did not do this.”

  “Convince me.”

  He shook his head. “This is crazy. This is completely crazy. Lord, I hope you haven’t told anybody about this. It’s my life, my career. I had nothing—nothing—to do with any of this, but just the accusation or even the suggestion would finish me. My God, Mother, how can you think this?”

  She looked at him, tears in her eyes now. “I want to believe that, but I don’t. I knew about the cats. I hid it even from myself, but I saw you one day, going out in the garage, and I found the cat later.”

  And suddenly she broke down and began to cry, a series of breath-catching moans—a sense of agony that brought tears to Qatar’s eyes, not because of his mother’s pain, but because of the injustice and the lack of understanding, that she should betray him by her lack of belief.

  “That was not me,” he insisted. “Mother, who have you talked to about this?”

  “Nobody,” she said, shaking her head. “I know the effect this could have on your life. I took care—but now I have something to pray over. My own flesh and blood.”

  “Ah, man . . . Mother, I don’t want to have to deal with this, but I have to say it: I think you are . . . afflicted. You’ve made this up. Created it. The man on the television is not me; I saw the drawings on television. You really think I could draw those things? C’mon, Mother.”

  But it wasn’t going to work. He could see it. “I need something to drink—water,” he said. “Don’t go away.”

  He walked past her, through the living room and into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, got a glass, let the water run for a moment as the calculations flew through his mind. With the glass overflowing, he turned the water off, drank a sip, exhaled, poured the rest of the water down the drain.

  Well, she knew. He had to act.

  SHE WAS STILL sitting in the rocker when he walked
back into the room; the actor’s face was still frozen on the TV screen, watching them. Helen seemed in despair, but without a touch of fear.

  “The best thing to do—” she began.

  She didn’t finish. He caught her one-handed by the hair and pulled her straight forward onto the carpet. She yelped once and went facedown, and he dropped on top of her, pinning her with his weight. She grunted, desperately, “James,” and turned her head, her eyes rolling wildly, looking up at him, unbelieving, and he slipped one hand around her face and cupped her mouth in the palm of his hand and with his thumb and forefinger, pinched her nose. He took care: He didn’t pinch tightly enough to bruise, only to stop the flow of air. She struggled, she tried to get a breath—he could feel the suction against the palm of his hand—but it was all over quickly enough. He held her until he knew she was dead, then held her a minute longer.

  ALL RIGHT. THAT was done. They were four blocks from St. Pat’s. She walked most days, so moving her car would not be a problem. She was always the first one to work, so finding her there would not raise any eyebrows.

  He would have to change her, find something appropriate for work. He went to her bedroom, found a rack of business suits still in their plastic clean bags, found one that he knew she favored. The change itself was distasteful: She was like a withered bird, no muscle left, barely sexed. He hurried through it, but made sure that she was neat, just as she was in life.

  He turned off the porch light, stepped outside, waited for a moment in the dark, scanning the strip of visible street. This was all familiar enough, and he was good at it. When he was sure, he quickly moved her to the backseat of his car.

  Purse and keys. He got them.

  Money. She had fifty dollars in her purse; he took forty, left ten. And she kept money under the cup in the flour canister in the kitchen. He opened the canister, lifted the cup, and found three hundred and fifty dollars in tens. The money lifted his heart, and he hurried up the stairs. She accumulated money in a variety of ways—maybe even stole some of it from the museum, he thought—and squirreled it away. He didn’t know where, exactly, but he thought the bedroom. . . .

  And it was in the bedroom, in the closet, under the carpet, in a hole in the floor. He would never have found it if he hadn’t been on his hands and knees, checking her shoes. A corner of the carpet was pulled up, just enough that he reached over and gave it a tug. A square of it came away, too easily, and when he looked . . .

  A wad of cash. He pulled it out, and his heart leapt when he saw that most of the bills were fifties and hundreds. There must be thousands. He rolled out of the closet and counted, eyes bent close to the cash, stopping to wet his index finger on his tongue, the better to count. He counted once, could not believe the total, and counted again. Eight thousand dollars?

  He closed his eyes. Eight thousand. Everything he wanted, all right here. . . .

  Back down the stairs. He found a flashlight in a drawer by the sink, turned off all the house lights, and headed out.

  The night was cold and moonless. He drove the four blocks to the museum and parked on the street. Sat watching, letting an odd car pass by. A few minutes before nine, he got out, walked once entirely around the museum, then tried her key in the side door. It slipped in easily, and he was inside.

  There were safety lights at either end of the hall, and in the deadly silence he walked down to the office, let himself in, walked carefully past the secretary’s desk into his mother’s private space. Okay, he thought. This would work.

  He left the door unlocked and walked back out to the car, took a look around, then lifted her out and carried her across the lawn under one arm, as though he were humping a rug into the building. Inside, he put her in her chair.

  Got her cup, in the light of the flash, went down the hall to the men’s room, filled it with water, found a pack of instant coffee next to the microwave in the secretary’s office, and stirred the coffee into the cup. When it was all ready, he sat her in the chair, put her fingers around the cup handle, then pushed her onto the floor.

  She went over easily, dragging the cup with her.

  He looked around. What else?

  Nothing. Simple was better, and anything elaborate would take more time. And it really looked good, he thought; she was on her side, as if she’d gone to sleep. There was no trace of violence, just a little old lady who’d gone to sleep. The way she’d have wanted to go. . . .

  With a last look around, he left the building, locking the door behind him. Out to the car. A nice night, he thought. Money in his pocket.

  A half-million in Fidelity?

  Too bad about Mom.

  But she was old.

  19

  LUCAS WAS TALKING with Rose Marie Roux the next morning when her secretary poked her head in the door, looked at Lucas, and said, “A hysterical woman is on the phone, looking for you. She says it’s an emergency.”

  “Switch it in here,” Rose Marie said. The secretary backed out of her office, and a few seconds later, Rose Marie’s phone burped. She took the receiver off the hook and handed it across the desk to Lucas.

  “Lucas Davenport.”

  “Officer Davenport, this is Denise Thompson. . . .” The woman seemed to be falling apart, her voice pitched high and wobbly with stress.

  “Denise . . . ?”

  “Thompson, Helen Qatar’s secretary. You know she died—”

  “What?”He stood up, scowling, astonished. “She died? How’d she die?”

  “She died at her desk. I don’t know, I don’t know, she just died. She was at her desk with a cup of coffee and she must have had a stroke or something.”

  “Did she call out or—”

  “No, no, I wasn’t here, it was before anybody got here this morning. I saw her door open and her light on and so I went in, and I just saw her legs on the floor and I went around to see . . . she was gone. I called 911 . . .” Now she did break down and began a breathy weeping.

  Lucas let her go for a few seconds, then said, “Okay, okay, Mrs. Thompson. Police came?”

  “And the ambulance, but it was too late. I could see it was too late.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know why I’m calling you except that you’d been to see her and she was joking about being Miss Marple and now she’s gone.”

  “I’ll talk to the medical examiner and make sure there was nothing improper,” Lucas said. “We’ll make sure. Are you the contact on that, or . . . ?”

  “Her son is, really, if he’s not too wrecked. He was pretty wrecked this morning. I called him, and he ran right over. He went a little nutty.”

  “All right. Well, thank you for calling,” Lucas said.

  “Mr. Davenport . . . I don’t know, I’m not sure I should even bring this up. . . .”

  “Bring up anything you want,” Lucas said.

  “Well, I’m sure it was a stroke or something, something regular, she was an older woman . . . but—she didn’t bring her newspaper.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Every day for years, as long as I’ve worked here, she would carry her newspaper in. She told me that she would get up, she would eat raisin bran or bran flakes and a cup of yogurt, and she would make her list of things to do for that day. She wouldn’t get the newspaper until she had her list. Then, when she left for work, she’d pick up the newspaper from the front porch and carry it in. If the carrier didn’t bring it or something, she would stop at a box on the corner and buy one.”

  “Every day.”

  “Every day. When she got here, she would put the paper in her in-basket and make a cup of coffee, and then she would answer all of her e-mail and write e-mails to people she corresponded with. I would come in with my paper and we would work on her to-do list until break time, and then we would read our newspapers at the same time. But today . . . she didn’t bring her newspaper.”

  “So what do you . . . ?”

  “It’s just strange. Of all days . . . I’m sure it’s nothing
, but it’s just strange. I wanted to tell somebody.”

  “Thank you. We will look into it all,” Lucas said.

  WHEN THOMPSON WAS gone, he looked at Rose Marie and said, “Shit.”

  “It didn’t sound good from here.”

  “A little old lady is dead—Helen Qatar, down at St. Pat’s. It’s possible that she was taken off by the gravedigger. Goddamnit. She joked about being Miss Marple, and we think the guy may be around there somewhere, and I never told her to back off or be careful.”