Secret Prey ld-9

by John Sandford

  "So?" Lucas grinned at him and made a What? gesture with his hands.

  Robles had a friend, he said, a woman, a computer freak he’d met in an Internet chat room, and then in person, when it turned out that she lived in Minneapolis. When the news hit the papers that Polaris was considering a merger, and a large number of administrative and clerical personnel in Minneapolis could lose their jobs, she called him to ask him if the merger could be stopped.

  "Her mother works at Polaris, routine clerical stuff, exactly the kind of job that would probably be wiped out," Robles said.

  "And you told her that the merger couldn’t be stopped."

  "Not exactly. I told her that nobody much wanted it except Kresge and a small majority of board members, and the only reason the board was going for it was the stock premium…"

  "Explain that," Sherrill said. "I don’t understand stocks."

  "Well, see, Midland has offered to buy all the outstanding Polaris shares by trading with their shares, one to one. When they made the offer, they were trading in the sixties-sixty-plus dollars per share-and we were trading in the upper thirties. Their stock dropped on the offer, down to about fifty-three right now. But ours went to forty-six right now, and the closer we get to the merger, and the more certain it looks, the more ours will go up. If we finally merge, and nothing else happens, it’ll probably be around fifty dollars a share. Polaris needs ten board members to okay the deal. If you look at how many board members own how much stock, the tenth biggest holder…" Robles looked at Sherrill, who seemed to be having trouble following the explanation. "What I’m saying is, of those ten members needed to approve the merger, the one with the smallest holding is Shelley Oakes. He has ninety thousand shares, plus options for fifty thousand more at an average price in the thirties. If the sale goes through at fifty bucks, he’ll make a couple of million bucks over what the stock was worth before the merger talk started."

  "Ah," Sherrill said, as though she understood.

  "The biggest holder, Dave Brandt, has better than four hundred thousand shares, plus God only knows what he has in stock options, which he could exercise before the deal goes down. He’ll make tens of millions. Literally tens of millions."

  "So the board and Kresge make millions, and everybody else gets fired," Lucas said.

  "No, not exactly. Some people would make it. There’re rumors that the investment division will be kept intact, that Midland wants the division. Then there are other executives who could make a stink, but most of them have stock options."

  "Do you have options?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah, yeah. I’ve got options on five thousand shares at a bunch of different prices that average out to about thirty-five, so if it goes to fifty, I’d make seventy-five thousand. But I’ll tell you what, that’s about six weeks’ pay for me. And the government would get most of it anyway. I mean, it’s nothing."

  "Nothing," Sherrill said.

  "Nothing."

  "Jesus, I make forty thousand a year," Sherrill said. "And I’ve been shot for it."

  "For your big shots, forty ain’t a salary," Sloan said from behind Robles. "It’s more like the price tag on something they might buy next week."

  "Okay, okay," Lucas said. "So this woman…"

  "Bonnie Bonet."

  "… told you she killed Kresge, and she has some motive."

  "Yes."

  "Why’d she tell you?"

  "Ah, God. Because I asked her." He twisted his hands nervously, and Lucas noticed that he seemed to sweat all the time, and copiously. "See, the thing is, when she came on the ’net and asked if the merger could be stopped, I told her, not unless we killed Kresge. I didn’t mean it, we were just joking on the ’net. But she came right back and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ "

  "And you said…"

  "I said maybe we could figure a way to blow his car up," Robles said.

  "Blow his car up," Sloan said, repeating the phrase as though he were astonished.

  "I was joking. I really was-I’d never hurt anyone, it was just all bullshit. We went back and forth about ways to kill him, all ridiculous, like sci-fi stuff, and then… we stopped."

  "Stopped?" Sherrill’s eyebrows went up.

  "Yeah. It never came up again," Robles said. "It was like, a couple of nights, then we wore the subject out, and it never came up."

  "Until somebody killed him," Lucas said.

  "Why didn’t you tell me this Saturday?" asked Sloan.

  "Because I didn’t think there was any chance she’d done it. And if she hadn’t done it, talking about it could only get me in trouble. So I wanted to check with her. I came back, and I couldn’t find her online, and I didn’t know where she lived. She’s unlisted, and I’d only gotten together with her at Uncle Tony’s. That’s a bar…"

  "We know," Sherrill said. "The one with the porno on computers."

  "Porno? You mean the TV Three story? That was all bullshit…"

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Lucas said. "Go ahead."

  "Anyway, when I did find her, yesterday, I asked her if she’d heard about it, and she said yeah, she’d done it," Robles said.

  "But you don’t believe her."

  "No. She’s never fired a gun. She doesn’t even go outside, for Christ’s sake. She’s white as a sheet… she doesn’t know about walking around in the woods. Her old man’s got something wrong with his bowel or something and never worked, and they never went anywhere when she was growing up. She said she shot him with her father’s.30–30, and I bet she doesn’t even know what a.30–30 looks like or that he has one."

  "Could be the right kind of rifle," Lucas said. "The medical examiner says Kresge was killed with a largecaliber rifle, which around here probably means thirtycaliber…"

  "That’s why I decided to tell you," Robles said plaintively. "I’m ninety-five percent sure she didn’t do it-but I’m five percent not sure."

  "And you don’t know where she lives," Sloan said.

  "No, but she uses her driver’s license as an ID, and I figured you could get that."

  "Bonnie Bonet?"

  "B-O-N-E-T," Robles said, spelling it out. "Is this gonna be in the newspapers?"

  Sherrill looked at Lucas: "Want me to pick her up?"

  "Yeah. Do that. Get some uniforms to back you up. Call me when you’ve got her." When Sherrill had gone, Lucas turned back to Robles, looked at him for several seconds, then said, "We’ll need a statement. Detective Sloan will take it."

  And to Sloan: "Read him his rights on the tape."

  "My rights?" Robles threw his head back to peer at Lucas. "To a lawyer? Do I need a lawyer?"

  Lucas shrugged: "Purely up to you… Anyway, talk to Sloan." And to Sloan: "I’ll be down at my office. I’ve got some paper to look at."

  Two files were waiting for him: files on the people mentioned in the anonymous letter as victims of Wilson McDonald.

  Lucas took off his jacket, hung it on an antique oak coatrack, and dropped in the chair behind his desk. He picked up the first file, put his heels on his desk, and leaned back. And then let the file drop to his lap for a few seconds. He was not particularly introspective, but he was suddenly aware that the constant mental grinding in the back of his head-the grinding that had gone on for weeks, a symptom of the beast prowling around him-was fainter, barely distinguishable.

  A book project, he thought: Serial Murder: A Cure for Clinical Depression? by Lucas Davenport.

  George Arris was killed on a rainy night in September 1984 while walking down St. Paul’s Grand Avenue toward a restaurant-bar generally regarded as a meat rack. Somebody unknown had fired a single shot from a.380 semiautomatic pistol into the back of Arris’s head, and left him to die on the sidewalk.

  St. Paul homicide investigators had torn the city apart looking for the killer, because Arris was only the last of four nearly identical killings, spaced about two weeks apart.

  All the victims were younger white men, all relatively affluent, all walking alone at night. All of the killings we
re within twenty blocks of each other. A racial motivation was suspected, and black gang members were targeted as the primary suspects.

  Four different pistols had been used in the killings. Two of the guns had been found.

  The first, a.22-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver which had been used in the second killing, was found by a city work crew trying to open a clogged storm sewer a halfmile from the killing. That set off a general inspection of storm sewers, and the second pistol, a.25-caliber semiauto, was found three blocks from the.22. Neither of the other two pistols was found.

  The lead detective on the case was George Jellman.

  "Jellman was retired, and it took two phone calls to locate him. "He’s out back," his wife shouted. "I’ll go get him." She must have been shouting. Lucas mused, because they lived in Florida, which was a long way from Minnesota.

  Jellman came to the phone a second later: "Davenport, you miserable piece of shit. I never thought I’d hear from you again."

  "How are you, Jelly?"

  "Well, I’m looking out at my backyard," he said.

  "There are two palm trees and two orange trees and a lime tree-Denise makes key lime pie from it. It’s just a bit shy of eighty degrees right now, and I can smell the ocean. About an hour from now, I’ll be hitting golf balls on the greenest golf course you ever saw in your life… How’s it up there?"

  "Cool, but nice."

  "Right. Nice in Minnesota means the snow’s not over your boots yet… So what’s happening?"

  "You remember a bunch of killings you handled back in ’84, four guys shot in the back of the head?"

  "Oh, hell, yes," Jellman said. "Never got the guys who did it."

  "I’m interested in the last one-George Arris."

  "Why him?"

  "We got an anonymous letter with the name of the supposed killer."

  "I bet it ain’t no goddamn Vice Lord," Jellman said.

  "Why is that?"

  "Is it? A Vice Lord?"

  "No. It’s a bank vice president."

  "Hah. I knew it. Trust the letter, Lucas-if it was a bullshitter, he would’ve said it was a Vice Lord, ’cause that was on all the media. The Vice Lords did the other three, but that fourth one, that was a copycat."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Pretty sure. That was the word on the street, though nobody had any names for us. But the word was, the fourth one came out of the blue. That the Vice Lords who’d done the shooting had split for Chicago before the fourth one ever happened."

  "So it was pretty much street talk about the fourth one."

  "There was something else too-the first three were all up there in the colored section. But the last guy was down on Grand Avenue. You look on a map, it looks pretty close, but you don’t see many blacks over there. Not walking on the street-especially not then, not as tight as everybody was about the first three shootings. And there’s Wylie’s arket used to be over there. You remember Wylie’s?"

  "Sure."

  "They had a surveillance camera in the back of the store, looking at the cashier’s cage and the front door, get people’s faces coming in. Anyway, on the film, you can see the street through the window, and we picked out Arris strolling down the street, just a minute or so before he was shot. But there weren’t any blacks, either before or after."

  "Huh. Is the tape still around?"

  "Yeah, someplace. Since the case is still open…" "Did you ever look at the people around Arris? Friends and coworkers?"

  "Oh, sure. Went over to that bank where he worked, came up empty. He’d been dating a few women, but hadn’t had anything serious in a couple of years. All he did was work: that’s what everybody said. Wasn’t interested in pussy, gambling, booze. Just interested in work."

  "Huh. And he was dead when they found him."

  "Yup. Never knew what hit him. Probably never saw it coming. Entry wound right below the bump on the back of his head, exit wound right between his eyes."

  "Exit wound? So how’d you know it was a.380-was there a shell?"

  "Yeah, we found it in the grass next to the curb. There was a partial print, but really partial-not enough even to start looking for a match."

  "Slug fragments?"

  "Yeah, one piece. Hollow point of some kind, nothing that would identify a pistol."

  "Not much of anything, then."

  "Nope. Listen, if you want, I’ll call Doug Skelly over in St. Paul and get him to run down that tape for you."

  "Thanks, Jelly. Wish you were still on the job."

  "Wish I was too, man. I hate this fuckin’ place."

  The file on Andrew Ingall consisted of one sheet: His boat had been reported missing on Superior on clear, fine day with good sailing winds. The Coast Guard, the Civil Air Patrol, and the local sheriff’s departments in adjacent Minnesota and Wisconsin counties had done a search. Nothing was ever found, not even a life jacket.

  An address and phone number were listed in the town of North Oaks. Lucas punched the number in, got an answering machine, a woman’s voice. He hung up, dialed Dispatch, had them check the cross-reference index for numbers on both sides of that address, dialed the first one.

  "Hello?" Another woman.

  "Yes, my name is Lucas Davenport and I’m with the Minneapolis Police Department. I’m trying to get in touch with Annette Ingall, but all I get at her home is an answering machine."

  "Oh my God, nothing happened to Toby?"

  "No, no, I just need to talk to her about her husband. Do you know if she works? Where I could call her?"

  "Well, she has a bridal wear boutique downtown…"

  The bridal shop was a brisk ten-minute walk from City Hall, among a cluster of boutiques on Marquette Avenue. Annette Ingall was a tall woman with auburn hair and pale blue eyes; motherly, Lucas thought later, though she was probably five years younger than he was. She did a smiling double take when he walked into the store, and when a clerk came over and he asked for her, she said, "That would be me. Can I help you?"

  He stepped closer and pitched his voice down: "I need to talk to you privately for a moment. I’m with the Minneapolis Police Department-nothing happened with your boy, it’s a completely different matter."

  Her hand went to her throat as the smile died on her face. "How do you know about my son?"

  "Because I called one of your neighbors to find you, and she said, ‘Oh my God, nothing happened to Toby?’ "

  "Oh. Okay." The smile flickered back. "Why don’t you come back to my office."

  Ingall led the way through a door into the back of the store, to a small office cubicle that stuck out into a stockstorage area. There were two chairs inside, and she sat behind her desk and crossed her legs.

  Lucas sat down and said, "I’m investigating the death of Daniel Kresge."

  "Yes? I read about it."

  Lucas picked up the tone. "You didn’t like him?"

  "No. Not especially. He once made a pretty heavy pass at me, when he and his wife were still together. This was after my husband died, and I was feeling pretty vulnerable."

  Lucas nodded: "I’m actually here because I want to know more about your husband. I have an abstract of a Douglas County file about his disappearance, but there’s not much in it."

  "There wasn’t much to say." Her lower lip trembled as she said it; she was twisting a ring on her finger, and Lucas noticed that it was a wedding ring. "He just got on the boat and vanished."

  "But there isn’t any doubt that the boat sank?" Lucas asked.

  "What? Have you found out something?"

  "No-no-no. Just… your tone of voice."

  "Well…" Again, the trembling lip. "It’s been almost impossible to put this behind me, because nothing was ever found. No body, no boat debris, nothing. After he disappeared, all kinds of inspectors went to the bank, and they came and questioned me to make sure he hadn’t taken off with some money. I mean, every time I get a phone call at home that I’m not expecting, I halfway think it’s going to be his voice."

  "
But you really think the boat sank."

  "Yes." She nodded firmly. "In fact, I even think I know what happened. Do you sail, Mr. Davenport?"

  "I have. I’m not particularly good at it." Weather was a sailing fanatic, as her father had been, and they’d gone out almost every warm weekend, and for a long two weeks in the Caribbean.

  "When a boat goes down, there’s almost always lots of debris," Ingall said. "You know the enormous amount of stuff sailors carry around with them-books and logs and guides and all kinds of paper. Andy had even more of it than most people. Business papers and references and so on. Plus the boat had a lot of wood. So if it had blown up, like some people thought, they’d have found something. But they didn’t find anything. So you know what I think?"

  "What?"

  "What I think is, it was a cool day, and Andy had the autopilot on and he’d gone below. While he was down there… the keel fell off," she said.

  "The keel?"

  "Yes. The keel on our boat was about four thousand pounds of lead, held in place with four huge steel bolts. You normally couldn’t even see the bolts, without pulling up parts of the sole-the flooring."

  "Yeah." He knew what a sole was.

  "Anyway, I think the nuts worked off the bolts, from vibration, and then, with some sudden strain, the keel simply fell off," she said. "If that happened, the boat would have turned turtle just instantly, and water would have started pouring down the companionway and the whole thing would have sunk in a minute or two. There are cases known like this. They’re rare, but it sort of explains everything. There wouldn’t have been time for life jackets or anything, and the inflow of water would have kept everything inside. It would’ve been just… glug."

  "But that’s a rare thing."

  "Yes-but."

  "But."

  "We kept the boat in Superior, and there’s this old guy up there who pretty much lives on his boat. Not technically, because they don’t allow that, but he’s around day and night. When I was up there during the search, he told me that Andy’d had somebody working on the boat the night before he disappeared. He didn’t pay much attention, but he said he’d noticed the guy had pulled up the sole and stuck it in the cockpit, out of the way of whatever he was doing. He assumed the guy was working on the plumbing, but he could have been working on the bolts. Maybe there was something wrong with them. Or maybe he did something that messed them up."