Invisible prey ld-17

by John Sandford

  “Smart girl,” Lucas said.

  Back in the hallway, Lucas said to Conoway, “Give them a minute.”

  “What're they doing,” Flowers asked, “sopping up the blood?”

  “Jesse's telling Kathy what's what,” Lucas said. “I think we're okay.”

  A moment later Jesse stuck her head into the hall, looked at Conoway. Kathy was a step behind her. “We'll talk to you,” Jesse said.

  Conoway sighed, said, “I thought I was outa here. Okay, let's go, girls…” And to Lucas: “Thanks. You must throw a good tantrum.”

  Amity Anderson was annoyed with life, with art, with rich people, with Lucas Davenport.

  So annoyed that she had to suppress a little hop of anger and frustration as she drifted past the Viking warrior. The warrior was seven feet tall, made of plaster, carried an ax with a head the size of a manhole cover, and wore a blond wig. He was dressed in a furry yellow skin, possibly from a puma, if puma hides are made of Rayon, and his carefully draped loins showed a bulge of Scandinavian humor.

  Anderson wasn't amused. The reception was continuing. If she ate even one more oat cracker with goat cheese, she'd die of heart congestion. If she had one more glass of the Arctic Circle Red Wine, her taste buds would commit suicide.

  She moved slowly through the exhibit, clutching the half-empty wineglass, smiling and nodding at the patrons, while avoiding eye contact, and trying, as much as she could, to avoid looking at the art itself. Scandinavian minimalism. It had, like all minimalism, she thought, come to the museum straight from a junkyard, with a minimal amount of interference from an artist.

  An offense to a person of good taste. If somebody had pointed a gun at her head and told her that she had to take a piece, she'd have asked for the Viking warrior, which was not part of the show.

  Anderson had changed into her professional evening dress: a soft black velvet blouse, falling over black velvet pants, which hid the practical black shoes. The Oslo room was built from beige stone with polished stone floors. The stone look good, but killed your legs, if you had to stand on it too long. Thank God foundation staffers weren't expected to wear high heels. Heels would have been the end of her.

  The Viking warrior guarded the entrance. The art exhibit itself, mostly sculpture with a few paintings, spread down the long walls. The end wall was occupied by a fifteen-foot model of a Viking ship, which appeared to have been built of scrap wood by stupid unskilled teenagers. The best thing about the ship was that the stern concealed a door. The door led onto the patio, and once every fifteen minutes or so, Anderson could slip outside and light up.

  So the art sucked. The people who were looking at the art also sucked. They were rich, but not rich enough. Millionaires, for sure, but a million wasn't that much anymore. A million dollars well invested, taking inflation and taxes into account, would generate an income about like a top-end Social Security check.

  That was nothing. That was chicken feed. You couldn't lease a BMW for that; you'd be lucky to get a Chrysler minivan. You needed ten million; or twenty million. And if you were one of these guys, you sure as shit weren't going to give a million of it to some unknown gay chick at an exhibit of bent-up car fenders, or whatever this was.

  Anderson knew all that, but her bosses wanted somebody at the show. Somebody to smile and nod and eat goat-cheese oat crackers. No skin off their butt. She wasn't getting paid for the time. This was a required voluntary after-hours function; most small foundations had work rules that would have appalled the owners of a Saigon sweatshop.

  She looked at her watch. She'd given it fifty-four minutes. Not nearly enough. She idled toward the Viking ship, turned and checked the crowd, and when she judged that no one was looking at her, stepped backward and went out the door.

  The evening air was like a kiss, after the refrigerated air of the gallery. Night was coming on. The patio looked over a maple-studded lawn toward the evening lights of downtown Minneapolis, a pretty sight, lights like diamonds on a tic-tac-toe grid.

  She fumbled the Winstons out of her purse, lit one, blew smoke, trying to keep it away from her hair, and thought about Davenport and Claire Donaldson and Constance Bucher and Marilyn Coombs.

  Goddamn money. It all came down to money. The wrong people had it-heirs, car dealers, insurance men, corporate suits who went through life without a single aesthetic impulse, who thought a duck on a pond at sunset was art.

  Or these people, who bought a coffee-table book on minimalism, because they thought it put them out on the cutting edge.

  Made them mini-Applers. But they were still the same bunch of parvenu buck-lickers, the men with their washing-machine-sized Rolexes and the women with the “forever” solitaire hanging between their tits, not yet figuring out that “forever” meant until something fifteen years younger, with bigger tits, came along.

  Damn, she was tired of this.

  The door popped open and she flinched. A red-haired woman, about Anderson's age, stepped outside, and said, “I thought I saw you disappear.” She took a pack of Salems out of her purse. “I was just about to start screaming.”

  “I saw you talking to the Redmonds,” Anderson said. “Do any good?”

  “Not much. I'm working on the wife,” the redhead said. A match flared, the woman inhaled, and exhaling, said, “I'll get five thousand a year if I'm lucky.”

  “I'd take that,” Anderson said. “We could get a new TV for the employee lounge.”

  “Well, I'll take it. It's just that…” She waved her hand, a gesture of futility.

  “I know,” Anderson said. “I was pitching Carrie Sue Thorson. She had her DNA analyzed.

  She's ninety percent pure Nazi. The other ten percent is some Russian who must've snuck in the back door. I was over there going, It's so fascinating to know that our ancestors reach back to the European Ice Age.' Like, 'Thank Christ they didn't come from Africa in the last hundred generations or so.' “ “Get anything?” the redhead asked.

  “Not unless you count a pat on the ass from her husband,” Anderson said.

  “You might work that into something.”

  “Yeah. A whole-life policy,” Anderson said.

  The redhead laughed, blew smoke and screeched, “Run away, run away.”

  Anderson wound up staying for almost two hours and failed to raise a single penny-but she scored in one way. An hour and forty-five minutes into the reception, she took a cell-phone call from her supervisor, who “just wanted to check how things were going.”

  “I've eaten too much cheese,” Anderson said, sweetly. She understood her dedication was being tested and she'd aced the test. “But the art's okay. Carrie Sue is right over here, isn't she a friend of yours?”

  “No, no, not really,” her supervisor said hastily. “I'd hate to bother her. Good going, Amity. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Five minutes later, she was out of there. She drove a Mazda, cut southwest across town, down toward Edina. Time for a gutsy move. She knew the truth, and now was the time to use it.

  And she didn't want much.

  A couple of years in France, or maybe a year in France and another Italy. She could rent her own house, bank the money, come back in a couple of years with the right languages, she could talk about Florence and Venice and Aix and Aries. With a little polish, with the background, she could move up in the foundation world. She could get an executive spot, she could take a shortcut up the ladder, she wouldn't have to go to any more Arctic Circle Red receptions.

  Worth the risk. Of course, she needed to be prepared. As she turned the corner at the top of the last block, she reached under the car seat, found the switchblade, and slipped it into the pocket of her velvet pants.

  The Widdler house was an older two-story, with cedar shingles and casement windows, built on a grassy lot, with the creek behind. She glanced at her watch: ten-fifteen.

  There was a light in an upstairs bedroom and another in the back of the house. An early night for the Widdlers, she thought.

 
She parked in the drive, went to the front door, and rang the bell. Nothing. She rang it again, and then felt the inaudible vibrations of a heavy man coming down a flight of steps. Leslie Widdler turned on a light in the hallway, then the porch light, squinted at her through the triple-paned, armed-response-alarmed front door.

  Widdler was wearing a paisley-patterned silk robe. As fucked up and crazy as the Widdlers might be, there was nothing inhibited about their sex life, Anderson thought.

  Widdler opened the inner door, unlocked and pushed open the screen door, and said, “Well, well. Look what washed up on our doorstep. Nice to see you.”

  Anderson walked past him and Widdler looked outside, as though he might see somebody else sneaking along behind. Nobody. He shut the door and locked it, turned to Anderson, pushed her against the wall, slipped one big hand up under her blouse, pulled her brassiere down, and squeezed her breast until the pain flared through her chest.

  “How have you been?” he asked, his face so close that she could smell the cinnamon toothpaste.

  Her own hand was inside his robe, clutching at him. “Ah, Leslie. Where's Jane?”

  “Upstairs,” Leslie said.

  “Let's go up and fuck her.”

  “What a good idea,” Widdler said.

  And that's what they did, the three of them, on the Widdlers' king-sized bed, with scented candles burning all around.

  Then, when the sweat had dried, Anderson rolled off the bed, found her purse, dug out a cigarette.

  “Please don't smoke,” Jane said.

  “I'll go out on the back porch, but I need one,” she said. She groped for her pants, said, “Where's that lighter?” She got both the lighter and the switchblade. “We need to talk.”

  They didn't bother with robes; they weren't done with the sex yet. Anderson led the way down the stairs in the semidarkness, Leslie poured more wine for himself and Jane, and got a fresh glass from the cupboard and gave a glass to Anderson. They moved out to the porch, and Jane and Anderson settled on the glider, the soft summer air flowing around them, while Leslie pulled a chair over.

  “Well,” Jane said. She took a hit of the wine, then dipped a finger in it, and dragged a wet finger-pad over one of Anderson's nipples. “You were such a pleasant surprise.”

  “I want a cut,” Anderson said. “Of the Connie Bucher money. Not much. Enough to take me to Europe for a couple of years. Let's say… a hundred and fifty thousand. You can put it down to consulting fees, seventy-five thousand a year.”

  “Amity…” Leslie said, and there was a cold thread in the soft sound of her name.

  “Don't start, Leslie. I know how mean and cruel you are, and you know I like it, but I just don't want to deal with it tonight. I spotted the Bucher thing as soon as it happened. It had your names written all over it. But I wouldn't have said a thing, I wouldn't have asked for a nickel, except that you managed to drag me into it.”

  After a moment of silence, Jane said, “What?”

  “I got a visit from a cop named Lucas Davenport. This afternoon. He's an agent with the state police…”

  “We know who he is. We're police consultants on the Bucher murder,” Leslie said.

  Anderson was astonished; and then she laughed. “Oh, God, you might know it.”

  But Jane cut through the astonishment: “How did he get to you?”

  “He hooked the Bucher murder to the Donaldson case. He's looking at the Coombs murder.

  He knows.”

  “Oh, shit.” Anderson couldn't see it, but she could feel Jane turn to her husband.

  “He's a danger. I told you, we've got to do something.”

  Leslie was on his feet and he moved over in front of Anderson and put a hand on her head and said, “Why shouldn't we just break Amity's little neck? That would close off that particular threat.”

  Anderson hit the button on the switchblade and the blade clacked open. She pressed the side of the blade against him. “Take your hand off my head, Leslie, or I swear to God, I will cut your cock off.”

  Jane snorted, amused, and said, “A switchblade. You know, you should take off about four inches, just to make him easier to deal with.”

  “I'll take off nine inches if he doesn't take his hand off my head,” Anderson snarled.

  She could feel the heat coming off Leslie's thighs.

  “Fuck you,” Leslie said, but he moved away and sat down again.

  Anderson left the blade extended. “One good reason for you not to break my neck: Davenport will then know that the thieves are close. And when they investigate either my death or disappearance, the police will unlock the center drawer of my desk, where they will find a letter.”

  “The old letter ploy” Jane said, still amused, but not as amused as she'd been with the switchblade.

  “It's what I had to work with,” Anderson said. “About Davenport. He's working on the Bucher case and now on Donaldson and Coombs, but he's also working on a sex scandal.

  There was a story in the paper this morning. Some state legislator guy has been screwing some teenager.”

  “I saw it,” Leslie said. “So what?”

  “So Davenport is running that case, too, and that's apparently more important. He was interviewing me and he had to run off to do something on the other one. Anyway, I heard him talking on his cell phone, and I know the name of the people involved.

  The girl's name.”

  “Really,” Jane said. “Is that a big deal?”

  “It could be,” Anderson said, “If you want to distract Davenport.”

  Sandy the intern was sitting next to Carol's desk when Lucas came in. He was running a little late, having taken Sam out for a morning walk. He was wearing his grand-jury suit: navy blue with a white shirt, an Hermes tie with a wine-colored background and vibrating commas of a hard blue that the saleslady said matched his eyes; and cap-toed black tie-shoes with a high shine. His socks had clocks and his shorts had paisleys.

  Sandy, on the other hand, looked like she'd been dragged through hell by the ankles-eyes heavy, hair flyaway, glasses smudged. She was wearing a pink blouse with plaid pants, and the same scuffed shoes she'd worn the day before. Somebody, Lucas thought, should give her a book.

  She stood up when she saw him, sparks in her eyes: “He's innocent.”

  Lucas thought, “Ah, shit.” He didn't need a crusader, if that's what she was morphing into. But he said, “Come on in, tell me,” and to Carol, “I've gotta be at the Dakota County courthouse at one o'clock and it's a trip. I'm gonna get out of here soon as I can and get lunch down there, with Virgil.”

  “Okay,” Carol said. “Rose Marie called, she's got her finger in the media dike, but she says the leakers are going crazy and she doesn't have enough fingers. The governor's gone fishing and can't be reached. Kline has issued a statement that said the charges are without foundation and that he can't be distracted because he's got to work up a budget resolution for a special session in July.”

  “I bet the papers jumped on that like a hungry trout,” Lucas said. “You're in a news meeting and you have the choice of two stories. A-President of the Senate works on budget resolution. B-President of the Senate bangs hot sixteen-year-old and maybe her mother, too, and faces grand-jury indictment. Whatta you going to do?”

  “You think he did them both at the same time? I mean, simultaneously?” Carol asked.

  “I don't want to think about why you want to know,” Lucas said. “Sandy, let's talk.”

  She sat across the desk from him with a four-inch-thick file. “Lots of people have sex when they're sixteen,” she ventured. “Probably, now, most.”

  “Not with the president of the Minnesota Senate,” Lucas said. He dropped into his chair and leaned back. “When did you get in?”

  “I came back last night, about midnight. Then I stayed up reading until five…

  I had some luck down there.”

  “Start from the beginning,” Lucas said.

  She nodded. “I went down and found
the Polk County Courthouse. Des Moines is in Polk County. Anyway, I went to the clerk's office, and there was this boy there-another intern. I told him what I was looking for, and he really helped a lot. We got the original trial file, and Xeroxed that, and then we discovered that Duane Child-that was the man who was convicted of killing Toms-we found out that Child appealed. His attorney appealed.

  They claimed that the investigation was terrible, and that the trial judge let a lot of bad information get in front of the jury.” “What happened with the appeal?” Lucas asked.

  “They lost it. Child is in prison. But the appeals court vote was six to three for a new trial, and the three judges who voted for it wrote that there was no substantial evidence, either real or circumstantial, that supported conviction.”

  “So…”

  She held up a finger: “The main thing, from our point of view, that Bill showed me… Bill is the other intern… is that when they appealed, they got the entire police investigative file entered as evidence. So I got that, too.”

  “Excellent!” Lucas said.

  “Reading through it, I cannot figure out two things: I cannot figure out why he was indicted, and I cannot figure out how he was convicted,” Sandy said. “It was like all the cops testified that he did it and that was good enough. But there was almost no evidence.”

  “None?”

  “Some. Circumstantial,” she said.

  “Circumstantial is okay…” Lucas said.

  “Sure. Sometimes. But if that's all you've really got…”

  “What about connections between the Toms murder and the others?” Lucas asked.

  “That's another thing, Mr. Davenport…” she began.

  “Call me Lucas, please.”

  “That's another thing, Lucas. They are almost identical,” she said. “It's a perfect pattern, except for two things. Mr. Toms was male. All the others are female. And he was strangled with a piece of nylon rope, instead of being shot, or bludgeoned.

  When I was reading it last night, I thought, Aha.' “ “Aha.”

  “Yes. The killers are smart enough to vary the method of murder, so if you're just looking at the murders casually, on paper, you've got one woman clubbed to death, one woman shot, one woman dies in a fall, and one man is strangled,” Sandy said.