Lucas Davenport Novels 6-10

by John Sandford

  ‘‘A piece of one, anyway,’’ the crime scene man said. ‘‘Gimme a Ziploc, somebody.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ Helen said. ‘‘No.’’

  They pulled the capsule apart with forks, avoiding what appeared to be a fingerprint smudge. White powder spilled out. Lucas pulled apart one of the Prozac capsules from the bottle. ‘‘It’s different stuff,’’ he said.

  The lead crime scene tech got down close to the table, an inch from the white powder, barely inhaled, then straightened up, wiping his nose.

  ‘‘What?’’ asked Lucas.

  ‘‘Almonds,’’ the tech said. ‘‘That stuff is cyanide.’’

  THIRTY-THREE

  LUCAS CALLED THE COUNTY ATTORNEY FROM HELEN Bell’s house, told him about the pill: ‘‘All right, that’s it,’’ Towson said. ‘‘Pick her up. We’ll put her away this time. No bail. No nothing.’’

  Lucas hung up and nodded to Sherrill: ‘‘We’re gonna go get her. Want to follow me over?’’

  ‘‘I’ll ride with you,’’ she said. ‘‘You can always drop me back here to get the car.’’

  ‘‘Let’s go,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll get a squad to meet us there.’’

  Four miles out, Dispatch called and said a man from AT&T Wireless was on the phone.

  ‘‘Patch him through,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘There’re dozens of calls from that account in the past week,’’ the AT&T man said. ‘‘What was the time and date?’’

  Lucas gave it to him and said, ‘‘Look for a 699 prefix.’’

  After a moment’s wait: ‘‘Here it is. Here it is, by gosh.’’

  AUDREY WAS TALKING TO A FIDELITY ACCOUNT MANAGER when the phone rang in her purse. ‘‘I better take that,’’ she said, pleasantly. She was wearing her best, acting the banker’s wife: she wanted to get the money out of Fidelity before some legalism held it up. If she could get the cash and stash it somewhere, she would be good for at least a few years, no matter what else happened.

  ‘‘Let me get the rest of these numbers,’’ the manager said. She was a young woman dressed in a nice Ann Taylor suit, with a pretty silk scarf, nothing flashy, nothing too expensive. Audrey approved; maybe Fidelity wasn’t throwing her money away on exorbitant salaries.

  Audrey answered the phone on the third ring and Helen said to her, ‘‘Did you do it?’’

  And Audrey could hear Connie in the background, saying, urgently, ‘‘Mom, hang up. Hang up.’’

  ‘‘Do what?’’ Audrey said calmly, though she knew.

  ‘‘You’d know, if you did it.’’

  ‘‘That Davenport’s been there again, hasn’t he?’’ Audrey asked. ‘‘May I speak to him?’’

  ‘‘He’s gone,’’ Helen said. She choked on the words, and Audrey heard Connie say, ‘‘Mom, I’m gonna hang this up. You shouldn’t—’’

  And the connection was gone. Audrey looked at the phone for a moment, then punched the power button and turned it off. Davenport had found the pill. She wouldn’t need to talk to Helen again.

  As she walked out through the Fidelity office, she met the young manager on her way back: ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ Audrey said. ‘‘I’ve got something of a family emergency. I have to go home.’’

  She drove back toward her house on remote control. She didn’t have access to any serious money, so running was not a possibility. And with Helen alive, she didn’t really have many options left. She could think of precisely one.

  ‘‘I can die,’’ she said to the car. She was overwhelmed with a feeling of sadness, not for herself, but for the world. She’d be gone. The world wouldn’t have her anymore. ‘‘But they’ll see then,’’ she told the car. ‘‘That’s when they’ll see.’’

  The car seemed to steer itself, but she knew where it was going: North Woods Arms, in Wayzata. The gun shop was a small place, a door beside a picture window, the window laced over with security bars disguised as wrought-iron curlicues. The area beside the door and around the window had weathered-wood siding, to simulate a North Woods cabin; small Christmas lights blinked in the window, around a festive display of nine-millimeter pistols.

  A bell rang above the door as she walked in, and the owner looked up from a magazine. ‘‘Hello.’’

  ‘‘Hello,’’ Audrey said, glancing around at the rack of long guns. ‘‘I’m looking for a gun for my husband for Christmas.’’

  ‘‘You’ve come to the right place,’’ the owner said pleasantly. ‘‘Do you know what you’re looking for, or—’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ Audrey unfolded a piece of yellow notebook paper. She’d thought that would be a nice touch. ‘‘A Remington 870 Wingmaster twelve-gauge shotgun.’’

  ‘‘No problem,’’ the owner said enthusiastically. ‘‘You know what he’s going to use it for?’’

  ‘‘Ducks, I guess. He mostly hunts ducks. And geese.’’

  ‘‘No problem . . .’’

  She took the 870 along with two boxes of No. 2 shells. The store owner took her check, carried the boxes out to the car, and said, ‘‘Tell your husband I said, ‘Good hunting.’ ’’

  ‘‘When I see him,’’ she said, and got in the car. The store owner thought that was an odd thing to say; he would mention it to his wife that night.

  LUCAS AND SHERRILL HAD GOTTEN TO THE Mc-Donald house before Audrey, and a minute before two patrol cops in a squad car. Lucas knocked on the front door, got no response, and while the uniforms waited in front, they walked together once around the house. Nobody. Peering through the deck windows, they saw no sign of movement or light. Back in front, Sherrill rang the doorbell again. Lucas said, looking up at the bedroom windows, ‘‘Nobody’s home. Feels too quiet. I hope she’s not running.’’

  They were standing in the ‘‘L’’ made by the front of the house, the living wing to the front, extending to the left, the three-car garage swinging off to the right. ‘‘Maybe put out a call on her. Or we could just wait,’’ Sherrill said. The uniforms were leaning on the front fender of their squad car, chatting.

  ‘‘I hope she’s not looking for Helen,’’ Lucas said. And thought about Elle Kruger, and his jaw tightened. ‘‘Or anybody else. By God, I’d like to be there to bust her; but maybe we’d better—Whoops. There she is.’’

  AUDREY TURNED INTO THE BOTTOM OF THE DRIVEWAY, saw the Porsche and the police car at the top. She reached up and pushed the garage door opener. The shotgun rode beside her, muzzle down, in the passenger foot-well, the butt resting against her hip. She’d loaded four shells, as many as it would take, and had two more loose on the seat for reloading.

  And she was ready for it. On the way home from the gun store, her vision had seemed to narrow: on the highway, she could see only the road itself. On the driveway, she could see only the garage door, until she made the little left, then right loop that could take her into the garage. Then, she looked out the passenger-side window and saw Davenport walking toward the garage, and her vision narrowed to a small point: Davenport’s face. A mean man, she thought. Harsh. A man like Daddy.

  WHEN THE GARAGE DOOR STARTED UP, THE TWO UNIFORMED cops pushed away from the fender of their squad car, and looked down the drive. Audrey rolled slowly up the drive, made a little jog that took her straight in toward the far door. Lucas and Sherrill started walking toward it from the front stoop, and the two uniformed cops started toward it from their parking spot at the edge of the driveway. The back of Audrey’s car had just cleared the inside of the door when it started down again.

  Lucas turned and said, ‘‘Side door.’’ Sherrill followed him toward an access door at the near end of the three overhead doors, just ambling along without thinking about it. Lucas opened the access door and stepped into the semidark garage, which was getting darker as the end door dropped the last couple of feet. ‘‘Mrs. McDonald,’’ he said.

  AUDREY HEARD THAT, AND LOOKING LEFT, SAW DAVENPORT step inside the garage. He was standing in a shaft of light from the open access door. She grabbed the shotgun with her
right hand, took a second to make sure the safety was off, then opened the door with her left hand, pushed it out with her feet, and pivoted out of the car. The shotgun was long and awkward, and she had to maneuver it around the car’s roof post. Still, once it was out, it came up smoothly, and she saw the surprise register on Davenport’s face and heard him scream a word and saw a violent motion and then the muzzle was coming down . . .

  THE DOME AND DOOR LIGHTS CAME ON IN AUDREY’S car as she opened the door; and with that light, Lucas could see the shotgun barrel as it came up. Sherrill had come in behind him and he screamed, ‘‘Gun!’’ and battered her sideways as he went down behind a Lexus. At the same instant, the shotgun blew a foot-long finger of flame at him, and the wall behind exploded in a shower of drywall plaster.

  BAAA-OOOM.

  The sound came after the lightning flash—a long time after, it seemed, though he was suspended in air when he thought that. Then he was on the floor, groping for his pistol, dragging it out of the holster, rolling along beside the Lexus, and the shotgun lit up the garage again, blowing glass out over his head. He’d lost track of Sherrill, lost track of everything: the thunder of the shotgun was magnified in the enclosed space, and the lightning of the shots was now the only illumination, aside from the feeble dome light from McDonald’s car.

  • • •

  AUDREY HAD BEEN BLINDED BY THE MUZZLE FLASH; she hadn’t expected that, but she expected Davenport to be falling, so she dropped the muzzle of the weapon as she pumped it, and convulsively jerked the trigger again. Glass shattered and she registered a voice, screaming; and a surge of confidence ran through her. Got him. Now to finish him .

  ‘‘LIGHT.’’ LUCAS HEARD SOMEBODY SCREAMING; HIS mind processed it as Sherrill, but he couldn’t tell what she was saying. ‘‘Top.’’

  BAAA-OOOM.

  Three shots; and Audrey was getting closer, walking toward them. But some shotguns only held three shots. Was she reloading? Was this a four-shot chamber? And then suddenly, the overhead lights were on and he saw, from the corner of his eye, Sherrill scrambling away from a light switch, a gun in her hand. And at the same time, from his spot on the concrete floor, saw Audrey’s ankle behind the back bumper of the sport-ute. He pushed his hand forward, couldn’t see the front barrel of the pistol but squeezed off a shot. Twelve feet: and he missed to the right. Audrey did a little hop step, and he heard her pump, and a shotgun shell bounced off the floor and he adjusted a hair to the right and pulled the trigger again.

  And this time, he hit her.

  Audrey screamed and went down, and suddenly, her face was there, looking under the cars at him. And the barrel of the shotgun was pointing at him too and she was moving it toward his face. He rolled behind a tire as she fired, and the tire soaked up the blast; but he could feel the air torn apart beside him.

  She’d be dealing with recoil; she might be reloading. He didn’t think it, but knew it, and pushed himself just to the right and extended his arm again, still unable to find the front sight in the shadow under the car, but he was close, and her face was there, and he was tightening his grip on the trigger and she was moving the barrel back to him . . .

  • • •

  SHERRILL DROPPED ON HER LIKE A METEOR. SHE’D crawled over the sport-ute, and dropped from the roof. She landed with her feet behind Audrey’s neck, smacking Audrey’s head facedown into the receiver on the shotgun.

  Lucas jumped up and ran around the end of the car and caught Sherrill’s hand coming up with the pistol in it. ‘‘No, no . . .’’

  ‘‘What?’’ Sherrill looked confused.

  ‘‘We got her.’’

  Audrey wrenched her shoulders and neck around, looked up at them, dazed, blood running down her lips and across her teeth. ‘‘Who are you?’’ she asked.

  One of the cops outside was screaming, ‘‘Davenport, Davenport, talk to me . . .’’

  ‘‘We got her, we got her, we got her . . .’’ With his foot, Lucas pushed the shotgun under the sport-ute, out of reach. ‘‘She’s hit,’’ he said to Sherrill. ‘‘Let’s get her outside.’’

  ‘‘I’ll get the doors . . .’’

  Lucas got his arms under Audrey’s back and knees, and picked her up as best he could; then the three garage doors started rising simultaneously, and light flooded into the garage.

  The uniformed cops were there, pistols drawn. They reholstered as they saw Lucas carrying Audrey.

  ‘‘Jesus Christ,’’ one of them said. ‘‘What was that?’’

  ‘‘Shotgun,’’ Lucas grunted. ‘‘She’s hit. Get an ambulance out here.’’

  ‘‘Put her down on the driveway, Lucas,’’ Sherrill said. ‘‘Let’s get her flat. One of you guys, you got a blanket in your car? She’ll be going into shock . . .’’

  A cop got a blanket, spread it on the driveway, and Lucas put Audrey on it. She seemed only semiconscious, though her eyes were open. He stood up. ‘‘Damn,’’ he said. ‘‘That was a little too close.’’

  Audrey said something. Sherrill heard it, said, ‘‘What?’’

  She said something again. Sherrill said, ‘‘What?’’ and bent over the other woman.

  And as she put her head close to the other woman’s face, Audrey lifted her hand, and despite her awkward position, hit Sherrill in the eye with her fist, knocking Sherrill flat on her butt.

  ‘‘Knock that shit off,’’ one of the uniformed cops yelled at Audrey, stepping over her, and she unballed her fist and turned her head away, her eyes softly closing. Sherrill had crawled away, one hand to her eye. ‘‘Aw, man, that hurts.’’

  Lucas looked at it: ‘‘You’re gonna have a mouse. And a hell of a black eye.’’

  Audrey mumbled again. They both turned to look at her, eight feet away, flat on her back, and her cobra eyes caught Lucas. And suddenly she smiled, a big, toothy smile with bloody teeth.

  Lucas felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He turned back to Sherrill, who looked up at him and shook her head once: ‘‘Fuckin’ nuts,’’ she said.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  SHERRILL SAID, ‘‘SO KRAUSE THINKS MAYBE SHE DELIBERATELY let the lineman see her so we wouldn’t suspect Wilson. And then she called to tell us about the lineman, because we were digging at Wilson.’’

  ‘‘Smart woman,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘Nasty,’’ said James T. Bone, who was just settling into Lucas’s visitor’s chair.

  ‘‘I gotta go,’’ Sherrill said. She stood on her tiptoes, black eye nearly gone, kissed Lucas on the lips, said, ‘‘See you tonight,’’ and, ‘‘Bye, Mr. Bone.’’

  When Sherrill closed the door, Bone looked sleepy-eyed at Lucas and said, ‘‘White fuzzy sweater and chrome revolver in a shoulder holster. My heart almost stopped.’’

  ‘‘Wearing my ass out,’’ Lucas said comfortably.

  ‘‘I know how that goes,’’ Bone said.

  BONE SAID, ‘‘AUDREY . . . IS SHE GONNAFIGHT IT?’’

  ‘‘Her attorney’s a friend of mine,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘He says she’s crazy as a loon. Maybe she is. She even denies buying or firing the shotgun, even though we had four witnesses, the receipt in the car, and the gun shop guy identifying her. He says she’s having trouble remembering anything after the death of her husband. A shrink’s looking at her now.’’

  ‘‘Is she faking?’’

  Lucas shrugged. ‘‘I don’t know. She’s smart, that’s pretty clear. But her whole life has been a nightmare. I think it’s possible that she never did know the difference between right and wrong.’’

  ‘‘And if the court decides she’s nuts?’’

  ‘‘She’ll go off to the state hospital.’’

  ‘‘What if she’s not nuts?’’

  ‘‘Then we have a trial, and we’ve got her.’’

  ‘‘Huh.’’ Bone looked out the window at the street. The weather had turned gray, and small flecks of snow bounced off the window. Although it was only three in the afternoon, most of the passing cars had th
eir headlights on. A week after the fight in the garage, the world was beginning to settle down again. ‘‘I’d feel a lot better if I knew she was going away for a long time; like forever. I’d hate to see her get out of a hospital in a couple of years.’’

  Lucas nodded: ‘‘So would I.’’

  BONE HAD THE BANK: OF THE TOP FIVE POLARIS EXECUTIVES in October, only two had made it to the end of November, Bone and Robles. ‘‘I’ve got my assistant winding up O’Dell’s affairs here. I talked to her father—he’s having trouble dealing with her death.’’

  ‘‘Death of a child,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Just ’cause they’re grown up, doesn’t make it any easier.’’

  ‘‘No, I don’t expect it does,’’ Bone said. Then, ‘‘Have you seen Damascus Isley lately?’’

  ‘‘Not since we had lunch together a while back.’’

  ‘‘I saw him at the bank. We talked a little basketball . . . He’s on a strange diet, a Big Mac every day with popcorn.’’

  ‘‘He told me he was thinking about it,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I hope he can stick it out.’’

  ‘‘I think he will. He was on the diet for one week, he told me, and lost eighteen pounds. He knows that won’t keep up, but when he got on the scale after the first week, he said his wife went out to the bedroom and cried for fifteen minutes. Outa joy, I guess. He was freaked out. I don’t see any way he’ll relapse.’’

  BONE SAID, ‘‘THIS AUDREY MCDONALD THING HAS torn me up.’’

  ‘‘Yeah?’’ Lucas had an archaic typewriter tray in his desk, just the right height for feet. He pulled it out and put his feet up.

  ‘‘Yeah. I was gonna run a major bank someday. But it wouldn’t have come this soon, if Audrey hadn’t blown old Dan Kresge out of his tree stand.’’

  ‘‘Won’t you be out of a job, if the merger goes through?’’

  ‘‘Sure. But some problems are cropping up with the merger,’’ Bone said, showing a thin smile. ‘‘The road might not be as smooth as it looked. Even if it happens, once you’re running a place, you can usually go someplace else, and run that. It’s the breakthrough to the top that counts.’’