One of the Lorens who owned a pickup had had a minor drug bust-personal use marijuana-in Minneapolis. Another had been arrested and convicted of theft from a Wal-Mart warehouse and had made restitution. The Wal-Mart guy didn’t sound like he’d be the type to hang around with Frances. The third guy lived in Fertile, and that was too far away.
The doper was a possibility. 2002 Toyota pickup. Huh. He called Del.
“You got a little time?"
"What’s up?” Del asked. “I want to talk to a guy on the Austin case, but I’ve taken a couple of pain pills."
"You need a designated driver."
"Yeah."
"I’ve never been one,” Del said. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
Loren Whiteside O’Keefe lived in a nice- enough, but not too nice, apartment complex in Woodbury, east of downtown St. Paul. They pressured an assistant manager into letting them through the locked outer doors, and took the elevator up to three. Identical blond wood doors were spaced evenly down long blank corridors, the medium- blue carpet the indoor- outdoor stuff that looked good for a year.
“Place will be a slum in ten years,” Del said. “Walls look like they’re made out of cardboard.”
“Owners’ll pay it off in ten, though,” Lucas said. “Then it’s all gravy.”
“If you don’t mind being a slumlord,” Del said. Lucas was limping, and Del asked, “You all right?"
"Yeah, I’m terrific.” The pain had definitely backed off, but every once in a while, a muscle spasm took him by surprise. O’Keefe was in 355. They heard music, knocked, and a pudgy, big-
headed, rosy- cheeked man opened the door. “Eh?"
"Loren O’Keefe?"
"Ya. Who’re you?” He had dark hair, a big head, and sloping shoulders. The man who'd shot at Lucas had square shoulders and a small head. Couldn’t see that in the driver’ s- license photograph. The photo also didn’t mention that O’Keefe had a slight but distinct Irish accent. Austin had said specifically that her Loren sounded local.
“Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.” They showed O’Keefe their IDs.
“So what’s up?” he asked. The TV behind him was tuned to an Oprah rerun.
With the sure sense that he was wasting everybody’s time, Lucas said, “We’re looking for a Loren who dated a girl named Frances Austin.”
O’Keefe looked at them blankly. “I’m sorry. That’s not me."
"Ever hang out with any Goths?” Del asked. “I’ve had a couple in my classes."
"You’re a teacher?” Lucas asked.“At Augsburg,” he said. “I teach drama."
"Huh. You had a bust for marijuana."
"Yup. Two fat boys,” he said cheerfully. “Jesus, I bought three, only had time for one. Why couldn’t I be one of the guys who’s arrested for three seeds? No, they gotta get me with two-thirds of the weekly allotment.”
Lucas looked at Del, and tipped his head toward the corridor. “Okay. Well, I think you’re not the guy we’re looking for.”
“What? Already? You can’t leave me hanging,” O’Keefe said. “C’mon and have a cuppa tea and tell me about it.” If his leg hadn’t hurt, Lucas wouldn’t have done it. He said, half to O’Keefe, and half to Del, “I’ve dinged up my leg. I wouldn’t mind sitting down for a minute.”
“Oho! Are you that copper that got shot?” O’Keefe was delighted. “Your name rings a bell.”
Lucas nodded: “That’s me."
"You’re chasing a ripper, like good old Jack. Damnit, what goodluck. Come in, come in.” He’d had a pot of tea going, and had it ready in two minutes, fussing around like an old lady, with a tray and cup, and offered them milk to put in it. They both declined, while he took some; he had them sitting in a conversation group, two easy chairs and a love seat.
“So it’s this bartender and this liquor store clerk you’re investigating, then,” O’Keefe said. “How did my name come up?”
Lucas gave him a short version of the investigation, O’Keefe manically stirring his tea as he listened, his bright blue eyes like cornflowers in his pink face. He asked questions, and winkled more out of Lucas than Lucas had intended to give.
When Lucas finished, O’Keefe took a sip and said, “You shouldn’t be chasing Lorens, then. You should be putting pressure on the Austin woman. You should be… reenacting the crime. Right at the scene of the murder.”
“There’s a surprise,” Del said. “A drama teacher who wants to reenact.”
“Ah, but I have a reason,” O’Keefe said. He shook a finger at them, like a professor might. “You have only two things. You have a motive: money. And you have a scene of a crime and it’s the first crime. Would I be wrong in assuming that the first crime of a series is probably the key crime?”
“Sometimes it is,” Lucas said, mildly amused. “There have been cases where a first murder was done to set up a second one, so that it would look like a series killing.”
“About as often as you’ve seen a leprechaun, I would expect,” O’Keefe said. He went on without waiting for an answer. “You have a motive and a crime scene. If you go back and reenact the crime as you believe it happened, you will see much more deeply into it, I guarantee it. I’m a playwright, as well as a teacher, and when you’re writing a play, you always go and look at the scene of the crime. Or whatever scene. You go to the actual place. When you’re in the actual place, you can work out possibilities and discard impossibilities. You can see the idiosyncrasies that make a scene come alive. I would urge you to reenact.”
“Maybe I will,” Lucas said. “Maybe-"
"And then, of course, there’s the obvious question. Often comes up in drama… in fact, it’d be a clichй, I’m sure you’ve already checked it out thoroughly.”
Lucas spread his hands. “What’s the obvious question?” O’Keefe leaned forward, his trigger finger still crooked through the cup handle: “Mistaken identity.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “The daughter comes home, it’s dark, she turns off the security system, and the killer strikes! But, ho! To his or her horror, he finds that he has struck at the wrong person. Hoping to recover, somehow, he bundles up the body and cleans up the crime scene. Since the daughter doesn’t live there, perhaps nobody will tumble to her disappearance for a day or two. Or three or four. Give him a chance to cover his tracks-or to strike again at his real target! The Austin woman!”
At some point during the recitation, O’Keefe had gone on stage, and Lucas and Del both bought it. When he snapped, “The Austin woman!” they both jerked away.
O’Keefe smiled: “But you’ve thought of that.” They argued about it for a bit, as they finished their tea, and Del told O’Keefe about working undercover, which was something of an acting job.
“Fascinating! Fascinating!” O’Keefe said. “Have you ever thought about collaborating on a play? I think there could be great potential in a play about an undercover man: it’s so right for the stage; it combines friendship and treachery and a modern existential angst. Should you destroy your friend for the sake of The Man? There are so many ways we could take it. It’s just fantastic material!”
As they took the elevator down, Del asked, “You gonna reenact?"
"No,” Lucas said, with a Valley- girl inflection. “Jesus Christ, Del."
"The guy might be on to something,” Del said. “You gonna collaborate on a fuckin’ play?” Del didn’t say anything for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe.” Limping across the parking lot, Lucas asked, “Mistaken identity?"
"Never occurred to me,” Del said. “It’s got a funky logic to it.”
“Funky being the key word.” Lucas nibbled on the corner of his lower lip, then laughed and said, “Reenact. Reenact, my big white ass.”
“Like we were talking about what- if the other night, at the diner,” Del said. “What if Alyssa Austin was screwing somebody, like her husband was. What if this guy knocks off her husband to get at her? He thinks he might marry somebody with a billion bucks, or whatever she’s got. What if she begin
s to suspect? What if he decided he had to get rid of her and her suspicions, and he goes after her. But instead of getting Alyssa Austin, he gets the daughter. Female, looks about the same, she shows up in the dark and knows the security system…”
“I’ll think about it, but it sounds overcooked,” Lucas said. “A little overcooked,” Del agreed.
Back at home, Lucas walked around the house for a bit, working the leg, kneading it, took another pain pill, found his thinking was a little fuzzy, and went to take a nap.
Weather woke him at dinnertime: “Leg hurts?"
"It has been.” He rolled a bit, flexed it, tried it out: better. “Not so bad, now.” Weather knelt next to the bed, pulled the bedside lamp over. “Let me see it.” She pulled the tape and the dressing, her fingers stroking the bruises. “No new bleeding-but you’re pushing too hard. I want you immobile for the rest of the evening. And tomorrow, take it easy.”
“All right.” She sat back on her heels. “You agreed too fast. It must hurt more than you’re telling me.” Lucas said, “It’s not that-it’s fucked me up this time. Getting shot at. I’ve been thinking about it, all those shots. Could have hit me in the heart as well as the leg-and no more you, no more Sam, no more Letty.”
She’d gotten the gauze and tape and a tube of disinfectant ointment out of the bedstand, and folded the gauze and laid it over the wound, and said, “Last time you got shot at, you were on your own. No responsibilities.”
“It’s not responsibilities,” he said. “You guys would get along without me. It’s me. I wouldn’t get to see the kids grow up, I wouldn’t get to jump your bones… I’d miss too much.”
“Talk to the governor,” she said. “Get an office job."
"Be nice if it were that easy,” he said. “Just make one change, and life becomes simple.” She finished taping him up, put the medical kit back in the bedstand drawer, touched his cheek. “I’ve got no advice. Except, c’mon and eat.”
He sighed and sat up. “Gotta call Alyssa."
"You’re not quitting?"
"No. I need to go back over to her house,” he said. “Get in there alone."
"You’re gonna sneak something?"
"No. I’m gonna reenact the crime,” Lucas said. “Atta-boy,” she said.
11
Austin met him at the door, the bright sunlight breaking around her, barefoot, in a woolen top and straight long skirt. She smiled and at the same time looked sad, too sad. “You’re going to reenact?”
“Yeah. I got some advice that I might as well take,” Lucas said. “Also: when I was reading the case file, there was an inventory of Frances’s apartment, and a note that you were going to move her things and close the apartment. Did you do that?”
“Yes. Everything was brought back here. It’s all up in her room,” she said.
“I would like to take a look,” Lucas said. “When you’re gone."
"Absolutely. C’mon, I’ll show you where.” He followed her up a curving stairs, all polished maple, down a long hall that, at the very end, appeared, through a half- closed door, to open into a bedroom the size of a basketball court. She stopped short of that room, opened a different door, flipped a light.
Frances’s room was full of cardboard boxes. “I never unpacked. I haven’t been able to look at her stuff, yet,” she said. She touched one of the boxes. “The big ones are clothes. The small ones are personal effects. Books and jewelry and letters and notes and all that.”
“I’ll start with the acting,” he said. “It’d be better if I were alone."
"And I’ve got work to do,” she said. “I’ve got so many meetings I might as well be a politician."
"Before you go,” he said as they went down the stairs, “I was kicking this whole thing around with another guy. This idea came up- what if there was somebody here, waiting for you? And they attacked Frances by mistake. As I understand it, neither you nor anybody else expected Frances to come home. You told the crime- scene people that there hadn’t been a burglary, you weren’t missing anything, so it probably wasn’t a burglar. Is there anyone who would be interested in hurting you? Is there anything going on in your life? An angry boyfriend, a relative who’d benefit from your death, a business competitor… though that’s a bit far- fetched.”
“A mistake?” She was shocked, an open hand going to her breastbone. “Somebody coming for me?”
“It’s thin… but is there anybody?"
"Well, I have relatives. My parents. Hunter’s mother died years ago, but his father’s still alive, out in LA. He’d get some money, but he doesn’t really need it. There are some specific bequests in our wills. You think… the Bach and Beethoven Society would put out a contract on me?”
That made him laugh; but he said, “I’m a little serious. Is there a boyfriend?”
“No, not yet,” she said. “Was there a boyfriend? When Hunter was alive?"
"No. There was not.” Some frost, now. “No girlfriends, either."
"Hey-I’m not trying to insult you, I’m trying to figure this out,” Lucas said. “Any businesspeople who were pissed at you? Did you or Hunter screw somebody to the point where they might come looking for revenge? Or maybe a stalker-some deluded guy who thought he’d been screwed…”
She’d softened up after he snapped back at her: “Lucas, we’ve got money, but we’re really pretty ordinary people. Nobody stalks us, nobody cares. Hunter had a nice company, but it wasn’t General Motors. We had disgruntled employees, but nobody dangerous, as far as I know. They didn’t know me, anyway. And Hunter was dead. Why would they come after me?”
“Think about it,” Lucas said. “If you think of anything, let me know.”
She left him standing in the kitchen. He heard the Mercedes come to life, and then the garage door rolling up and down. They’d pushed the housekeeper out of the main wing, and he could hear the faint sound of vacuuming somewhere down the endless hallways. Other than that, he was alone.
Okay. According to the crime-scene analysts, the murder-or whatever it had been-occurred where a hallway exited the kitchen, leading down to the living room on the right, with the dining room right around the corner to the left
But wait. He wasn’t reenacting, he was just thinking about it, simply buying the crime- scene report. Start over. He walked back to the garage, out into it, then turned and came back.
It was dark. Huh. Austin had come in from the garage, but would Frances? Why would she? Two spaces were taken up by Austin’s cars, a third space by the housekeeper’s, although the housekeeper’s space would have been empty. Still, Frances would probably park in front and enter through the front door. Wouldn’t she?
He had Austin on speed dial, caught her a mile or two out, still in her car. “When your daughter came over, did she park in the garage, or out front?”
“Out front."
"Thanks.” Click. Outside, to the front door. Okay, the kid comes in through the front door. She can go straight ahead to the kitchen, left, to the family room/entertainment wing, or right into a public space, a greeting room. No reason to do that.
So she disarms the alarm system, walks straight ahead, into the kitchen. Now what? He stood there, at the corner of the kitchen. The reenactment was already breaking down, because there were too many possible branches. Two possibilities right here, or maybe three.
— She argues with somebody who came with her. -She argues with somebody already in the house. -She encounters somebody in the dark-all right, give the credit to O’Keefe-who was waiting for Alyssa Austin, but who attacks Frances by mistake.
But did it happen right after she came in? Might not be able to tell without her coat-if the coat was cut through, then she’d still have had it on.
He struggled with it for a bit, then thought, Let it go. Anyway, Frances is attacked. Does the killer already have the weapon, or does he get it from the drawer? If the killing was carefully planned, why would he do it with a paring knife?
Lucas looked back down the kitchen cou
nter from the death scene. If he wanted to use a bigger blade, there were plenty of them fifteen feet away, sticking out of a knife block. Heavy knives, easier to handle, deadlier.
And if he came to the house intending to kill, why hadn’t he brought a weapon of his own? A club, maybe. Quiet, effective, less likely to leave blood all around.
Lucas formed a little tent with his hands, folded them over his nose, working through it. The guy would have brought a weapon. If given a chance, once determined to kill, he would have used a bigger knife.
Therefore: the killing was spontaneous. If he took the knife from a drawer, had he known it was there? Was he intimately familiar with the kitchen? Or had the knife been left on the counter? Maybe somebody was cutting up an apple, or a chunk of cheese. Have to look at the crime- scene photos.
He considered the possibility of a burglar. But why would a burglar take the body, and clean up? Burglars got in and out, fast. Most of them got nervous if they spent more than two or three minutes inside a house. He might have taken the body to obscure some crime, though Lucas couldn’t think what the crime might have been, to have gone undetected this long. Maybe he’d come in to steal, knew that he’d left behind some fingerprints…
No, no, no. Wrong direction.
The killing, done for whatever reason-maybe the fifty thousand, but maybe not-was spontaneous, but then, after it was done, the killer had thought about it, at least for a couple of minutes. Had to have thought about it-and then, he’d moved the body. Why? To obscure the time of the murder, or the place?
If there hadn’t been a small spatter of blood, that Austin had spotted among the tangled flowers of the wallpaper, if they’d cleaned that up… nobody might ever have discovered that the murder had taken place at the Austin house.
Given the tendency of erratic young Minnesota girls to run off to more romantic places, far away from January in Minnesota… the cops might not be looking for her, even now. Not too hard, anyway. Not yet. And the date of her disappearance might be stated as several days too late.
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