Secret Prey

by John Sandford

  ‘‘Not Audrey and Helen?’’

  ‘‘No, just an Audrey.’’

  ‘‘How about on George Lamb?’’

  ‘‘That was . . . Amelia.’’

  ‘‘Huh. Did Amelia Lamb have to take a physical?’’

  ‘‘Um . . . yup. Passed okay.’’

  ‘‘Anything about high blood pressure?’’

  ‘‘Nope. But this form isn’t specific—you’d have to see the original doctor’s report, and that was so long ago . . .’’

  ‘‘Do you have the doc’s name?’’

  ‘‘Yup.’’

  But the doctor was dead. His son, a dentist, said his father’s records had been transferred to other doctors when he gave up his practice, and records not transferred had been stored for ten years, then destroyed.

  ‘‘Shit.’’

  ‘‘I beg your pardon?’’

  LUCAS WENT BACK TO THE RECORDS FOR AN HOUR, and finally came to a push-comes-to-shove point. If Audrey was guilty of all of this, then she must have killed O’Dell. But according to the investigative records, signed off by Franklin and Sloan, she left the building before O’Dell was killed. That was confirmed: she logged out of the building at 10:53. Two people visiting their son in the building, who had logged out after her, confirmed that they had left just as a Roseanne rerun was ending. Nightline ended a couple of minutes before eleven, and they were shown as logging out at eleven, while O’Dell was confirmed killed at 11:02.

  It was possible, of course, that Audrey was a master burglar and that she had some way of getting into a building with a security desk in the lobby. Or that she had somehow obtained a key card for the elevator. But the first of those possibilities seemed laughable, while the second was only barely reasonable—she wouldn’t have had much time to plan the killing of O’Dell, unless the killing was part of a long-range plan.

  He thought about that for a moment. Maybe she did have a long-range plan. Maybe she had access to everybody she might ever need to kill. Then he shook his head. Couldn’t think that way. If she was working off a long-range plan, which had somehow involved getting home keys for all her possible victims, then she was a perfect killer and they were out of luck.

  He glanced at his watch, punched up his computer, and wrote a memo, with copies to Frank Lester, head of the investigative division, and Rose Marie Roux.

  Halfway through, a sheriff’s deputy called from Itasca County. ‘‘You called yesterday about the Baird case?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, thanks for calling back,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘How well do you know the case?’’

  ‘‘I was lead investigator,’’ the deputy said. ‘‘I pretty much know it all.’’

  ‘‘I understand it was a firebombing,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘A Molotov cocktail.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, that’s right. A mix of gas and oil in a gallon jug,’’ the deputy said.

  ‘‘Was there anything weird about the bottle?’’ Lucas asked.

  After a moment of pregnant silence, the deputy said, ‘‘Like what?’’

  ‘‘Like scoring? Like with a glass cutter?’’

  Another beat. Then, ‘‘How’n the hell did you know about that? We never put it in the report . . .’’

  WHEN HE WAS DONE WITH THE MEMOS, LUCAS printed them and walked them down to Roux’s office and left them with the secretary. Homicide was just down the hall, so he stopped by.

  Sherrill was at her desk: ‘‘Lunch?’’

  She was sitting next to Sloan, who was eating a corned beef sandwich. ‘‘If you don’t think people’ll think you’re fucking me,’’ she said, just loud enough for Sloan to hear.

  Sloan never flinched. ‘‘Let’s go,’’ Lucas said. And to Sloan: ‘‘Have you got an hour, in an hour or so? To go over to O’Dell’s place, and look around?’’

  ‘‘Sure.’’

  LUCAS AND SHERRILL WALKED DOWN THE STREET TO a cop hangout, got sandwiches, and Sherrill said, ‘‘I hope I can get past this wise-mouth stuff with you. I’ve been a wise-ass ever since we got together, and I’m having a hard time getting off that wavelength.’’

  ‘‘I’ll recite you a poem sometime,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘It makes women feel all gushy and tender; they roll right over on their backs.’’

  ‘‘You just did it to me.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Wise-assed me. I heard you read poetry. I always thought it was neat. Now you wise-assed it.’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’ He looked up at her, serious now. ‘‘I’m sorry I wise-assed it. I do like poetry, and I do like reading some of it to women.’’

  ‘‘Say a poem to me.’’

  He thought, and then said, slowly, ‘‘ ‘It was Din, Din, Din you limpin’ lump of—’ ’’

  ‘‘Get the fuck out of here,’’ she said. ‘‘You did it again.’’

  ‘‘We gotta do something about this,’’ he said, grinning at her. ‘‘I really am serious. We’ve got to have at least one honest talk. Penalties for any wise-ass remarks.’’

  ‘‘Tomorrow night. For dinner.’’

  ‘‘Tomorrow,’’ he agreed.

  Sherrill’s phone rang, and she took it out of her purse, listened, and handed it to him: ‘‘Rose Marie. Christ, she knew right where to call.’’

  Lucas put the phone to his ear. ‘‘Yeah?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t interrupt a tender moment, did I?’’

  ‘‘Yeah. I was about to bite into a cheeseburger.’’

  ‘‘I called Towson about your memo. He wants to meet.’’

  ‘‘It’s too soon.’’

  ‘‘No it’s not. I’m sending a copy over for him to read. You should get over there at two o’clock. Frank is gonna go along. From the memo, I don’t think we’re likely to get her unless she kills somebody else. So you guys are gonna have to figure something out.’’

  LUCAS DROPPED SHERRILL BACK AT THE OFFICE, picked up Sloan, and they walked together over to O’Dell’s apartment building. The security guard recognized Sloan and sent them up.

  ‘‘The basic problem is, if you go down in the elevator, you can’t get back up without a key card,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘Even if you have a key card, there’s a monitor camera in the elevator, so a guard might recognize you . . . not that they spend a lot of time looking at the monitor,’’ Sloan said, as they got in the elevator.

  ‘‘So she gets off at another floor . . .’’

  ‘‘Nope. Can’t get off at another floor. If you get in at the lobby, you can go to any one floor. If you get in at any other floor, you can only go down to the lobby. Unless you have a key card.’’

  ‘‘How about the fire stairs?’’

  ‘‘The doors are locked in the lobby and the skyway. From those floors, you can’t get in without a key, you can only get out. And you can’t get out on any floor except the lobby or the skyway, even if you have a key.’’

  ‘‘A key, not a key card,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘That’s right—like a Schlage.’’

  ‘‘How close do they track the cards?’’

  ‘‘They know how many each person is signed out for. O’Dell had three, two for herself, and one for her father, who lives way the hell out in South Dakota. We found her two cards, and her father still had his when he was here to pick up the body. So that was all of hers. But somebody else in the building? Who knows? There are almost three hundred cards out. I suppose we could try to find all of them . . . I’d guess a few are missing. The problem is figuring out how the McDonalds might have gotten one.’’

  ‘‘Huh. If it was all arranged ahead of time, we’re fucked anyway. What if she had to do it off the top of her head? Maybe a day’s thought?’’

  Sloan shrugged. ‘‘You figure it out.’’

  They got off on O’Dell’s floor, and Lucas stood with his back to the door of her apartment. ‘‘She went down first, then she had to get back up to kill her.’’

  ‘‘Right.’’

  Lucas looked at the elevator: ‘‘Even if she
’s got a key card, there’s a problem coming back up to kill O’Dell. She can’t guarantee the guard won’t look at the monitor out of sheer boredom, if he sees movement on the screen. If he does, she’s dead meat. He’s just seen her leave, and now she’s going up to kill somebody. Therefore . . .’’

  ‘‘She doesn’t use the elevator, she uses the stairwell,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘She has a Schlage key for the door in the skyway. She signs out of the building, runs across the street to the skyway, goes up, walks across the skyway to the skyway fire door, uses her Schlage to get into the stairwell, walks up here. Where you have a problem: she can’t get out of the stairwell. There’s no key at all that’ll get you out of the stairwell onto another floor. You can only get out in the skyway or the lobby.’’

  Lucas worked on it for a moment. ‘‘Like this,’’ he said finally. ‘‘She knows she doesn’t have the votes to make a real deal with O’Dell: she claims she’s got them, but Bone says she didn’t, and she knows she doesn’t. She’s come here specifically to kill O’Dell—she knows that when she gets here. She can’t just sneak up and do it, because she doesn’t have any key. She doesn’t have anything. So she calls O’Dell to talk about making a deal, and her only purpose is to get into the building. So she gets out of the elevator, and right when she arrives, before she talks to O’Dell, she walks over to the fire door, opens it, takes some duct tape out of her purse, tapes the lock, walks down the stairs to the skyway, opens that door, tapes it, and then comes back up here and rings the doorbell.’’

  ‘‘O’Dell answers it, they talk, the deal falls through, and she leaves. O’Dell sees her into the elevator, and she goes down through the lobby and signs out,’’ Sloan said.

  ‘‘Then she runs across the street, comes up into the skyway, goes in through the taped door, runs up the stairs, knocks on the door, and boom. She has to do it then—even though she knows we’ll look at her—because she can’t count on the tape being left on the door for more than a short time.’’

  ‘‘Which explains something,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘O’Dell told Louise Compton that there was ‘somebody at the door,’ which meant that she didn’t know who was at the door, which meant that she didn’t know who’d be arriving. She wasn’t expecting anyone, like a boyfriend. There was no easy explanation for that knock, at least not in her mind.’’

  ‘‘So Audrey shoots her, checks her to make sure she’s dead, runs back down the stairs, carefully pulling the tape off the locks . . . and goes home.’’

  ‘‘Fuckin’ cold, man,’’ Sloan said.

  ‘‘She is cold. I wonder if she was cold enough to wash the sticky stuff off the doors when she pulled off the tape? She’d need acetone, or something,’’ Lucas said.

  They were both staring at the fire door. Sloan reached out to the doorknob, pulled the door open, bent forward to look at the lock tongue, then knelt. Lucas squatted beside him.

  ‘‘Looks like sticky stuff,’’ Sloan said. He tapped his index finger next to what looked like gray tape residue.

  ‘‘Wonder how many movers have gone in and out, using tape?’’

  ‘‘Up this high? None. That’s why the elevator’s so big. And I think this stuff would wear away, if the door was opened and closed on it enough. So it’s probably fairly new.’’

  ‘‘Let’s get Crime Scene over here,’’ Lucas said, standing up. ‘‘And let’s get a search warrant ready, see if we can find some tape at her place that matches this sticky stuff—if the lab guys can make a match like that.’’

  On the way back down in the elevator, Sloan said, ‘‘It’s a reach.’’

  ‘‘ She’s a reach. She looks like Old Mother Hubbard and she’s really the Wicked Witch of the West.’’

  THE HENNEPIN COUNTY ATTORNEY, RANDALL TOWSON; his chief deputy, Donald Dunn; and Richard Kirk, head of the criminal division, met with Lucas and Frank Lester, deputy chief and head of the investigative division.

  ‘‘You’re telling us she’s a serial killer,’’ Towson said.

  ‘‘Everything points to it,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’m not sure we could prove it to a jury.’’

  ‘‘Make the argument.’’

  ‘‘You’ve all seen the memo. The major point is this: We have too many unusual deaths. First, her parents. She benefited directly from the death of her mother—a fifteenthousand-dollar life insurance policy that her sister apparently didn’t share in. She probably got insurance from the death of her father—her mother was weak, and Audrey seemed to be running things, even then, as a kid. We also have four obvious and unquestioned murders: George Arris, shot in the back of the head in St. Paul; Daniel Kresge, who you all know was shot while deer hunting last week; Wilson McDonald, who she admits shooting to death; and Susan O’Dell, who was shot to death in her apartment. Audrey McDonald was the last person known to have been with O’Dell.’’

  ‘‘I’d think that would almost be exculpatory, from what I get from your memo,’’ Kirk said. ‘‘She could prove that she was out of the building before the killing happened.’’

  ‘‘Things have changed in the last hour, since I wrote the memo,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Detective Sloan and I have worked out a way she might have done it. There might even be the possibility of some physical evidence . . .’’

  ‘‘How . . .’’

  He explained quickly about the duct tape, then said, ‘‘Let me finish this other thought. In addition to her parents and the four outright murders, we also have four mysterious deaths: Andy Ingall disappeared and has never been found after a supposed boating accident; eleven-year-old Tom McKinney was killed while riding his bicycle; and Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon Baird were burned to death in their cabin. We also have two aggravated assaults in the past two weeks. One was on my former fiancee´, Weather Karkinnen; her house was firebombed, you’ve probably read about it. Normally, I wouldn’t suggest that there was a tie, but I would here. You can read the full reasoning in the memo— Audrey has a history of attacking people to distract, as well as to eliminate, and I believe that’s what she did here. We even have some evidence for this.’’

  ‘‘And it is . . .’’

  ‘‘When Mr. and Mrs. Baird were burned to death, investigators found the remnants of a glass jug in their front room, and the glass had been scored to make sure the bottle broke on impact,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘That feels like a pro job— but it happens that when my finace´e was firebombed, remnants of the bottle used in that bombing showed the same kind of scoring.’’

  ‘‘Jesus Christ,’’ Towson said.

  ‘‘Then, last week, another friend of mine was attacked, Sister Mary Joseph, from St. Anne’s College. As it happens, Audrey McDonald knew her. And presumably knew where she lived, and attacked her for the same reason she attacked Weather. To get me off her back.’’

  ‘‘And you can show that she benefited from all of these,’’ Dunn said.

  ‘‘She benefited financially from the killings of her father and mother—in addition to the money, she may have killed her father because he was sexually and probably physically abusing her, and she got rid of him. All the other deaths were done to push her husband’s career: when you put them down in outline form, you’ll find that he benefited from each of the other deaths . . . Look at page three of the memo, there’s a chart.’’

  ‘‘What about her husband?’’

  ‘‘I think her husband was killed because we were getting too close, and he was a rather notorious coward. If he knew about the killings, he might have ratted her out, if there was pressure. Also, she inherits, if she’s found not guilty of murdering him. Running through his files after he was killed, we figured he could be worth about seven, eight million.’’

  ‘‘I see one problem,’’ Towson’s deputy said, snapping the paper with his finger. ‘‘If I remember right, you guys had elected Wilson McDonald for the Kresge killing.

  Looking at this, I ask myself, couldn’t McDonald have done all of these? We know he was a brutal asshole. Look what he did
to his own wife.’’

  ‘‘It’s worse than that,’’ Lester said. ‘‘St. Paul’s got a partial print, probably made by McDonald, on a shell from the gun that killed Arris.’’

  ‘‘Not good,’’ said Towson.

  ‘‘No—but all that proves is that McDonald loaded the gun. I’ll also say it seems that when O’Dell was shot in the head, the bullet might have come from the same gun. We can’t prove the gun-slug connection, because the slug, a hollowpoint, came apart in her head, and there was nothing left but fragments. But a spectroscopic analysis of the metal from the slug in O’Dell’s head and from the traces of a slug in the Arris killing suggests both came from the same batch of lead. We also have the gun—taken out of a car owned by McDonald but not driven by him since September—and the clip was full. But all the shells had his prints on them but the last two. The lead from those two came from a different batch, but the lead from the shells in the lower part of the magazine came from the same batch— probably the same batch—as the slugs that killed Arris and O’Dell.’’

  ‘‘You’d drive a jury nuts with this stuff,’’ said the criminal division guy.

  ‘‘There’s another point here. I think I can demonstrate by the recorded times of some cell phone calls that Wilson McDonald couldn’t have killed O’Dell. And if he couldn’t have killed her, then somebody else who knew where the gun was must have. Audrey McDonald. And like I said, I think we can show how it was done.’’

  ‘‘But you can’t definitively prove that was the gun that killed O’Dell.’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘That’s a problem,’’ Towson said.

  They all sat in silence for a minute; then Kirk said, ‘‘ Pattern.’’

  Everybody nodded. Dunn said, ‘‘Pattern, plenty of motive, we knock down any sympathy she might get with the killing of her mother . . .’’

  ‘‘Which is more than balanced off by the fact that her mother apparently stood by while her father was fucking her,’’ Kirk said. ‘‘The defense puts a weeping woman on the stand who denies doing anything, but points out that if she did—which she didn’t—it certainly would have been justified, a fourteen-year-old girl getting the ol’ pork trombone from her own father. Matter of fact, if I was the defense attorney, I’d make the mother an accomplice. If Audrey’s as smart as this stuff makes her, she wouldn’t need too much of a hint to come up with something pretty lurid.’’