Secret Prey ld-9

by John Sandford

  She was rehearsing it all in her mind when she heard the main door open. No voices, just the clank of the push bar on the door, and the door opening. Three seconds later, a woman in a black habit swept by, and down the walk. Audrey instinctively knew she was alone: she was moving too quickly, with too much focus, to be with another person. Audrey swung out from behind the junipers, her heart gone to stone in her chest, a step and a half behind the nun.

  And she struck, like an axman taking a head.

  The heavy rod hit the nun on the side of the head, glanced off, hit the nun’s shoulder; the woman sagged, her knees buckling, one hand going to the ground. She started to turn.

  And Audrey struck her again, this time full on the head, and the nun pitched forward on her face… Audrey lifted the dowel rod, her teeth bared, her breathing heavy, and struck at the nun’s head again, but from a bad angle: the rod this time bounced off the side of the nun’s head and into her shoulder.

  With building fury, with the memory of all these decades of slights and slurs against her, with the thought of all the people who’d held her back and down, with her father, her mother, with all the others, Audrey struck again and again, hitting the nun’s neck and back and shoulder…

  And heard the clank of the door again, froze, looked wildly around-nowhere to run, not at this instant, this was the very worst moment for an interruption-and stepped back in the shadow of the junipers. The girl came around the corner no more than a second later, saw the nun, said, "Sister!" and bent over her.

  And Audrey struck at her, hitting the girl on the back of the head. Like the nun, the girl pitched forward, onto her face. Audrey hit her again, and again, breathing hard now. Stopped, hovered over the two motionless women for an instant, jabbed at the nun’s leg with the end of the dowel rod, got no response, then scuttled away. Around the corner, onto the sidewalk, down the sidewalk to the car. Nobody on the sidewalk. Inside the car, dowel rod on the floor-a sudden touch of panic: she felt her pocket. Yes! The phone was there-and the car started and she eased away from the curb.

  This was always the hardest part, staying cool after an attack. With her heart beating an impossible rhythm, Audrey drove slowly off the campus, to the Mississippi, left to the bridge and across to Minneapolis.

  She stopped once, on a dark street, to throw the dowel rod down a sewer. She went on, dropped the cotton gloves one at a time out the window. She hadn’t seen any blood from either of the women, but it had been dark: she should burn these clothes, or get rid of them, anyway.

  That would have to wait-she could wash them tonight, immediately-and throw them out tomorrow.

  But now, there was more to do.

  Twenty minutes later, headlights on, she pulled into her driveway, and into the darkened garage. She dropped the garage door, groped to the kitchen entrance, went inside and flipped on the light.

  Upstairs, she took off her clothes, inspected them closely. Nothing she could see. Still, they’d go in the washing machine. She picked up the phone: no messages. Good.

  She dialed, got Helen: "Hello?"

  "Helen… I just… can’t sleep," she said, her voice crumbling. "I hate to bother you, have you come over here, but I’m just so blue, I’m just lying here thinking about Wilson." She began to weep, a bubbling, pathetic wail. "Help me."

  "Oh God, hang on, Audrey, I’ll be right there."

  "And H-Helen… b-b-bring a few of those Prozacs. Maybe they would help. I’ve got to try something."

  "I’ll be right there. Hang on."

  She hung up, satisfied. Cleared her face, gathered her clothes for the wash. She might not ever need the Prozac, she might not ever need Helen coming up the drive with her lights on, to muddy any witness statements-but who knew what the future might hold? Better to work all the possibilities now, than to regret it later.

  She thought about the nun, lying on the sidewalk.

  Wonder if she’s dead?

  She never thought about the other woman at all; the other woman was irrelevant.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Sherrill had brought with her a votive candle scented faintly with vanilla, and a crystal candleholder, and their second night together took on the feel of college days, making love in the yellow flickering candlelight. And Sherrill said, as they lay comfortably warm under a sheet, "Do you think you could go for somebody like Candy La-Chaise?" Sherrill had put four.357 slugs through Candy LaChaise’s chest during an abortive holdup at a credit union.

  "I don’t think so," Lucas said. He was lying on his back, hands behind his head. "I think she’d smell pretty bad by now."

  Sherrill made a quick move toward his groin and he flinched and said, "Don’t do that, I almost killed you with my karate reflexes."

  And she said, "Yeah, right. Answer the question."

  He didn’t have to think about it: "Nope. She was pretty, but she was missing a couple of links. You know those kinds of people-basically, they’re a little stupid. Maybe they don’t get bad grades in school, or maybe they even get good grades, but somewhere, down at the bottom, they’re fuckin’ morons. They don’t connect with the world."

  "You remember Johnny Portland?"

  "Yeah. Asshole."

  She got up on one elbow, looking down at him. "I went out with him a couple of times."

  Lucas turned his head to look at her: "Jesus. Did he know you were a cop?"

  "I wasn’t. This was like my sophomore year in college, I met him at this Springsteen concert. He liked younger girls, I was like twenty; he picked me up at my mom’s house in a Rolls-Royce."

  "That will turn a girl’s head," Lucas said.

  "He never touched me. I wasn’t gonna sleep with him anyway, he was too old for me, but he never made a move. I thought maybe, you know, he couldn’t."

  "There were some stories around that he sorta liked wrestling with guys…"

  "That occurred to me too-you know, not like I was Miss Queen of the May and everybody’s drooling over me, but he was showing me off to the guys, like, ‘Look what I got.’ But he never seemed much interested in really getting me. Just showing."

  "Yeah… Listen, don’t tell anyone else you went out with John Portland. Hewasan asshole."

  "I think he might’ve been missing a couple links too," she said. "And all these other missing-linkers would come around, acting like they were Robert De Niro or something, like wise guys, but they were really like bartenders and tire salesmen."

  "De Niro’s old man was a famous artist and De Niro grew up with the intellectual artsy crowd on the East Coast," Lucas said. "Somebody told me that."

  "Really? He seems pretty real to me. Like he grew up on the streets, and I thought-"

  The phone rang, and Lucas rolled out of bed.

  "Every goddamned time," she said, eyes following him. "You could skip it."

  "Not when they call at this time of night," he said. "Back in a sec." Lucas picked up the phone in the den: "Yeah?"

  She heard him pounding down the hall; it might have been funny if she hadn’t heard him virtually screaming at the telephone. Lucas thundered into the bedroom, found Sherrill pulling up her underpants, snapping on her bra.

  "My pants…" He seemed confused.

  "On the floor, by the foot of the bed."

  "My friend Elle…"

  "I heard. She’s hurt and you’ve gotta go," she said. She rocked back on the bed to pull her jeans on. "I’ll drive."

  "Bullshit, you will," Lucas said.

  "I don’t think you’ll be in any shape-" she protested, but Lucas cut her off.

  "I’m fuckin’ driving," he snapped. "Shoes?"

  "I think one of them is under the bed, I think I kicked one under…"

  She was one garment ahead of him, stepping into her Nikes, collecting her revolver and purse from beside the nightstand, heading for the door. Lucas was ten seconds behind, out through the kitchen, into the garage, into the Porsche, slipping out under the garage door before it was fully up.

  "Flasher," she said, a
s they hit the street.

  "Busted," Lucas said.

  "Better go over to Cretin then, it’s better lit and you’ll hit some college kid if you run like this on Mississippi."

  Lucas grunted, downshifted and slid through a corner, punched the car two blocks down to Cretin, ignored the stop sign and cut across the street in front of a small Chevy van and gunned it again; Sherrill braced herself and asked, "How bad is she?"

  "She’s bad," Lucas said.

  "Take her to Ramsey?"

  "Yeah."

  "They notify Minneapolis?"

  "That was one of the nuns at the Residence calling, another friend." They clipped the red light at Grand Avenue, barely beat the red at Summit, came up behind a line of cars, and Lucas threw the Porsche into the oncoming lane, whipped by a half-dozen vehicles. "She was just calling because she knew I’d want to know."

  "Better call Sloan or Del," she said, digging a cell phone out of her purse. "This is the second run at you. Until we figure out what’s going on, the rest of the guys ought to know."

  Lucas risked a glance at her: she was sitting comfortably in the passenger seat, one hand forward to brace herself, the other hand working the cell phone. She was calm and composed, maybe a slight pink flush to her face. He looked to the front again, ran the red light at Randolph, burned past the golf course, and dove down the ramp onto I-94.

  They made a four-and-a-half-minute run to Ramsey Medical Center; Sherrill hooked up with Sloan one minute down the road, filled him in. "Tell him to find Andi Manette’s home phone number and call her," Lucas said. "Weather’s staying with the Manettes. Tell Weather about it. She and Elle are pretty tight."

  Sherrill passed the word, clicked off the phone, looked at the speedometer. "That all you can get out of this thing?"

  "No," he said, and the needle climbed through 120.

  She watched his face for a moment-a brick, a stone- then looked out at the cars flicking by. Good thing, she thought, that she hadn’t driven. She’d never moved this fast on a vehicle that didn’t have a stewardess.

  Lucas dumped the Porsche in an ambulances only zone and they banged into the emergency room. A startled nurse turned toward them from the reception desk, and Lucas said, "I’m Deputy Police Chief Lucas Davenport from Minneapolis and a nun named Elle Kruger was brought in here…"

  "Yes, yes, she’s in X ray, she just got here, the doctors are working-"

  "Where?"

  "Sir, I can’t let you go-"

  "Where?" He shouted it at her, and she stepped back and a couple of male white-coated orderlies started down the hall toward the desk.

  "Hold it," Sherrill said. "Miss, can you tell us who the doctor in charge is? Jim Dunaway?"

  "No, Larry Simone…"

  "Okay, he’s a friend of mine. Could you tell him Chief Davenport and Detective Sherrill are here asking about…"

  "Sister Mary Joseph. Elle Kruger," Lucas said.

  "I’ll be right back."

  As the nurse started down the hall, waving off the orderlies, a thin, ill-tempered man stuck his head in the door and called, "Hey, whose car is this out here?"

  "I’ll get it," Sherrill said to Lucas. "Gimme the keys."

  Lucas dug the keys out and handed them to her. The ill tempered man raised his voice: "I’m asking, who the hell left their car out here-"

  "I’ll move it," Sherrill said, walking toward him.

  "You goddamn well will move it," the man said. "Or I’ll push that thing right into the wall."

  Sherrill stepped to within four inches of his face, her voice low and controlled. "You shut your fuckin’ pie hole or I will break all your teeth out," she said. She pulled one hand back on her hip so the ill-tempered man could see the wooden butt of the.357. His eyes slid away from hers, and she pushed through the door to the car.

  A balding, hatchet-faced doctor walked out of a back room, trailed by the reception nurse. He looked around, spotted Lucas. "Are you with Marcy Sherrill?"

  "Yes. Elle Kruger-the nun-is my best friend."

  "This is Chief Davenport," said the nurse.

  "Come on back," he said. "Where’s Marcy?"

  "Outside, moving a car off the ramp. How’s Elle?"

  "Not good, but she’s better than the other one. We’ve got head injury but no direct brain damage, like the girl. We’ve got to manage the swelling and so on, which is gonna be a problem, but I’m more worried about blunt trauma to her kidneys and liver. Somebody beat the hell out of her with what looks like a baseball bat."

  "Baseball bat?"

  "Yeah…"

  Sherrill caught up with them and said, "Larry, how are you?" and the doc said, "I’d like to look at that leg of yours again."

  "I think it’s okay," she said.

  "Oh, I know; I just wanted to look for aesthetic reasons." And Sherrill snorted and said, "Aesthetic, my ass," and he said, "That too…" and Sherrill said to Lucas, "Larry was one of the docs that took care of me after that thing with John Mail."

  "Ah." Lucas said, and looked wildly at Simone, who said, "Through there."

  He could barely see her. She was flat on her back, under an operating drape, her head tilted back, her head already shaved and painted with iodine-colored disinfectant. A drip flowed into her arm, and her mouth was propped open. She looked like a saint who was about to be committed to fire.

  "Elle," Lucas whispered.

  "She can’t respond," Simone said. "She might hear you, somewhere in her head, but she’s too doped up to show it."

  "Gonna be all right," Lucas said, his face a foot from her ear. She didn’t look like any Elle Kruger he remembered: separated from the habit and other paraphernalia of the church, she looked stark; and the disinfectant added a strange otherworldly touch, like an image from Heavy Metal. "Gonna be all right, we’re here with you; we’re waiting."

  "Come on," Simone said. "They’ve got to finish getting her ready for the OR."

  Lucas reluctantly followed Simone out of the prep room, Sherrill a step behind him. "You want to look at the X rays?" Simone asked.

  "Can I see anything?"

  "C’mon."

  The X rays were clipped to wall-mounted view boxes and a man in a tweed sportcoat was peering at them. Simone said, "Jerry, what do you think?"

  "I’ve already called Jack Bornum in; we’re gonna have to do them both at the same time. I’ll take the kid, she’s gonna go if we don’t get in quick. Jack can have the nun."

  "How bad’s the nun?" Lucas asked.

  "Who’re you?"

  "I’m a cop-and her best friend. Oldest friend."

  "Whoever hit her missed; looks like two or three blows, hard, but never quite brought it down over the top of her head, like with the kid. Everything sort of skidded off."

  "What about the blunt trauma?" Lucas asked.

  The tweed man shrugged: "I don’t know; I do brains."

  He glanced at his watch. "And I better go do this one."

  "How long before the other guy gets here?"

  "Five minutes maybe. He’ll be here before she’s ready to go," Tweed said gruffly. "He’s a good guy too-he’ll take care of her."

  The other doctor, Bornum, arrived in the allotted five minutes, and disappeared into the back. Simone caught a knife wound to the liver area, and also disappeared. Twenty minutes later, Weather pushed through the door, with Andi Manette a step behind. She saw Lucas and Sherrill and said, "Lucas, my God, what happened?"

  "Somebody beat her up. Almost killed her," he said. His voice got shaky and she touched his arm.

  "How bad?"

  "Pretty bad. They’re getting her ready for the OR. They’ve got a neurosurgeon working on her."

  "Oh, no…"

  He wanted to wrap her up and hold on, but there was a wall between them: he could feel it, pressing them away from each other. "I don’t know what happened… In fact, I think I’m gonna…"

  He walked over to the reception desk. "Could somebody let me know when Elle Kruger goes into the OR, and
get an idea of how long it’ll take?"

  "I’ll check," the nurse said.

  Weather stepped closer to Sherrill and asked, "How is he?"

  She shrugged: "Freaked out. Really freaked."

  Weather smiled, a thin, tentative smile but a real one, Sherrill thought. "Take care of him," Weather said.

  Sherrill blushed and nodded, then said, "If I can."

  Lucas wandered back, and Weather said, "The bomb through my window, and now Elle."

  Lucas shook his head: "I can’t figure it. It’d have to be somebody who knows me, to know about you two. But who? And why not come after me? And why with the bomb and now a beating, for Christ’s sake? There’s too much risk involved. If they really want to get at me…" He rubbed his chin, wandered away, deep in thought.

  A moment later, the nurse appeared in the hallway, busily stepping down toward the reception area; Lucas went to meet her.

  "She’s in the operating room now," the nurse said. "They’re just putting in the anesthesia. Doctor says he can’t tell how long it’ll be, anywhere from two to six hours."

  "Okay, okay…"

  "He said she’s strong," the nurse said.

  Lucas turned back to Weather and Sherrill: "Did you hear that?"

  They nodded and Weather said, "Have you been to the scene?"

  "No, that’s where I’d like to go…"

  "You guys go ahead," Weather said. "I’ll wait here, and if anything comes up, I can handle it."

  "Thanks, Weather," Lucas said. To Sherrill: "You wanta come?"

  "Yeah, I do." She glanced at Weather and quickly nodded.

  They’d just started toward a door when a middle-aged couple hurried in, and the woman, tightly controlled, went to the reception desk and said, "My daughter was just hurt in some kind of accident at St. Anne’s and we were told she was here, but I don’t see her, do you know…"

  And Lucas shook his head at Sherrill and they hurried out: "I didn’t want to see that," Lucas said. "I don’t need it."