Lucas Davenport Novels 16-20

by John Sandford

  Shockley said, “My roommate. Leigh Price.”

  Price smiled and licked a knife with peanut butter on it. “Cop,” she said. Price was a fairy, if he understood the concept: short, slight, dark, pretty. Maybe thirty. Shockley was thicker, wider; a University of Minnesota basketball player.

  “You always work at night?” Shockley asked.

  “I’m looking for a guy,” Lucas said. “Do either of you know Roy Carter?”

  The two women glanced at each other, then they both looked back at Lucas and shook their heads. Price said, “Nooo . . . I don’t think so. Who is he?”

  “He works at Mike’s liquors? Hangs out at the A1?”

  Price shook her head: “Not our scene. Why are you asking?”

  “I’m trying to put some of Frances Austin’s friends together,” Lucas said.

  “I wasn’t one of Frances’s friends,” Price said.

  “I was, all the way back to school,” Shockley said. “She was really nice, once you got to know her—but Leigh thought she was stuck-up.”

  “Stuck-up rich prig. But I didn’t think that enough to kill her,” Price said. Her dark eyes caught Lucas’s eyes as she dug in a peanut butter jar with the knife. Lucas felt a little thrum, and it didn’t have anything to do with murder.

  Lucas said to Price, “Would people call you a fairy?”

  Her eyebrows went up, and she said, “Maybe.”

  “Oh, poop,” Shockley said. “You’re a fairy.”

  “You’re just as much a fairy as I am,” Price said to her roommate.

  Shockley rolled her eyes. “Right.” To Lucas: “She’s Tinker Bell the Fairy, I’m Clarabelle the Cow.”

  “Not fair,” Price said; but there was a spark in her eye; she knew it was the truth.

  Shockley and Frances Austin had gone to Blake Academy from kindergarten through graduation, and then on to separate colleges.

  “We didn’t date together or anything—we just knew each other for a long time,” Shockley said. “We went to each other’s birthday parties. I didn’t see her much when we were in college, but then . . . we’d hook up for lunch or go out and have drinks a couple times a year. And we were both interested in the gothic, but from different directions. She came in from women’s studies and I came in from literature.”

  “I came in from witchcraft,” Price said.

  “So you don’t really know who she was hanging out with?” Lucas asked.

  “She hung out with a lot of students, at night. She was on-again off-again in graduate studies, but there weren’t any jobs in her area and she was thinking about changing direction into something more practical. I’m working, I have to get going early, so I don’t hang out at night.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Commercial real estate,” Shockley said. “Probably start law school in a year or two. My dad says he’ll supply the bucks.”

  Price said, “I’m a chemical engineer. I work at 3M in medical products.”

  Neither of the women had seen Austin in the two weeks before she’d died. Shockley thought she’d seen her on a Monday afternoon or a Tuesday afternoon, two weeks before, but it had been an accidental encounter in a Macy’s store, and they’d gone and gotten cinnamon pretzels and chatted for a while.

  “She wasn’t worried about anything, except about what she was going to do,” Shockley said.

  “Did she say anything about her mother?” Lucas asked.

  “She was always talking about her mom. She really admired her— her mom’s sort of a free spirit, but she also runs a good business, and she’s smart, and she’s on boards and stuff.”

  “Her mother thinks that there was a little stress between them, since her father died,” Lucas said.

  “She was broken up about her father,” Shockley agreed. “She said a couple of things about her mom being hard on him, but . . . she wasn’t really mad at her mom. It was just a hard time. She was one of the executors of his estate, and she took it really seriously.”

  “Okay.” Lucas looked at his notebook: “Do either of you know a couple, uh, Denise Robinson and Mark McGuire?”

  The two women looked at each other and Price said, “Well, sure. Denise and Mark.”

  “What do they do?”

  “They’re Web people—they’re trying to set up a commercial website. Something to do with video advertisements . . . I’m not too clear about it. Mark has a day job at, uh, some truck thing. Computers and trucks, I don’t know what it is.”

  “I’ve been told that they were really tight with Frances before she was killed,” Lucas said.

  “I don’t know what that’d be about,” Shockley said, and Price shook her head.

  “Okay,” Lucas said. “I need names . . . I need to run along a rosary of names until I find something.”

  Shockley suggested three people that he might contact, and had numbers for two of them, and said each of the two would have a phone number for the third. He took the names down, recognized two of them from Alyssa Austin’s list.

  “Are any of the three fairies?” Lucas asked.

  “You know, we don’t really call ourselves that,” Price said. “I mean, it’s not like people go around pointing them out and saying fairy-fairy-fairy. ”

  “Yes, they do. You even dress like that. The waif look,” Shockley said. She added, “They call them Lolis, too. Loli is short for Lolita.”

  “Also lollipop,” Price said.

  “I’m looking for a woman; and I’ve been told that she is one,” Lucas said.

  “Like me,” Price said.

  “That’s what I’ve been told,” Lucas said.

  Shockley jumped in. “Karen Slade could be. She’s thin enough.”

  “She’s kind of tall,” Price said.

  Lucas put a check next to Slade’s name. “Thanks. I’ll call if I think of anything else.”

  “Do that,” Price said.

  Outside, he looked at his watch. It had been a half hour since he’d left Roy Carter’s; might be worth checking back. Or, he could go home.

  Got in the car, thought about it; what the hell, he could swing by. Five minutes, found a good parking space, only two houses down from Carter’s place. Up the stairs, knock on the door, still no response. But when he was turning away from the door, another door, sideways down the hall, popped open, and a woman stuck her head out.

  “Looking for Roy?”

  “Yup.” He took her in: a round-faced woman, unnaturally pale, with lipstick that looked almost black in the dim light of the hallway. She was dressed in a loose, black, ankle-length dress. Another one; he’d tapped into Goth Central.

  “He won’t be back until late,” she said. “He’s out.”

  “I’m a cop,” Lucas said. “I’m going to stick a card under the door. If you hear him come in, could you ask him to call me? Whatever time it is?”

  “Okay, but I’m going out myself,” she said.

  “If you hear him . . .”

  “Is this about that guy getting murdered at that bar?” She leaned in the door frame.

  “Yup. He might’ve talked to somebody that we’d like to find,” Lucas said.

  “Not that little fairy, is it?”

  Lucas’s eyebrows went up. “Yes, it is. You know her?”

  “No. But that’s where Roy is. She called him up.”

  “What?”

  “They’re hooking up tonight.”

  Carter had stopped back at his apartment after work—probably while Lucas was arguing with the woman behind the liquor store counter—had changed clothes, and was gone, hurrying down the steps. He met his neighbor, the Goth woman, whose name was Jean Brandt, on the way down, said, “Hey: that fairy called me. We’re going out,” and then he rattled on down the stairs and out the door.

  Lucas asked her, “You know where he goes? Where he might take her? What does he look like?”

  “I’ve got a picture of him,” she said, a worry-crinkle creasing her forehead. She went back into her apartment,
came back to the door with a snapshot; Brandt and two men, in a park somewhere. “Roy’s on the right.” Lucas tilted the photo under the hall light: Roy was a tall man, six-four, thin, red-haired, pale eyes, bony shoulders, and big hands. Even in the park, he was dressed from head to foot in black. He had a silver earring piercing the upper ring of the only ear that Lucas could see.

  “You think he’s in trouble?” Jean asked.

  “I don’t know—I’d just like to talk to this woman,” Lucas said.

  “She’s apparently the last person to see Dick Ford alive.”

  “Well, knowing Roy—he’s always been a little retarded around women—I’d say he’s going to take her to the place he thinks will impress her the most. That’s probably November.”

  Lucas looked up: “November on Lyndale? I thought it closed.”

  “New management, but they kept the name,” she said. “Or he might go to Candy’s, but Candy’s is big on dancing and Roy doesn’t dance so much. And it’s loud. I think he wants to talk.”

  “Thanks,” Lucas said, and he turned back to the stairs.

  “If you want, I’ll ride along,” she offered. “If he’s not at November, maybe I could ask people that we know. Somebody will be there.”

  “Let’s go,” Lucas said.

  In the car, Brandt said, “Roy is really sweet, but, you know, he doesn’t get so far with women. I don’t know why, he’s really a nice guy. So this one sort of hit on him the other night, actually got his work number. He’s been shaky about it ever since. Hoping she’d call.”

  “Didn’t have a name?”

  “He didn’t tell it to me, if he did,” Jean said.

  “Did he know a young woman named Frances Austin? She was killed, it was in the papers? She was Goth, or somewhat Goth, hung out at A1.”

  “I don’t know. Roy hung out at A1 and he’s Goth. So probably,” Brandt said.

  “Did you know her?”

  “Not as far as I know. My friends are more from, you know, the south side and over toward Edina. Roy’s friends were more the university group.”

  “Do you know Patricia Shockley or Leigh Price?” Lucas asked.

  She looked over at him in the dark, her moon face almost luminescent. “Well, yeah. I do. Are they involved?”

  He explained about Frances Austin, and she said, “Okay. If you hook up with a Goth, and they talk to you, you can follow a chain around to all the Goths in the Cities, and probably all over the country. So I know Leigh and Pat one way, and I know Roy another way, but if they know each other . . . I don’t know.”

  November was a charcoal-colored concrete-block building with a long scrawling November above the doors in red neon. The parking lot had two dozen cars in it. Worried about getting parked in, Lucas left the Porsche on the street, a block away. Jean led the way back, and as they passed the parking lot, said, “That’s Roy’s car.” She pointed at an aging red Camry parked at the back of the lot.

  “Excellent,” Lucas said.

  Inside the door, they stopped to scan the main room—black leatherette booths, around a U-shaped bar with subdued light, a harsh black-and -white six-foot photo enlargement of Edvard Munch’s The Scream on the wall above the back bar. Jean turned to Lucas and said, “This way,” and headed for a booth with two couples, all Goth.

  She asked one of the men, “Have you seen Roy?”

  The Goth looked around, “Yeah, he’s here.”

  “Is his friend with him?”

  “Yeah. They’re right here.” He sat up a bit and craned his neck, looking toward the back room. “Maybe they went in the back?”

  They went into the back, found more booths, scattered around a twenty-by-twenty dance floor, no music yet, and only three couples in the booths. Jean went to one of the couples and asked, “Did you see Roy?”

  “He was just here,” the man said. The woman flicked her finger toward a hall on one side. “Restroom. Just a minute ago.”

  Lucas said, “Thanks,” to Jean, and headed toward the hall that led to the restrooms. The men’s room was empty; Jean saw him back out and said, “Let me look,” and went into the women’s restroom. A second later, she was back. “Only one person, and it’s not her.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She said, “Roy called her a fairy. This woman”—she tipped a finger at the restroom door—“is a plus size. Maybe two-plus.”

  The hall went on past the restroom, and Lucas followed it out, thinking it might lead outside; but it was a loop, leading back to the 7 main room, at the front. They stood there for a moment, peering at the tables, then one of the men they’d first spoken to saw them and pointed at the door.

  They stepped over to the booth, and he said, “You talk to them? They just went out. Just now.”

  There were only two people on the street, both guys, ambling down toward them, apparently heading for the club. Lucas looked in the parking lot, around to the side. The Camry was still there. He walked down to the corner, a hundred feet away, looked up and down the street. There were people about, no odd couple, no tall redheaded guy with a diminutive fairy girl.

  Where in the hell had they gone?

  6

  Fairy and loren took the Honda, a five-year-old black Prelude SH with a stick shift and some engine work. Small, what car nuts called a q-ship: mild-looking but with a serious bite, put together by some nice Asian boys from St. Paul. With its high-revving engine and tight suspension, it felt, under Fairy’s butt, like the Batmobile.

  They went west on I-494, up 35E, west on I-94, and off on Nicollet, cutting through back streets, driving with the stick, braking with the engine, spotting a street-parking spot under an elm tree. As she backed into the parking place, Loren said, “I bet he’s early. He’s eager.”

  “Can you still feel Frances on him?”

  “I can,” he said. “I can feel her spirit, her hand on his shoulder.” Fairy looked in the rearview mirror, saw the lights from a car turning into the November parking lot. A moment later, Roy Carter walked out of the lot, slowly, combing his hair, patting it down with one hand, straightening his shirt, tucking it in. “There he is.”

  “Then, let’s go.”

  She popped the door, got out, shook out her skirt. Her purse had once been an art deco silver-and-onyx cigarette case, and held her driver’s license, two credit cards, four fifty-dollar bills and a twenty. The size of a clamshell, she held it in one hand, and it was so cool that other Goth women looked more at her purse than her face.

  She crossed the street, as smooth as a leopard, the knife beating in her jacket pocket like a second heart. She paused inside the door, looked left and right, letting the black hair flip, and then Roy called, “Honey.”

  She looked left and smiled at the name; he was standing next to a table with two other couples. She twiddled her fingers at them, cocked her head at Roy, pulled him in. He was a smooth-faced boy, maybe twenty-four, a few adolescent blemishes still spotting up one cheek. Light brown eyes, he’d have grown to be a light brown man, working wistfully unhappy in some service industry, behind a desk, with a name tag—that is, if he’d had a chance to do it. She said, “Why don’t we find a place in back?”

  Away from witnesses.

  “Sure. Want a wine?”

  “Let’s see if we can find a place.”

  They went into the back, and as they walked, she snagged the fingers of his right hand in her left, letting him lead by a step. She knew she was running about 440 volts through him, that the thing with the hand-holding would pull him through.

  She looked in a mirror; would Francie be looking out at her? Would Francie have her hand on Roy’s shoulder? Nothing.

  They got to a booth and she turned to sit down and happened to look back toward the front door and froze for a moment, then unfroze with the thought: Move.

  Fairy turned her face up to Roy and said, “Just believe in me for two minutes. For two minutes. Come on. Hurry. Come on.” She pulled his hand and they went left down a hallway to the
restroom and which, she hoped, went to a back door. But it didn’t—it led back to the main room. She peeked out. Wait, wait, wait . . .

  “What?” Roy whispered.

  Then: “Hurry,” tugging at his fingers, and they scampered across the room and out the front door. In the cold air, she laughed and said, “Run.”

  He followed behind, across the street, into the car. She fired it up, cranked the wheel, and they were off down the street: she took the first right, playing with the clutch, rolling, rolling, and she lifted her foot and the clutch engaged and they rolled silently into the dark.

  Roy asked, “What was that?”

  “An old, old friend who I never want to see again,” she said. “Let’s find someplace to walk for a while. He’ll be gone, we can go back.”

  “I know another place,” Roy said. “On the other side of town— across the river. Not so nice as November, though.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “A1.”

  “I know that place,” she said. “Sounds like a barbeque sauce.”

  They parked along the riverfront, because, she told him, she still needed to walk. “I’m cooped up all day. Work, work, work. It’s the crisis of American life, huh? We need time to think. Time to brood.”

  “I get up, I go to work,” Roy said, shyly. “I’d like to be a writer. I’ve got some ideas, but I never have the time. It’s like you said—time to think. If I could get away, someplace . . .” He scuffed his feet, head down a little, hands in his pocket, and he said, “Well, fuck it.”

  She took his hand, pulled him into the strip of grass along the river, under a cottonwood, and said, “If you don’t do it, the time can run out on you.”

  “I know, but . . . I’ve still got time. I read about writers, you know. A lot of them had lots of experiences, lots of jobs, before they got published. That’s what I’m doing now. I’m getting experience. I thought about going into the army, but I’ve . . .”