John Sandford - Prey 10 - Certain Prey

by Certain Prey

  'Well, he's not,' Marker said. 'He died of colon cancer last year.'

  'I'm sorry,' Mallard said.

  'They said it was all the chemicals from the dry-cleaning,' Marker said. 'I'll probably go that way myself. A lot of us do.'

  There was more, but nothing significant. They released Marker, and Mallard drove Lucas to the Hay-Adams, retrieved his bag from the luggage room, and took him to the airport.

  'So you think she's gone,' Mallard said.

  'Yeah. And I think I'm the guy who tipped her off by calling into Tennex.'

  'Nothing to do about that,' Mallard said. 'You were just running checks on a list of phone numbers. It was a long shot.'

  'Yeah, but Jesus. That close.'

  'We've still got a lot to work with - all those checks, all the phone calls. We've got something, now. I'll bet we have some kind of description of her in a week. I'll bet we unravel some kind of connection.'

  'How much?'

  'What?'

  'How much will you bet?'

  Mallard sucked on his teeth for a moment, then said, 'About a dime, I guess.'

  Lucas nodded. 'Get me to the plane on time.'

  The plane, as it happened, was going to Minneapolis - with a stop in Detroit.

  'Aw, no, I gotta fly direct,' Lucas told the check-in attendant.

  'Nothing tonight, except through Detroit,' the clerk said, punching up her computer. 'We could get you on a flight tomorrow morning that goes straight through...'

  'Aw, man...'

  He went through Detroit, miserably suffering through two take-offs and landings. He was surprised at the safe landing in Detroit, but quickly convinced himself that it would be the second half of the flight,

  the unnecessary half, that would kill him, so achingly close to home...

  As miserable as he was, two things occurred to him:

  Wichita, Kansas, was a large enough city that it might attract the eye of somebody who traveled out-of-town to make her calls; but Marker had said the killer was angry when she called from Wichita. Was it possible that she lived close to Wichita, and made spur-of-the-moment calls out of anger when something went wrong with the answering service? He got the airline flight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of him, and looked at the flight map again. Wichita, he thought, would be as viable a home town as Springfield. Something to think about...

  The second thing came to him as they were landing in Minneapolis: he was looking down at one of the lakes where he'd expected the impact to occur - he could see himself struggling to get out of the flooding cabin, but his legs and arms were broken and he couldn't unfasten the seatbelt - and the name Des Moines popped into his head.

  If the killer came from either Springfield or Wichita or virtually anyplace around those cities, and if she were driving to Minneapolis, she'd go through Des Moines.

  If she had done that, he thought, she'd be here now.

  He looked down at the broad multi-colored grid of lights that made up the Cities and thought, 'Somewhere?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Carmel didn't understand the silence: days had passed since she'd left the message for Pamela -if Pamela was her name, which Carmel doubted. Still, she should have gotten back.

  Had something happened to her? Had Carmel's name come up through Pamela - had Pamela been caught? Was she in one of those stainless-steel federal pens somewhere, sweating through the sensory-deprivation stage of a multi-level interrogation? Was the phone connection corrupt, or discontinued, or worse, tapped? What was going on?

  She'd worked through her defense two hundred times, and all two hundred times, she'd walked. The cops didn't have a case, couldn't have a case. There was nothing to build a case on - unless that little girl had identified her.

  Her contact with the cops said that nothing had come of the photo spread, but Davenport was running this routine, and he was worse than tricky, he was bad. If he was sure that she was involved, he might be sticking together a morality play, to frame her. With nothing more than a sliver of evidence, a woman could go to prison for life, if a jury didn't approve of her life-style.

  She shouldn't have fucked Hale, that was the truth of the matter. Just shouldn't have. Should have waited. Even if there were no proof, if a jury found out she'd fucked Hale the night before his dead wife's funeral, she was history. And where in the hell was Pamela?

  She was in her apartment, trying to work, when the phone rang. She glanced at her watch: probably Hale, but she said, 'Be Pamela.'

  And Rinker said, 'You got time for a drink?'

  Casually: 'Sure, where are you? I'd hoped you'd call.'

  'Remember that place we went, the bar where we saw the guy with the cowboy scarf? Let's go there.'

  'Oh, sure. An hour from now?'

  'Be careful, though; it's dark around there. You'll get eaten by a stalker.'

  'I'll bring my switchblade,' Carmel said, laughing. 'See you in an hour.'

  Stalker? Pamela thought Carmel was being followed? Is that what that meant? And the place where they saw the guy with the red silk cowboy scarf wasn't a bar, but the lobby of her hotel. Was that where she wanted to meet?

  Before she left her apartment, Carmel changed into a loose long-sleeved silk blouse, jet black, with black slacks and a small gold necklace. Ten minutes after she hung up the phone, she was on the street in the Volvo. She took a twisting route out of the downtown area, eased along a one-way lane on the

  edge of the Kenwood area, past homes of the rich and the strange, and checked her back trail: nothing.

  But if what she'd read about complicated tags was right, the cops might have three or four cars following her, changing off, some in front, some behind. She pulled over to the side of the lane, waited two minutes: nothing went by. What if the car were wired, and they were following her from a distance?

  No way she could tell that.

  Besides, she was beginning to feel that she might be a little delusional. She'd read hundreds of criminal files in her lifetime, and the heavy surveillance never started until the case was made. Before that, they were simply too expensive. The cops might go for a phone tap, or loose surveillance, but there wouldn't be a multi-car track across town.

  She looked at her watch. She still had a half hour before she was supposed to meet Pamela. She headed south, on and off 1-35, round and round quiet city blocks, looking for anything that might be a follower. At the south end of the loop, a heavy jet roared five hundred feet overhead, and she turned, heading north, moving fast now. She took the car straight into the hotel parking garage, got a ticket, left it, and took the stairs down to the lobby.

  Rinker was sitting in a corner. She saw Carmel step out of the stairway, smiled, stood up and walked back to the elevators. She was just getting in the elevator car when Carmel caught up with her.

  'Did you understand what I saw saying on the

  phone?' Rinker asked, as the elevator car started up. 'I think so. I'm not being followed, unless they've done something electronic, and I'd be willing to bet they haven't - if they really think I'm involved, it's way too early in the investigation to have twenty-four-hour surveillance. But right now, there's nobody with me.'

  'I sort of bet myself you'd be coming out of that stairwell,' Rinker said. 'It's what I would have done. Zip into the garage, take the stairs, they can't stick too close behind or you'll spot them... and by the time they sneak in, you're in one of five hundred rooms.'

  'They'll go through five hundred rooms if they have to, if it gives them a professional killer,' Carmel said.

  'Which is why I'm trying not to touch anything hard, except the TV remote control, the on-and-off faucets in the bathroom, and a few things like that. I'll wipe them before I leave.'

  'What about the credit card?'

  'Good card, fake name,' Rinker said.

  'So what's going on? I was worried when you didn't call back, I thought they'd picked you up.'

  'You tell me what's going on. Why'd you call?' Rinker asked.
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  'This Davenport guy, the cop. Remember?'

  Rinker nodded.

  'He took some pictures over to show the little girl who saw us. I was in the photo spread.'

  'Ah, jeez. Why?

  'I don't know. I've got a contact in the police department, and nobody knows what's going on. But apparently, the kid failed to identify me. Nothing came out of it.'

  'But why would they take your picture over in the first place?' -'That's the question,' Carmel said.

  Rinker had a room on the seventh floor. Inside, Rinker opened the mini-bar, took out two cans of Special Export. 'I got glasses,' she said.

  'Can's fine,' Carmel said, popping the top. 'I really didn't expect you to come all the way back from... wherever. I just wanted to talk.'

  'Yeah, well, I got a little problem of my own,' Rinker said. She sat on the bed and Carmel pulled the chair out from the tiny desk and sat down. 'The day before you called me, I got another call, at the answering service. A guy who was supposedly trying to get in touch with Tennex. But when the receptionist asked if he wanted to leave a message, he said no. Then two days later, the cops showed up. That's all I know -cops were asking questions. I don't have any easy way to find out more.'

  'Huh.' Carmel thought about it for a minute, then took a cell phone out of her purse, and her address book. She checked a number, as Rinker watched, and punched it in. 'Calling my guy,' Carmel said to Rinker. Then, into the phone: 'This is Carmel. Anything else

  happen?' She listened for a moment, then said, 'I stopped by to see Davenport a couple of times. He's never in... Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, I'll probably stop and see him tomorrow, then. Okay. And listen, I'll send along another envelope. Keep your eyes and ears open; this thing is starting to scare me. I'm afraid they're setting me up on something. Uh-huh. Well, you know Davenport. Uh-huh. Talk to you tomorrow.'

  'What'd he say?' Rinker asked.

  'He said Davenport was out of town, and the rumor was, he was at the FBI headquarters. In Washington.'

  'Shit.' Rinker said it sharply, expelling breath. 'What's going on? They're on to you and me? How could that happen?'

  'I called you once from my apartment,' Carmel said. 'This last time, I called from a pay phone, but I did call Tennex that one time, the first time, about Rolo, from my apartment. If they're looking at my long-distance billing, if they're checking everything...'

  'Even if they were, how did they pick out Tennex? It's a goddamn messenger service.'

  'Maybe they picked on it because they couldn't find anything behind it. Maybe just luck. What does Tennex mean? Would that mean something to somebody?'

  'No. When we were setting this up, we were talking in the kitchen of this guy's restaurant down in St. Louis, and we were wondering what to call the

  company, and I saw this name on this air-filter thing he had there. Tennex. It sounded like something, so I said, "How about Tennex?" '

  'So that's not it.'

  'I don't see how,' Rinker said.

  'All right. So we've got to do some prospecting.'

  'Very carefully.'

  'Very. And there's something else,' Carmel said. 'If it looks like I'm in trouble, why wouldn't you just shoot me and walk away? I mean, that's something we ought to talk about.'

  'Well, I sorta think of you like... well, almost a friend,' Rinker said. 'I mean, we've done some stuff together, and we get along, and we're probably going to Mexico together, pick up some guys. So... I could ask you the same thing.'

  'I don't know how to find you,' Carmel said. 'So I couldn't, even if I wanted to. Which I don't.'

  'If you need some other reason, I can give you one,' Rinker said, swallowing beer. 'I gotta find out why I'm in trouble. These guys I work with - if the feds start snooping around, or your pal Davenport, all they've got to do is dump me, and they're safe. They have a couple more people like me out there, and I'd walk out the front of my apartment someday and boom, that'd be it. So I gotta find out. If the feds start bugging my guys, I gotta know, and take some precautions.'

  'These guys are... Mafia?'

  Rinker shrugged. She looked like a slightly over-

  aged cheerleader, bouncing softly on the hotel bed. 'Yeah, I guess. If you're gonna put a label on them. I mean, they're Italian, most of them. Except Freddy, he's Irish, or his grandfather was. And I guess Dave is like a Polack, they're always giving him shit about it. They're sorta the Mafia, but they're more like a bunch of guys who watch NFL Monday Night Football and pick up stuff that falls off trucks. Some of them are pretty mean, though. Like Italian bikers.'

  'Huh.' Carmel showed a small grin. 'I thought it'd be more dignified than that.'

  'Maybe back East. Not in St. Louis,' Rinker said.

  'So are you gonna be around?'

  'In and out of town, until we figure out what's going on,' Rinker said. 'I'm going to Washington tomorrow. I want to talk to this woman who runs the answering service.'

  'What if they're watching her?'

  'Then I won't talk to her,' Rinker said.

  'I'm gonna try to get in touch with Davenport tomorrow, if he's back. I'll see what he has to say for himself.'

  'Be careful.'

  'Always.'

  Rinker gave Carmel the name she was using at the hotel, and as Carmel was leaving, said, 'Hey - this Davenport. Do you know where I could get a picture of him?'

  Carmel shook her head. 'No. I mean he's probably been in the paper any number of times, but I don't

  ... wait a minute. I bet I do know. He also ran a company called Davenport Simulations, computer simulation-things for cops. If you check the library, the business section, the local business magazines, I bet you'd find something.'

  'Cut the page out with a razor...'

  'Don't get caught,' Carmel said. 'The library people can be mean pricks when it comes to people cutting up their magazines.'

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lucas was sitting in his office, pushing deeper into the Equality Report. Reading the perfect, politically correct prose had become a Zen-like exercise. The words flowed softly and without meaning through his brain, an unending stream of nonsense syllables that eventually metamorphosed into a cosmic hum, and allowed other ideas to bubble up.

  He was on page ninety-four when Carmel knocked. He thought it was Sloan: 'Yeah, for Christ's sakes, come in.'

  Carmel opened the door and stuck her head in. Surprised, Lucas stood up. 'Sorry about that,' he said. 'I thought it was somebody else.'

  'A little mistake like that is nothing compared to what you're gonna get into,' Carmel said, stepping into the office, pushing the door closed. She put one fist on her hip and said, 'A little birdie told me you stuck my face into a photo spread on that Dinkytown murder. The Blanca chick and the other guy. I want to know why'

  'We were looking for photographs of long-legged blondes, and you were available,' Lucas said, his voice flat.

  'Bullshit,1 she said. Her mouth was like a short stretch of barbed-wire. She dropped into the visitor's chair opposite him, and stretched her legs out, but didn't really settle in: she was like a spring, all squeezed down and about to explode. 'So why? You are fucking with me, and if I don't get a good reason, I'll see you in court and let the judge ask you why.'

  Lucas nodded: 'It'd be an interesting lawsuit. I don't know what you could possibly sue us for...'

  'Some of the best civil lawyers in the U.S. fuckin' A. sit down the hall from me, and I don't doubt that they could find ten reasons that a judge would like,' she said, her voice glassy-edged. 'For one thing, I represented Rolando D'Aquila and several of his associates in the past, and now you're hauling my picture around and showing it to people around this crime. Are you trying to discredit me as an attorney? It might seem so...'

  'All right, you're smarter than I am, Carmel,' Lucas said. 'You want the real reason? The reason is that a witness who probably saw the killers described one of the women in a way that you resemble. And you admitted to several people that you knew and represented Rol
ando D'Aquila, and not only that, that you were representing a man suspected of hiring somebody to kill his wife - a murder committed by the same person or persons who committed the D'Aquila killing. So far, you are the only connection we can find between the killing of Barbara Allen and the killing of the other three. And that's why we took the

  photos around; and if you don't like it...' 'What?' 'Tough shit.'

  They sat staring at each other for a few seconds, then Carmel smiled quickly and said, 'All right. I wanted to know.' She stood up to leave. 'I didn't have anything to do with any of these killings. I've been trying to work out in my head how they could have happened, and I can't come up with anything.'