Secret Prey ld-9

by John Sandford

  "Possibly a woman?"

  The ME pushed his lips out and blew a capital O. "Could be. Whoever it was, wasn’t all that strong. Jumping somebody from behind, with a club-a strong guy would have killed her, hitting her like that."

  "Huh."

  Lucas had Seen Helen Bell at the arraignment of her sister, and had been struck by how little they resembled each other, in the sense of a total package, for two women who looked so much alike. Audrey at thirty-eight was a beetle, hunched, fussy, dressed all in earth colors, her movements small and nervous. Bell at thirty-four was not exactly a butterfly, but seemed even in the restrictive circumstances of a legal hearing to be much more outgoing, much more like a woman in her thirties. Her hair was touched with color, she wore a bit of makeup, and at the arraignment, she’d worn a pretty red silk scarf with a conservative blue business suit; and she smiled.

  Helen Bell lived in a small white house with green shutters, backed onto an alley, a shaky-looking garage standing behind the house. Lucas left his car in the street and walked up the narrow seventy-year-old sidewalk to the front door and knocked. Bell was there in a minute, smiling nervously when she opened her door and said, "Chief Davenport? Come in."

  The living room had a just vacuumed look, and magazines, mostly about homemaking, were stacked carefully on a coffee table. "Coffee?" she asked. "It’s only microwave instant."

  "Yes, that’d be nice." The voice again: this was the tipster, all right. Lucas mentally kicked himself: he’d known that Audrey McDonald had a sister.

  "Decaf or regular?" She was bustling around, making sure he was comfortable; he felt as though he were on a first date.

  "Whatever you have… Regular is fine." She went to get it, and he looked around the small living room, checked a shelf of paperbacks: self-help, mostly. How to succeed in business. "Where do you work?" he called.

  He heard the door slam on the microwave: "Fisher Specialties down in Bloomington. You know-truck accessories. I’m in charge of the orders department." She came out of the kitchen carrying two mugs of coffee. "Sit on the couch-I’ll take the easy chair."

  "Any children?"

  "A daughter. Connie. She should be home from school any minute."

  "I wanted to talk to you about some background involving the death of Dan Kresge and then later, of Wilson McDonald…"

  "Are they going to drop the charges against Audrey?"

  "I don’t know, I don’t work in that area," Lucas said. "Mrs. Bell… did you write to us about your brother-inlaw? Call me on the phone?"

  She looked too surprised by the question; she wasn’t surprised, but she acted as though she were, her eyebrows going up, her head cocking to one side. "Why…"

  "I can get phone records, if I want to," Lucas said. "And there’s nothing at all illegal about what you did. You were simply recommending an investigation."

  She took a sip of coffee, then ran the index finger of her free hand around the rim of the cup. After a second, she said, "Yes, that was me. You’d already figured it out, I guess. But it couldn’t be from the phone-I called from Rainbow."

  Rainbow was a supermarket. Lucas shook his head: "It’s just your voice. You sound a little, I don’t know- Canadian."

  "Aboot," she said.

  He nodded. "The first time I talked to your sister, I thought she was the one who called. So: How long ago did you decide Wilson McDonald was killing people?"

  "I… thought there’d been a lot of deaths, to get him where he’d gotten. But it was only when Mr. Kresge was shot that I was really sure. You know that Mr. Kresge was going to merge the bank…"

  "Yes."

  "And Wilson’s job was gone. I mean, gone. Then Mr. Kresge gets killed, and Wilson’s job was saved. And maybe he’s even in line for Mr. Kresge’s job. That was too much. There’d been too many of these things."

  "How long had he been beating your sister?"

  "He beat her up before they got married," Helen said. "She told me that later."

  "Then why’d she marry him?"

  "Because she loved him," Bell said simply. "She still loves him."

  "That’s a very odd relationship."

  "A kind of codependency," Bell said. "You know… Never mind."

  "No. Say it."

  "My father, before he died, used to beat up my mother. And Audrey. And he would’ve started on me, if I’d been old enough. And somehow, I think that did something to Audrey’s brain-she thinks women deserve to get beaten. I mean, she’d never say that, but way deep down, I think she might feel it. I used to plead with her to leave the man."

  "Where do you come from? You and Audrey?" He knew, but if he could get her rolling, anything might come out.

  "Oxford. It’s up in the Red River Valley," she said."The closest big town is Grand Forks."

  "Sugar beets?"

  "No, we never really farmed. We lived just outside Oxford-we could walk to school-and my dad was a mail carrier. Both of my grandfathers were farmers, though. Dad grew up on a farm, and so did Mom, but he just wasn’t interested."

  "Your folks still live up there?"

  "No, they both died. My father died when I was little, when I was ten, that was… twenty-four years ago, now. Just about this time of year. Mom died four years later. In the spring. After Mom died, I went to live with my aunt Judy in Lakeville and Audrey went to college. She went to St. Anne’s."

  "I know… Listen, I assume that you didn’t talk to us directly because you didn’t want to offend your sister. Or alienate her. Is that right?"

  Bell nodded. "You know, she kept talking about how she loved him and what a great provider he was, but I really thought he was an animal and that sooner or later, he’d kill her. He was a killer. You said on the phone that the Kresge thing wasn’t finished yet, but you know, it really is. Wilson killed him. Maybe I should have come forward earlier, but… I wasn’t sure. And he was my sister’s husband."

  "The good provider."

  "Easy to laugh off if you’re a police officer, down here in Minneapolis," Bell said. "But if you were poor in Oxford, Minnesota, and we pretty much were, then ‘good provider’ isn’t something you laugh at."

  Lucas glanced around: "Are you married? Or…"

  "Divorced," she said. "Four years now." She shook her head at the unstated question. "Larry never laid a hand on me. We just found out that we weren’t very much interested in each other. We were dating when I got pregnant, and we got married because we were supposed to."

  "All right," he said.

  They talked for a few more minutes, then Lucas stood up. "Thanks."

  "What about Dan Kresge? Are you all done now?"

  Lucas shrugged. "I don’t know. There doesn’t seem much more to look at. We’ll keep picking at little corners, but there’s not much left."

  "I’m glad that man’s gone-Wilson, not Mr. Kresge. I know it’s a sin, but I’m glad he’s gone."

  Lucas had just taken a step toward the front door when the door opened and a slender teenager stepped in, dressed head to foot in black, carrying a black bookbag. Her hair was blond, no more than an inch long, and a tiny gold ring pierced one eyebrow. She looked quickly at her mother, then to Lucas, gave him an assessing smile and said, "My. This is a studly one."

  "Connie!"

  "He is…" Slightly seductive, intended to tease her mother.

  "Please! This is Chief Davenport from the Minneapolis Police Department."

  "A cop? You can’t be asking if Aunt Audrey really killed him-she admits it," the teenager said. She dropped her bookbag in the entry. "I don’t think she killed anyone else."

  "We’re just making routine calls," Lucas said.

  "The chief of police makes routine calls?"

  "I’m not the chief, I’m a deputy chief," Lucas said. "And sometimes I make routine calls, if the case is important enough."

  "We were just finishing here," Bell said.

  "Well, good luck with Aunt Audrey," the girl said. "The meanest woman alive."

  "
Connie!" And Bell looked quickly at Lucas: "Connie and Audrey don’t get along as well as they should."

  "She is such a tiresome little bourgeois," Connie said, rolling her eyes. "The only interesting thing she ever did was kill Wilson."

  "Which was, when you think about it, pretty interesting," Lucas said.

  Connie nodded: "Yup. I gotta admit it."

  Lucas smiled at her, deciding he liked her. The girl picked it up, and smiled back, a touch of shyness this time. Lucas said to Bell, "If anything else comes up, I’d like to give you a call."

  As Lucas passed Connie, he picked up just the slightest whiff of weed; he glanced at her, and she pickedthatup too. Smart kid, he thought, as he walked down the sidewalk.

  Thinking: More dead people. Audrey’s parents, dead and buried.

  From his car phone, he called Sherrill: "I’m gonna run up to the Red River Valley tomorrow, up by Grand Forks. Can you go?"

  "Yup: this is my weekend. Can we stay overnight in one of those sleazy little hotels with the thin walls and fuck all night so the people can hear us on the other sides of the walls?"

  "I don’t know about all night… maybe, you know, once."

  "I’ll start practicing my moaning. Call me tonight."

  The phone rang a minute later, and he thought it was Sherrill calling back. It was Lucas’s secretary. Rose Marie wanted to see him.

  Rose Marie Roux was working on the budget when Lucas stepped in. "Sit down," she said, without looking up. She worked for another moment, humming to herself without apparently realizing it: she was happy doing budgets.

  "So," she said eventually, dropping her yellow pencil and linking her fingers. "Are you sleeping with Marcy Sherrill?"

  Lucas got frosty: "We’re seeing each other. I don’t think it’s much of anyone’s business what happens-"

  "Lucas, for Christ’s sake-are you living in a goddamn cave?" she asked in exasperation. "A deputy chief of police can get away with sleeping with one of his detectives only if-"

  "She’s not one of my detectives," Lucas said. "I don’t have any regular supervisory control…"

  "Oh, bullshit-she works for you when you need her. And besides, the media won’t give a shit about technicalities. You’re a deputy chief, she’s a sergeant. I don’t care- I really don’t. What I was about to say is, a deputy chief can get away with sleeping with one of his detectives only if he’s very, very careful. Not secretive, but careful. Now:

  You left a message that you were going off to this place…" She looked at a notepad. "Oxford. Tomorrow. Up in the Red River Valley? Were you planning to take Sherrill?"

  "I thought-"

  "If you take her, she’s gonna have to take vacation time. Or she puts in her regular hours, and you go up on her days off and she doesn’t get paid at all."

  "Look…"

  "No, you look: I’m not trying to save her ass. I’m not trying to save my ass. I’m trying to save your ass. I can guarantee you that if you go up there with her, and she’s paid for it, and the press finds out, you’ll wind up being fired. I’d back you up, but it wouldn’t do any good-you’d get it in the neck anyway."

  "Maybe we just oughta forget the whole thing," he said. "Me ’n’ Marcy."

  She softened a quarter-inch: "I didn’t say you gotta do that. But you’ve got to be discreet, and you’ve got to be politically careful. She can’t be on the payroll when you’re off together."

  "All right," he said. "That’s it?"

  "Elle Kruger seems to be doing okay."

  "I was just talking to her, and her doctor. She’s gonna have a lot of pain for a long time," Lucas said. "But her brain wasn’t affected. At least, not as far as they can tell. Motor is all right, memory, language."

  "Nothing on it?"

  "Nothing yet. But that’s why I’m going up to the Red River. There’s a question about whether Audrey McDonald might be involved."

  Roux’s genetically enabled left eyebrow went up: " Seriously?"

  "Seriously. We might have the edge of something pretty interesting," Lucas said.

  "Okay. But remember what I said about Sherrill."

  "She’s off the next couple of days. We should be all right.""No expense accounts, no meals, no nothin’…"

  "Nothing," he said. "Not a nickel. For either of us."

  "All right," she said. "Good luck."

  "With Marcy? Or the case?"

  "Whatever," she said.

  Lucas, back in his office, called the County attorney’s office and asked for Richard Kirk, the head of the criminal division. He waited for a moment, and Kirk came on: "What’s up?"

  "How long can you hold off on a decision about Audrey McDonald?"

  "Why?" Just like a lawyer.

  " ’Cause."

  "Just like a fuckin’ cop: ’Cause," Kirk said. "Anyway- we’re gonna take McDonald’s story to the grand jury and let them decide. That’s the democratic way, and also lets our beloved county attorney off the hook if something goes wrong."

  "So when do you go to the jury?"

  "Next Wednesday, but it’d be no problem to hold off for a while. We could present the basic case Wednesday and hold the decision for the meeting one after that."

  "That’d be good," Lucas said. "Some odd stuff has come up."

  "So we’ll do that-and don’t surprise us at the last minute."

  "Okay. And tell your boss to hold off any speeches to the Feminist Fife and Drum Club, about it being an obvious case of self-defense."

  "Okay. But if something happens, call me, so we know which way to lean," Kirk said.

  "I’ll call."

  "Goddamnit, Davenport, you’re old enough to know…"

  "What?"

  "That too much investigation will screw up a perfectly good case."

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Morgan Bite had such a beatific look on his face as he stood at the edge of the Bite Brothers parking lot, at the end of the line of black Cadillac limousines, still holding the check, that Audrey McDonald actually thought of killing him; actually thought that after she received all the money she was due, after all the legal matters were cleared away, after all the police were gone, she might come back some night and murder the man, for the simple pleasure of doing it.

  Bite was speaking in cliches: "… able to achieve such a natural appearance that the loved one seems to be undoubtedly present among us…"

  She wanted to say, "Yes-yes-yes," and run away down the sidewalk; she limped instead, putting on a stunned expression, as though she might at any moment suffer a relapse. Though, now that she thought of it, Bite might find a relapse attractive, given his profession.

  "… not regret this in any way, and do not hesitate for a moment to call me at any time, day or night, with any concerns…"

  She’d just given him a blank check to handle Wilson’s funeral-well, blank to the tune of twenty-five thousand dollars, which he thought would be adequate to protect Wilson’s image in the business community. Whenever she’d mentioned anything having to do with Wilson’s death, Bite had seemed intimately aware of every detail, while somehow remaining unaware that she’d had anything to do with it. Come to think of it, she sort of liked that. Maybe she wouldn’t kill him.

  Well: She could decide that some other time.

  Audrey McDonald came with a full set of the negative emotions: hate, anguish and anger, pain, fear, dread and loathing were her daily bread, illuminated by an active imagination. Love and pleasure were not quite a mystery. She thought she might have loved Wilson, and her parents, and even Helen. She felt pleasure with the prospect of money-not with what it could buy, but the lucre itself; she loved handling it, reading account statements. She had talked Wilson into buying a hundred gold coins, American Eagles, which she kept in a box in a cubbyhole in the kitchen. Once a week she would take them out and handle them, so smooth, so beautiful and cool to the touch.

  And she certainly felt pleasure with the prospect of killing.

  Killing was the most interesting thin
g she’d ever done, and that alone was a powerful attraction. Added to the attraction was the simple reality that a killing was always done to decrease her own fear-fear of poverty, fear of helplessness, fear of low status-and to increase the amount of money she would someday have. So far, she hadn’t killed idly: so far, she’d always made a profit on her killings.

  But it was dread that hung over her fifteen minutes after she left Bite Brothers, as she pulled the car to the curb in front of her sister’s house. Helen had been talking to Davenport again: she’d called to confess it, and to admit that she’d written to Davenport that Wilson had killed people.

  But Wilson hadn’t. She had. And if Davenport was still sniffing around, he might trip over something inconvenient. She was beginning to fear the man, not because he seemed to be particularly bright, or especially hard-driving, or even mean, but because he simply wouldn’t go away. Now he was visiting Helen. This was all supposed to be done with. What did he want?

  Helen was standing in the doorway as she limped up the sidewalk. Putting on the limp.

  "I’m sorry," Helen said. "He was hurting you so badly that I don’t think I had a choice."

  Audrey nodded abruptly and let Helen take her coat at the door. "Still hurt," she mumbled. And she looked terrible. The bruises were going yellow, and her hair, unwashed since the attack, looked like sticky pieces of dirty brown kite string.

  "Let me get you a coffee," Helen said, bustling around.

  "Why aren’t you working?" Audrey asked. Audrey hadn’t worked since Wilson’s second promotion, the one that carried him into mortgages. She’d always talked about Helen’s having a "career" in a way that made both Helen and her ex-husband feel like rag-pickers.

  "I had personal time coming, and since the fight with Wilson, I thought… I just thought I ought to be around," Helen said from the kitchen. She appeared a moment later with the coffee. "How are you?"