Certain Prey

by John Sandford

  'Do you know what time it was?'

  'We were talking about that, before you came over,' Davis said. 'She was out there with her blocks and her bulldozer when I told her to come in. But she left her truck, and a few minutes later I heard her messing around out there, and I went out and got her. It was between eight and nine.'

  'Eight and nine. You wouldn't have been watching television, or anything, so you'd know what show was on?'

  Davis was shaking her head. 'No, I'm rewriting my thesis, the final edit, and I'd just shut down...' She cocked her head to the side, then said, 'Hey: I think the word processor has a time thing on it, that shows when the file was closed.' She hopped off the couch and headed for a back room. Lucas and Heather followed.

  Davis' study was a converted bedroom, with a single bed still in it: 'Howard slept here the last few weeks he lived with us,' she said, offhandedly. She was bringing the computer up, cycling through the Windows 98 display, then bringing up the word processor.

  'Yup.' She tapped the screen, and bounced in her seat a little, the way her daughter had. 'The file was stored at eight twenty-two. I stored it and got up and heard Heather in the hall, and told her to come back inside.'

  'All right, that's something,' Lucas said. 'Eight twenty-two.' He looked at Heather. 'Did you see anybody when you were in the hallway?'

  She shook her head. 'No.' Then added, 'I peeked when Mom was gone, and I saw two ladies.'

  'Two ladies? This was after you heard the party balloons?'

  She nodded, solemn in the face of Lucas's interest. 'How did you see them?' Lucas asked.

  'When I heard them, I opened the door just to peek,' she said. 'I thought it was Marta.'

  'But it wasn't Marta?'

  She shook her head again.

  'Did you know the ladies?'

  'No.'

  'Never saw them before?'

  She shook her head.

  'Do you remember what they looked like?' Lucas asked.

  She cocked her head in a perfect rendition of her mother's thinking-mannerism, and after two or three seconds said, 'Maybe I do.'

  Chapter Nine

  Carmel Loan learned that the bodies had been found from TV3. She and Rinker were walking through the Skyway toward Loan's office, eating frozen yogurt, when Carmel spotted a printed headline under a talking head in a deli-window TV: Two Bodies Found Near University. She nudged Rinker with her elbow.

  'That was quick,' Rinker said, looking up at the TV.

  'So was the other one - we could have gotten a couple days on either of them, but we didn't.'

  'I wonder about that kid,' Rinker said. 'I hope nothing comes out of that.'

  Carmel nodded and said, 'Let me find out when these bodies were found. If the cops have released any information, I can go over there and ask how it affects the case against Hale... and maybe find out what they've got.'

  'Too much curiosity might be dangerous,' Rinker said.

  'I can walk that line,' Carmel said confidently.

  Carmel went straight to Lucas:

  'I understand you found them,' she said. 'I mean, you personally.'

  'Yeah. Not one of the brighter moments in my day,' Lucas said. He was tipped back in his new office chair, his feet up, reading the Modality Report. He'd bought the chair himself, a grey steel-and-fabric contraption that felt so good that he was thinking of marrying it.

  'I'll tell you what,' Carmel said. 'We got one upper-class woman and three spies dead, and I would suggest to you that there's something going on besides some guy trying to kill his wife for her money. I'm reasonably sure that you're smart enough to have figured it out.'

  'I figured it out, all right,' Lucas said. 'Your goddamn client's a snake. He was financing the local cocaine cartel with his old lady's money - and she found out. After he killed her, he rolled up the rest of the group before they could talk about it.'

  'You can't...' Carmel started. Then she stopped herself. She ticked her finger at Lucas and said, 'You're teasing me.'

  'Maybe,' Lucas said.

  'I just don't know why we haven't slept together,' Carmel said. 'Except that my heart belongs to another.'

  'So does mine,' Lucas said. 'I just wish I'd meet her.'

  Carmel laughed. Let herself laugh a little too long, even indelicately.Then, 'So I can tell my client that he

  can stop the heavy drugs, and try to get some normal sleep.'

  'He's had a problem?' Lucas asked. He yawned and looked at his watch.

  'He sees himself involved in traumatic rectal enlargement, at the hands - well, not the hands - of biker gangs at Stillwater.'

  'Yeah, well...' Lucas said dismissively. 'Don't tell him he's clear, because we're still looking at everybody. But between you and me...'

  'Yeah?'

  '...he seems unlikely. And if we get him into court on a murder charge, and you ask me if I said that, I'll perjure myself and say "No, of course not.'"

  'That'd be a big fuckin' change, a cop committing perjury,' Carmel said. 'AH right. I'll tell him you'll be easing up.'

  'That'd probably be right,' Lucas said.

  Carmel turned, as though to leave, then asked, ingenuously, 'You got anything on the new killings? Like potential clients I can chase?'

  'Well, we got this, out of a kid,' Lucas said. He dropped his feet off the new chair, pulled open a desk drawer and took out a computer-generated photo. 'We're putting it in the paper.'

  He passed it to Carmel, who looked at it for a minute and then asked, 'What is this?'

  'What the kid saw.'

  'This is shit,' Carmel said. 'This is nothing.'

  'I know. But it's what we got.'

  'It looks like two aliens, a tall one and a short one.'

  'I thought they looked like grim reapers, the head things they have on.'

  The silk scarves had helped. Carmel would've spent a moment giving thanks, if she'd had any idea who she might give thanks to. In the picture, the scarves gave their heads a tall, slender profile. The kid must have seen them as silhouettes. The faces within the silhouettes were generic enough to be meaningless.

  'What are the head things?' Carmel asked.

  'The kid didn't know. Maybe some kind of hat. Maybe they were nuns.'

  'Good thought,' Carmel said.

  'They're women, anyway,' Lucas said. 'At least the kid says they are.'

  "The shooter in the stairwell was a woman,' Carmel

  said.

  'The triumph of feminism,' Lucas said. 'We got equal-opportunity hitters.'

  'Well...' Carmel flipped the photo back on the desk. 'On second thought, if you find her, call somebody else. She might be a little dangerous to know.'

  'Especially if you lose the case.'

  Carmel snorted as she went through the door. 'As if that might happen,' she said.

  When Carmel got back to the apartment, she found Rinker's suitcase in the front hall, and Rinker

  just getting out of the bathroom, freshly showered, scrubbing her hair dry.

  'So what happened?'

  'We're clear,' Carmel said. She gave Rinker a short account of her talk with Lucas. Rinker was pleased with the outcome. 'I'm outa here,' she said. 'I've got to get back to my business.'

  'Do you have a reservation?'

  'Yeah, for four o'clock,' Rinker said.

  'I'll drive you out to the airport,' Carmel said. 'Listen, what do you do in the winter?'

  'Mostly work,' Rinker said, fluffing her hair. 'Where I live, there's not a hell of a lot to do outside.'

  'Same here... You ever go to Cancun? Or Cozumel?'

  'Cozumel. Acapulco. A couple of times. Practice my Spanish.'

  'I try to get out of here for at least three weeks after it gets cold - a week in November, a week in January and a week in March,' Carmel said. 'We ought to go together. I've got connections, in the hotels and so on. It's a good time.'

  'Jeez,' Rinker said. She seemed oddly pleased, and Carmel got the impression she wasn't often invited places.
'That's sounds nice.'

  'So call me in October, and if you can get away, I'll set up the hotels and everything, and you can set up your own plane reservations, and we'll meet down there.'

  'I'd like that,' Rinker said. 'What do you do? Lay

  on the beach? Shop? I kinda like to boogie...'

  'Listen, I know some guys there, and there are always guys around... we'd be going around.'

  Rinker held up a finger: 'Hold that thought, but this just popped into my mind, before I forget. The guns are in the closet. You gotta take them down and throw them in the river, or bury them somewhere. Also the box of shells - the shells are with the gun. They're the only things left that can hang us.' 'I sorta like them,' Carmel said. 'Fine. Spend a few hundred bucks and get a nice clean gun of your own. I can make a call, and have one sent to you: brand new, cold, no registration to worry about. If you want a silencer, I can handle that, too. But the guns in the closet have gotta go. I'm nervous having them here, even hidden. You gotta do it; I'll call you every ten minutes until it's done.'

  'We can dump them in the river by the airport,' Carmel said. 'I know a place - then you won't have to worry.'

  'Excellent,' Rinker said. She cocked her head. 'Listen, if we go to Cancun, what about my hair? I've always had the feeling that it's a pretty small-town cut, you know, like I'm already middle-aged or something. I thought...'

  Carmel did cartoon breath-intake, and held her fingers to her breast: 'There's this woman down there, I've had my hair done every time I've gone down, she's a genius...'

  Talking about Mexico, they almost forgot the guns. With the door open, and Rinker's suitcase in the hall, Carmel snapped her finger and whispered, 'The guns.' She went back to get them, and fumbled the box of shells. There were still thirty-odd shells in the box, and they flew everywhere. Carmel hastily scooped them up, pushed them back in the box, and hurried to the door.

  Before going to the airport, Carmel took Rinker to the flats below Fort Snelling on the Minnesota River. 'The fort's just a relic,' Carmel said, as they looked up the bluff at the revetments. 'The first thing ever built here, that's still around, anyway. The Army had a death camp for Indians right where we're standing. This was after the big revolt... they hanged thirty-eight Indians in a single drop, down in Mankato. This area, this is where they kept the survivors, especially the woman. Half of them died during the winter; most of the women were raped by soldiers.' 'Happy story,' Rinker said.

  'I don't know what I'd do if I got raped, but it'd be something unpleasant, if I got my hands on the guy,' Carmel said.

  'I bet,' Rinker said. She didn't mention the guy named Dale-Something. They found a quiet path along the river, checked to make sure there was nobody watching, and pitched the guns into a deep spot.

  'That's it,' Rinker said. 'We're all done.'

  On the way back from the airport, Carmel called Hale Allen.

  Allen said, 'God, I was trying to get you earlier in the afternoon. Are you coming to the funeral tomorrow?'

  'I was trying to get you, but all I got was your machine,' Carmel said. 'We've got some things to talk about. I spoke to Lucas Davenport this afternoon...'

  'What? What'd he say?' Allen was anxious.

  'I'm in my car, and I hate to talk on this cell phone. Why don't I just stop by? I could be there in twenty minutes.'

  'Twenty minutes,' he said, with an uncertain note in his voice. 'Okay. See you in twenty.'

  Not the most eager lover she'd ever had, Carmel thought as she ended the phone call. On the other hand, he didn't know they were lovers. Not yet.

  In a couple of hours, he would. A certain kind of man, sharks-in-the-water, attorneys more often than not, alone with Carmel, would produce a pass. Sometimes, depending on her mood and the man, Carmel would receive the pass, and things would proceed. Carmel was far from a virgin, but had never had a long-term sexual relationship. One woman, who was almost a friend, had once confided to Carmel that one of her ex-suitors had said, to a number of people at a party, that Carmel frightened him. He felt like the fly, and she was the spider.

  Carmel pretended to be puzzled by the comment, but wasn't entirely displeased: fear wasn't the worst

  thing to instill in a man, especially the man who made the comment, who was something of a thug himself. Still, after that, she tried to soften her bedroom image, tried to slow down a little. But she really didn't much care for the weight of a man pressing her down, the trapped feeling gasping over his shoulder, staring at the ceiling while he flailed around on top. And she was a little picky. She didn't like hairy shoulders -even less, hairy backs. She didn't like chest hair that connected with pubic hair. She didn't care for bald men or the untidiness of uncircumcised men; she didn't care for men who burped, or whose breath smelled of anything cooked, or who peed with the bathroom door open, or farted.

  Orgasms didn't often happen, not with men; her best orgasms came alone, in the bathtub. Hale would change that, she thought. If not right away, she could train him.

  Hale Allen lived on a quiet, upperclass street off one of the lakes, far enough from the crowds to have a certain peace in the evening, without the constant to-ing and fro-ing of thin young women with earphones and blades; but at the same time, close enough that residents could walk down and enjoy the mix when they wished to. The house was long and white, with lake-green shutters and a yellow bug light over the central door, and a long driveway that curved up a slope past fifty-year-old burr oaks. A small white sign at the edge of the driveway warned burglars that the

  house was protected by Insula Armed Response.

  Carmel left the Jag under the spreading arms of an oak and rang the doorbell. A moment later, she heard the muffled pounding of stocking feet on a stairs, and then Hale opened the door, a white terry cloth towel in his hand. He smiled and backed up and said, 'Come on in,' and rubbed his damp hair with the towel. He looked like something off the perfume pages of Esquire. She had never been inside his house - Barbara Allen's house, it turned out, was decorated with a cool and discerning eye, a mix of pieces new and old. But nothing fabulous: Carmel felt the instant chill of class inferiority. She moved into the living room, turned and said, 'I talked to Davenport.' 'Yeah?' He was eager.

  'It's pretty much over with. They've got three more shootings by the same person - probably the same person - and you're an obvious non-candidate in all three of them.'

  'So they're gonna do what? Talk to the press, tell them...'

  'Doesn't work that way,' Carmel said. She took a slow turn past a small watercolor: no name that she recognized, but she did feel a vibration coming from the work - a simple street scene, probably New York -and understood that it was good. She looked away from the painting: 'The way it works is, they don't say anything to anybody. They just go away. Then, if it turns out that you were involved, they don't look like dumbshits.'

  'That's not fair,' Allen protested. Once again, she had to strain to think of him as a lawyer.

  'Of course it's not fair. But they have the choice of, one: being fair to Hale Allen, or two: taking the chance that they're going to look like dumbshits. Which choice do you think a bunch of city hall bureaucrats is gonna choose?'

  'By golly, that really makes me mad.' He hurled the terrycloth towel at a couch.

  'Hey. Unless something new comes up, it's over,' she said. 'About Barbara - the funeral is at two?'

  'Yes, at Morganthau's.'

  'I won't be able to make the service; I'll be at the cemetery, though.'

  'Thanks. I..." He plopped on the couch, picked up the damp towel, turned it in his large hands. 'I have some questions that I want to ask Barbara, and I've got some things I want to talk over, but I can't, cause she's dead. I can't get around that.'

  'like what do you want to tell her?' Real curiosity.

  'Like, I want to tell her about Louise.'

  Now Carmel was puzzled. 'Why? You'd only hurt her.'

  'I wouldn't only hurt her; I think it's more complicated than that, don't y
ou?'

  'All right,' Carmel said. She sat on the couch next to him. 'Tell me about it. Tell me about Louise.'

  Louise liked sex, and so did Hale. Barbara liked it better than, say, a fried egg sandwich, but not as much as a good soft back rub. 'When we were having

  sex, I always had the feeling that she was taking care of me, not making love with me. She was always waiting for me to finish. She always wanted it to be good for me, but then she always wanted to round out the night with a book...'