Secret Prey ld-9

by John Sandford

  "That’s up to you," the older cop said.

  "That’s my number at the bottom, in case you need to interrogate me. It’s unlisted," she said. She looked at him with her blue eyes and nibbled on her lower lip.

  "Well, thanks," he said. He tucked the slip of paper in his shirt pocket.

  "Do I sound like a heartless bitch?" she asked him cheerfully. And as she asked, she took his arm and they walked slowly toward the door together.

  "Maybe a little," he said. He really did like her and he could feel the back of his bicep pressing into her breast. Her breast was very warm. He even imagined he could feel a nipple.

  "I really didn’t like him," she said. "You can put that in your report."

  "I will," he said.

  "Good," she said, as she ushered him out the door. "Then maybe I’ll get to see you again… You could show me your gun."

  The cops found themselves in the hallway, the door closing behind them. At the elevator door, the younger one said, "Well?"

  "Well, what?"

  "You gonna call her?"

  The older one thought a minute, then said, "I don’t think I could afford it."

  "Shit, you don’t have to buy anything," the young one said. "She’s rich."

  "I dunno," the older one said.

  "Take my advice: If you call her, you don’t want to jump her right away. Get to know her a little."

  "That’s very sensitive of you," the older one said.

  "No, no, I just think… She wants to see your gun?"

  "Yeah?"

  "So you wanna put off the time when she finds out you’re packing a.22."

  "Jealousy’s an ugly thing," the older cop said complacently. As they walked out on the street to the car, he looked up at the apartment building and said, "Maybe."

  And even if not, he thought, the woman had made his day.

  Audrey McDonald, coming in from the garage, found her husband’s orange coveralls on the kitchen floor, and just beyond them, his wool shooting jacket and then boots and trousers in a pile and halfway up the stairs, the long blue polypro underwear.

  "Oh, shit," she said to herself. She dropped her purse on a hallway chair and hurried up the stairs, found a pair of jockey shorts in the hallway and heard him splashing in the oversized tub.

  When Wilson McDonald got tense, excited, or frightened, he drank; and when he drank, he got hot and started to sweat. He’d pull his clothing off and head for water. He’d been drunk, naked, in the lake down the hill. He’d been drunk, naked, in the pool in the backyard, frightening the neighbor’s daughter half to death. He’d been in the tub more times than she could remember, drunk, wallowing like a great white whale. He wasn’t screaming yet, but he would be. The killing of Dan Kresge, all the talk at the club, had pushed him over the edge.

  At the bathroom door, she stopped, braced herself, and then pushed it open. Wilson was on his hands and knees. As she opened the door, he dropped onto his stomach, and a wave of water washed over the edge, onto the floor, and around a nearly empty bottle of scotch.

  "Wilson!" she shouted. "Goddamnit, Wilson."

  He floundered, rolled, sat up. He was too fat, with fine curly hair on his chest and stomach, going gray. His tits, she thought, were bigger than hers. "Shut up," he bellowed back.

  She took three quick steps into the room and picked up the bottle and started away.

  "Wait a minute, goddamnit…" He was on his feet and out of the tub faster than she’d anticipated, and he caught her in the hallway. "Give me the fucking bottle."

  "You’re dripping all over the carpet."

  "Give me the fucking bottle…" he shouted.

  "No. You’ll-"

  He was swinging the moment the "no" came out of her mouth, and caught her on the side of the head with an open hand. She went down like a popped balloon, her head cracking against the molding on a closet door.

  "Fuckin’ bottle," he said. She’d hung on to it when she went down, but he wrenched it free, and held it to his chest.

  She was stunned, but pushed herself up. "You fuck," she shouted.

  "You don’t…" He kicked at her, sent her sprawling. "Throw you down the fuckin’ stairs," he screamed. "Get out of here."

  He went back into the bathroom, and she heard the lock click.

  "Wilson…"

  "Go away." And she heard the splash as he hit the water in the tub.

  Downstairs, she got an ice compress from the freezer and put it against her head: she’d have a bruise. Goddamn him. They had to talk about Kresge: this was their big move, their main chance. This was what they’d worked for. And he was drunk.

  The thought of the bottle sent her to the cupboard under the sink, to a built-in lazy Susan. She turned it halfway around, got the vodka bottle, poured four inches of vodka over two ice cubes, and drank it down.

  Poured another two ounces to sip.

  Audrey McDonald wasn’t a big woman, and alcohol hit quickly. The two martinis she’d had at lunch, plus the pitcher of Bloody Marys at the club, had laid a base for the vodka. Her rage at Wilson began to shift. Not to disappear, but to shift in the maze of calculations that were spinning through her head.

  Bone and O’Dell would try to steal this from them.

  She sipped vodka, pressed the ice compress against her head, thought about Bone and O’Dell. Bone was Harvard and Chicago; O’Dell was Smith and Wharton. O’Dell had a degree in history and finance; Bone had two degrees in economics.

  Wilson had a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in business administration and a law degree from the same place. Okay, but not in the same class with O’Dell or Bone. On the other hand, his grandfather had been one of the founders of Polaris. And Wilson knew everyone in town and was a member of the Woodland Golf and Cricket Club. The vice chairman of Polaris, a jumped-up German sausage-maker who never in a million years could have gotten into the club on his own, was now at Woodland, courtesy of Wilson McDonald. So Wilson wasn’t weaponless…

  She heard him thumping down the stairs a minute later. He stalked into the kitchen, still nude, jiggling, dripping wet. "What ya drinking?" he asked.

  "Soda water," she said.

  "Soda water my ass," he snarled. Then his eyes, which had been wandering, focused on the cold compress she held to her head. "What the fuck were you taking my scotch for?"

  "Because we’ve got things to think about," she said. "We don’t have time for you to get drunk. We have to figure out what to do with Kresge dead."

  "I already got his job," he said, with unconcealed satisfaction.

  "What?" She was astonished. Was he that drunk?

  "O’Dell and Bone agreed I could have it," he said.

  "You mean… you’re the CEO?"

  "Well… the board has to meet," he said, his voice slurring. "But I’ve already been dealing with the PR people, putting out press releases…"

  She rolled her eyes. "You mean they let you fill in until the board meets."

  "Well, I think that positions me…"

  "Oh, for Christ’s sake, Wilson, grow up," she said. "And go put some pants on. You look like a pig."

  "You shut the fuck-"

  He came at her again and she pitched the vodka at his eyes. As he flinched, she turned and ran back into the living room, looked around, spotted a crystal paperweight on the piano, picked it up. Wilson had gotten the paperweight at a Senior Tour pro-am. When he came through the doorway after her, she lifted it and said, "You try to hit me again and I swear to God I’ll brain you with this thing."

  He stopped. He looked at her, and at the paperweight, then stepped closer; she backed up a step and said, " Wilson."

  "All right," he said. "I don’t want to fight. And we gotta talk."

  He looked in the corner, at the liquor cabinet, started that way.

  "You can’t have any more…"

  She started past him and he moved, quickly, grabbed her hand with the paperweight, bent it, and she screamed, "Don’t. Wilson, don’t."

  "Dr
op it, drop it…" He was a grade school bully, twisting the arm of a little kid. She dropped the weight, and it hit the carpet with a thump.

  "Gonna fuckin’ hit me with my paperweight," he said, jerking her upright. "Gonna fuckin’ hit me."

  He slapped her again, hard, and she felt something break open inside her mouth. He slapped her again, and she twisted, screaming now. Slapped her a third time and she fell, and he let her go, and when she tried to crawl away, kicked her in the hip and she went down on her face.

  "Bitch. Hit me with, hit me, fuckin’ bitch…" He went to the liquor cabinet, opened it, found another bottle. She dragged herself under the Steinway, and he stopped as though he was going to go in after her, but he stumbled, bumped his head on the side of the piano, caught himself, said, "I’m the goddamned CEO," and headed back up the stairs to the tub, his fat butt bobbling behind him.

  Audrey sat under the piano for a while, weeping by herself, and finally crawled out to a telephone, picked it up, and punched a speed-dialer.

  "Hello?" Her sister, Helen, cheerful, inquiring.

  "Helen? Could you come get me?"

  Helen recognized the tone. "Oh, Jesus, what happened?"

  "Wilson’s drunk. He beat me up again. I think I better get out of the house."

  "Oh, my God, Aud, I’ll be right there… hang on, hang on…"

  FOUR

  Lucas arrived at the office late Monday morning, neatly dressed, neatly shaved, dead tired. The simpler things in life could be done on automatic pilot: take the clothes to the cleaners, shower, shave, and eat. Anything more complicated was difficult. Exercise took energy, and a heavy workout was impossible after a month without sleep.

  He’d been the route before. The last time over the edge, he hadn’t recognized what was happening, hadn’t seen it coming, and it’d almost killed him. This time the process felt slightly different. He could feel it out there-the depression, the breakdown, the unipolar disorder, whatever the new correct name for it was-but it didn’t seem to be marching on him with the same implacable darkness as last time.

  Maybe he could fight it off, he thought. But he still dreaded the bed. The minute his head touched the pillow, the brainstorm would begin. Sleep would come only with exhaustion, and then not until after daylight…

  In the winter just past, Weather Karkinnen, the woman he’d been about to marry, had been taken hostage by a killer looking for revenge against Lucas. Weather had managed her attacker: she’d talked him into surrender. She’d given him guarantees. But nobody on the outside knew.

  When Lucas closed his eyes at night, he could see the two of them walking down the narrow hospital corridor toward him, Weather in front, Dick LaChaise using her as a shield, with a pistol to her head. He could also feel the pressure at his back, where a hidden police sniper, a kid from Iowa, was looking at LaChaise through a rifle scope.

  Lucas’s job was to talk the gun away from Weather’s head, if only for half a second. If he could just get LaChaise to move the muzzle… And he did. The Iowa kid was cold as ice: Dick LaChaise’s head had been pulped by the mushrooming.243 slug.

  Weather, whose face was only inches away from La-Chaise, had been showered with bone, brain, and blood. She had recovered, in most ways. She could work; she could even forget about it, most of the time. Unless she saw Lucas. They tried to pull the relationship back together, but three months after Dick LaChaise died in a hospital hallway, she was gone.

  Gone for good, he believed.

  And Lucas was staring into the darkness again.

  "Hey, Lucas?"

  Lucy Ghent, a secretary, was calling down the hall from the chief’s office door. She was one of the older women in the office, who competed with her peers on hairdos. "Chief Roux is down in Identification. She wants to see you right away."

  "Trouble?"

  Ghent flopped a hand, dismissively. "Just… weirdness."

  Rose Marie Roux was sitting at a cluttered desk in Identification, chewing Nicorette, paging through a document Lucas recognized as the departmental budget. She looked up when Lucas came in and said, "I swear to God, if you killed the smartest guy on the city council, the average IQ in Minneapolis would go up two points. Don’t quote me."

  "What happened?"

  "The York case."

  "Yeah?"

  Morris York, two years on the force, found with a halfounce of Mexican bud in a Marlboro box behind his patrol car visor. His marijuana habit had been detected by a departmental mechanic who claimed he was getting a contact high off the car’s upholstery. Internal Affairs made movies of York getting mellow on the job.

  "Tommy Gedja says this morning, at the council meeting, if that’s all we’re doing in our cars, why do we need new cars? I think he was serious. I think they’re gonna try to pull twelve cars out from under us."

  Lucas shrugged: "Life sucks and then they cut your budget. What’re you doing down here?"

  "More budget problems." A piece of white paper, wrapped in a plastic folder, lay on the desk’s otherwise empty typewriter tray. She picked it up and handed it to him. "Came in the mail, first thing this morning."

  Dear Chief of Police Roux:

  One week ago, Mr. Kresge sent a memo to Susan O’Dell which said that her department would not be allowed to continue with a planned expansion because of budget constraints. Mrs. O’Dell has worked on the expansion for a long time and when she got the memo, her quote was, "God Damn him, I’m going to kill him." There were three people in the room at the time: Sharon Allen (assistant to the vice president), Michelle Stephens (executive secretary), and Randall Moss (assistant head cashier). I can’t tell you my name, but I thought you should know.

  "Not much here," Lucas said. He snapped the paper with his index finger. "We could interview Stephens to see how serious she thinks it is. Or if she’s just trying to torpedo O’Dell."

  "Stephens?" Roux had the gene that allowed her to lift one eyebrow at a time, and her left brow went up.

  Lucas nodded. "She’s probably the one who sent it- sounds like somebody who actually heard O’Dell say it, but she misuses the word ‘quote,’ which means not a lot of education. On the other hand, everything is spelled right, and secretaries spell things right. She’s very aware of titles and refers to Kresge as ‘mister,’ which means she saw him as somebody with a lot more status than she has: not an associate. She wouldn’t put herself first on the list, because that would make her nervous. And an assistant head cashier probably has a college education."

  "So how’s she dressed, Sherlock?"

  Lucas smiled, but a droopy, tired smile: "Navy jacket and skirt or tan jacket and skirt with an older but neatly ironed white shirt and some kind of tie. Practical heels. Single mother. Tense. Anxious. Angry with O’Dell for personal reasons. Hurting for money."

  Roux said, "Smart-ass." She turned and shouted into a closet-sized office: "Beverly! Bring the other thing out so Sherlock Holmes can take a look."

  The department’s document specialist, a dark-haired woman with a faint Moravian accent, bustled out of the closet with another slip of paper wrapped in plastic.

  "Also in the mail," Roux said. "Beverly’s checking for fingerprints."

  "There are none," the woman said. "Not on the letter or the envelope. Standard twenty-pound copier paper, no watermark. Printed with a laser printer." Lucas took the paper.

  Chief Roux:

  Daniel S. Kresge was shot by Wilson McDonald, who was hunting with Kresge when the shooting occurred. I have known Wilson McDonald for many years and I believe that he has killed two other people to further his career. These people were:

  A man named George Arris, who was killed about 1984, in a shooting outside a restaurant in St. Paul.

  Andrew Ingall, who was killed in a boating accident in 1993 on Lake Superior. (He was from North Oaks and his wife still lives there.)

  I hope you catch him on this one. He can’t go on like this.

  A Concerned Citizen.

  Lucas looked at Roux, an
d she caught the small light in his eye. "Interesting?"

  "More than the first one," Lucas admitted. "No waffling about the presentation. He gets right to it: Daniel S. Kresge was shot by Wilson McDonald."

  "You think a man wrote it?"

  Lucas hesitated for a minute, then said, "Maybe not. Could be a woman."

  "When I read it, I assumed it was a woman. I don’t know why," Roux said.

  "Something about the wording," said Beverly. "I think it’s a woman too."

  "Would you look into it?" Roux asked Lucas. "Sort of… carefully? Lot of rich people involved."

  Lucas said, "Sloan and Sherrill are on it."

  "Sloan is working on the Ericson killing. That’s getting complicated. Sherrill’s doing the routine for the sheriff up there. I’d just like you to look at this letter. It sounds so… sure of itself." "You want me to look into it because you think it’s necessary?" Lucas asked. "Or because you’re worried that I’m going crazy?"

  Roux nodded: "Both. It’d be nice if we could catch whoever killed Kresge."

  "Are you getting pressure?"

  "No, not really. Kresge was divorced, no family around here, not all that well liked. But I mean, hey, it’s what we’re supposed to do, right?"

  "The paper this morning said that McDonald would be speaking for Polaris, at least until the board of directors meets," Lucas said. "The infighting could get pretty intense; something could fall out. In fact…" He tapped the first letter with the second. "Something already has."

  "So catch up with Sherrill, tell her you’ll take this angle. Get away from your desk."

  Lucas nodded: "Okay; I’ll look at it. And listen, I’m gonna send Del Capslock around with a problem."

  "That goddamn Capslockisa problem," Roux grunted.

  "Good cop," Lucas said.

  "Yeah, but I can’t stand to look at him: I keep wanting to give him a buck, or send him out to get his teeth fixed… What’s the problem?"