"I don’t know why," Lucas said. He leaned back against his desk. "But why would anybody carry a pistol back to the cabin? Anybody, no matter who it is?"
Sherrill shrugged: "Maybe they got it there, and thought if they put it back, nobody would know."
"Leaving a fired shell in the chamber?"
"That’s a question," she admitted.
Lucas scratched his head and said, "We’ll ask him, if we can’t figure something out… So what’s happening with you?"
She peered at him, almost as if she were nearsighted, which she wasn’t. "I’ve got this thing going around in my head and it won’t go away."
"Uh-oh," Lucas said. "I’ve had that problem…"
"No-no-no. Nothing like that. I’m not depressed. But, you know that old thing about, ‘Women don’t want sex, women want love’?"
"What?" She was talking fast, and he was suddenly aware of how quiet the building was, how dark the hallway had been outside, and how the two of them were alone in a not very big office.
"Yeah, well maybe I’ve heard something like that."
"The fact is, I always liked sex," she said. "A lot. And I haven’t had any for a year and a half before Mike was killed, while we were breaking up, and none since he was killed, and right now I just really don’t need love, but I really would sorta…"
As she spoke, she was moving to his left, and he was on his feet moving to her left, in a narrow circle, Lucas edging toward the door. "Jesus," he said.
"Look, you don’t have to," she said. "Where’re you going? You’re running for it?"
She almost started to smile, a sad, tentative smile, but Lucas only saw part of it. He flipped the latch on the door and hit the light at the same time, and in the next halfsecond his hands were all over her. She gasped and went a few inches up in the air, and then they were dancing around, half struggling, mouths locked together, Sherrill’s blouse coming off, and five seconds after that they were on the floor.
And ten minutes later Sherrill whispered, "was that loud?"
"Pretty loud," Lucas whispered back.
"Jesus, I want to do it again." He could only see her face dimly in the light coming through the door’s glass panel. And he thought: This rug smells weird. But he said, "My place," and he reached out and pressed the warm palm of his right hand over one of her breasts.
"I’ll follow you," she said.
"No: Come with me. We can be there in ten minutes."
"Can’t find my underpants," she said. "What’d you do with my underpants?"
"Don’t know…"
She pulled on her jeans and untangled her bra from around her neck, buttoned her blouse as Lucas pulled himself together, half turned away from each other, a small piece of still-necessary privacy. Neither of them wanted the light-when Lucas was dressed, Sherrill opened the door and Lucas found her cotton underpants hooked over the top of his wastebasket. Lucas stuck them in his pocket: "Let’s go."
"What a fuckin’ terrible idea this was," she said, as they jogged down the hall. "Screwing your boss." She looked at him. "You can’t screw your boss."
"I’m not your boss," Lucas said. "Keep moving."
Lucas concentrated on driving, out of Minneapolis past the dome, onto I-94 across the Mississippi and off at Cretin, south to the stoplight at Marshall. The light was a long one and Sherill was suddenly on top of him again, one hand fumbling at his belt while he tore at her blouse and finally freed her breasts, his mouth on her neck and then…
"Christ, we’re a movie," she said suddenly. He looked up, past her: a couple of St. Thomas students were walking past, and one of them flashed him the V-for-victory sign.
"Gotta go," Lucas said, as the light went green, and Sherrill subsided, but still half turned in the passenger seat, her hand on his chest. He dodged one red light, got down toward the river, then out on the boulevard heading south. Home in ten minutes, into the garage, then through the kitchen, stumbling with each other.
"Where’s the bedroom?"
She was turned around, but with an arm over his shoulder, and he picked her up and carried her back, dumped her on the bed and kicked off his shoes.
"Hurry," she said.
And later, she said, "man, that rug in your office sure smelled weird. What’d you do in there, anyway?"
Lucas sighed and rolled away from her and said, "This was really a bad idea."
"That’s what I said an hour ago."
"Yeah, well…"
"What?"
"So even if it’s a bad idea, I wanna do it some more."
"We should maybe wait a few minutes."
Lucas laughed and said, "It might be more than a few minutes."
"I think I could cut down the turnaround time."
"I’m sure you could," he said. "But you know what? I’m starving. I’ve got some bologna in the fridge, and some beer, and I think there’s some hamburger buns."
"Three of the major food groups," she said. "We’ll live to be a hundred."
"Let’s go."
"Show me the shower first."
He showed her the shower; the turnaround time was eliminated, and the bologna sandwiches temporarily forgotten.
But they got to the sandwiches, eventually, spreading mustard over the discs of mystery meat in the light from the refrigerator, and then sat in the dark to eat them with bottles of Rolling Rock.
"I think we oughta keep this quiet," she said finally.
"Yeah, right. We’re in an office full of investigators. You’re gonna walk in and you’re not gonna look at me and Sloan is gonna come up later and he’s gonna say, ‘You’re fuckin’ her, aren’t you?’ "
"So romantic. Coming over here and getting fucked."
"Hey, you know the talk."
She laughed and said, "Yeah, and it’s not that hard to take from Sloan. He can be a pretty funny guy."
"He thinks you’ve got nice headlights."
"I do."
"What can I say?" he said, talking through the bologna sandwich. "The evidence is on your side."
"I better get going," she said. "My car is downtown…"
"Oh, bullshit," he said. "You’re staying. I’ll give you a T-shirt."
"Lucas…"
"Shut up. You’re staying."
"Okay. Um, was that the last of the bologna?"
She slept on the left side of the bed, a good sign, since Lucas slept on the right. They’d settled down, talking, her hand on his stomach, when the phone rang.
Lucas glanced at the bedside clock. Ten after eleven. "Bet it’s Harriet Ashler."
And it was. "We’ve got a few bits and pieces, and a couple of good prints, but none that I can identify as from McDonald," Ashler said. "None of the good ones are, for sure. In fact, I’m pretty sure that none of the fragments are either."
"Okay."
"Sorry to wake you."
"No problem," Lucas said. And he imagined a wry questioning tone in her voice. It was impossible, he thought as he headed back to bed, that anybody knew yet.
EIGHTEEN
Eleven o’clock at night, and Wilson McDonald was savagely drunk.
Stunned by the board’s impetuous decision and a patronizingly courteous afternoon meeting that Bone had called with the bank’s top managers, he’d stopped at the liquor store on the way home and purchased three-fifths of the finest single-malt scotch, which he proceeded to gargle down as though it were Pepsi-Cola.
After the board decision he’d been, in sequence, angry, despairing, resigned, and finally faintly upbeat. He imagined that he might have a future in the merged bank, until Audrey dismissed the idea with such withering contempt that he lapsed back to despair.
Audrey had spent the afternoon in the backyard, wrapped in a winter parka, staring at the sky. The cold air and the hint of burning leaves-an illegal act in Minnesota, sure to be avenged by a politically correct neighbor-reminded her of the bad old days of her childhood on the farm with Mom and Pop and Helen. Hated the farm. Hated this suburb, rich as it was. She
should have had a place in Palm Beach and Malibu to go with it.
The very top job at Polaris had always been their goal and intent, the one goal that she and Wilson could agree upon, without reservation. There were other jobs that would have been as good-running First Bank, or Norwest, or 3M, or Northwest Airlines or General Mills or Pillsbury or even Cargill-but they’d been Polaris people, and Polaris was Wilson’s one real shot.
Few people outside of the top-management community realized the difference between, say, president and CEO on one hand, and executive vice president on the other. One was an American aristocrat, who held the lives of thousands of people in his hands, while the other was just another suit, a face, a yellow necktie. A CEO had the company plane and a car and driver; an executive vice president had to fight to go business class. And the spouse took status from the CEO: Audrey’d been a half-step from becoming a duchess. Now she was a rich housewife, but a housewife nevertheless.
And the things she’d done to get here: She’d married a brutal, drunken lout, because he seemed to have a chance to go the distance. And though she’d come to love him, at least a little, somewhere down in her heart, she knew exactly what he was… And she’d turned herself into a selfeffacing beetle of a woman, staying out of sight, out of mind, producing the perfect office parties when they were needed, at which she was never noticed, advising the lout on each and every career move… advising against the move to the mortgage company, where he had the title of president, which he’d been so proud of at that time, but now would be fatal…
Earlyin the evening, with Wilson upstairs drinking and raving, the phone had rung, and a woman named Cecely Olene said, "There was a police officer just here asking about Wilson. I told him that I didn’t want to discuss my friends behind their backs and would call you and tell you they’d been asking."
"Well, thank you," Audrey said. "I can’t imagine what they must think…"
"They think he killed Dan Kresge, is what they think," Olene said bluntly. "And they were also asking about a lot of other people who’ve died in the past. George Arris and Andy Ingall. They said they have evidence. Fingerprints."
"That’s absurd," Audrey said. "Wilson can get angry, but he’d never in his life kill anyone. I suspect James Bone is leading them on."
"Well, I don’t know about that," Olene said. "In any case, I called you like I said I would. I hope things work out for you."
And she was gone; and given that last sentence, Audrey thought, probably wouldn’t be calling back. Ever. I hope things work out for you.
Things never just "work out," Audrey thought. They were worked out. Always. When Audrey lived on the farm with Mom and Pop and Helen, she’d had to take any number of harsh decisions. She took another one now, sad in her heart.
She moved around downstairs, cleaning up; watched television for a while. Wilson came down once, dripping, raving. She avoided him, hiding in the basement, running the washing machine. By eleven o’clock, he was far gone, along with two of the bottles. She went to the kitchen, poured two inches of vodka into a water tumbler, drank it down, and went upstairs to confront the Whale.
McDonald was in the oversized tub, his gut sticking up through the water level like the top of an apple pie, while the tip of his penis hung offshore of the pie, like a fishing bobber. He was reading a water-spattered copy of Golf Digest; off to his left, an open bottle of scotch sat on the ledge.
"Well?" Audrey demanded. "Are you gonna drink all night?"
"Maybe," he said. "Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
"You’re such a pig," she said, surveying his whale body. "Little pathetic fucking dick floating around like an acorn. You oughta get a pair of fingernail clippers and snip it off, worthless little wart. What a sap you are…"
McDonald recoiled from this, astonished. They’d had their fights, but she’d never come on like this. He stared at her in stupefaction; then his face went rapidly from pink to red, and he heaved himself up, a sheet of water rolling out of the tub and onto the floor.
"You bitch," he bellowed. "I’m gonna beat your ass…"
He was fast on his feet for a fat man, but she was ready for it. She was several steps out into the bedroom, heading for the stairs, before he was out of the tub. Once he was angry enough, she knew, he’d keep coming, and he was angry enough. She ran down the stairs-the alcohol still a warm glow in her stomach, but not yet reaching toward her head-punched her sister’s number on the speed-dial, listened, prayed she’d answer. In any case, Helen had an answering machine, which would do almost as well… she could hear McDonald thundering down the stairs, two rings, three-and then Helen: "Hello?"
"Helen," she screamed. "Wilson is coming, Wilson-"
"Get the fuck away from there," McDonald shouted. His face was twisted, purple, all the pent-up rage of the day now flowing out toward her. She’d never seen his face like this, not even at the beginning of the worst of the beatings she’d taken from him. But she gave him the finger and he ran toward her and when he was close enough, she swung the phone at his head like a hammer. He deflected it with his forearm, then grabbed it, but she held on, screaming, "Let me go, Wilson, let me go," while he shouted, "Let go of the fuckin’ phone…"
He was trying to twist the phone free, and when she held on, he stepped back and slapped her hard, knocking her down. She went facedown, slamming hard into the floor, closing her eyes just an instant before impact, deliberately letting her head snap forward; felt the crunch of her nose, the taste of blood in her nose and mouth.
"Oh, Christ…" She tried to get up and McDonald kicked her and she went down again, and he was shouting into the phone, "You keep your nose out of this, Helen, this is between Audrey and me, if you stick your nose into this I’ll kick your ass too…"
Audrey launched herself toward the living room, blood streaming from her nose; the blood left long trails across the gray tile floor and onto the rug. McDonald had hung up the phone, and was coming: she got to her feet, spotted the crystal golf trophy, picked it up and threw it at his head. He ducked, and it bounced off a bookshelf, and he turned and tried to catch it as it bounced across the floor; it was unbroken until the last bounce, when it hit the tile of the kitchen and an arm shattered.
McDonald groaned and picked up the biggest chunk of it and began blubbering: "You fuckin’ broke it, you broke my golf man…"
He came after her hard then, with a balled fist. She screamed at him, "Wilson, don’t," but he clubbed her with a balled fist, and she crashed into the music stand on the Steinway; more blood spattered across the music books, and she went down again.
"Get up!" he screamed. "Get the fuck up…"
Instead, she tried crawling under the piano, where she wrapped her arms around the pedal mechanism: and a very small part of her mind assessed the damage she had taken, and was pleased.
"Get out here," McDonald screamed. He’d fallen to his hands and knees, the golf trophy set to one side, and grabbed her ankle and pulled. She hugged the pedal housing, kicking at his face; he dug his fingernails into the skin of her leg, holding on, pulling, and she jerked her leg up sharply and kicked again, connecting with his hands.
"You fuckin’ bitch!" he screamed, and he pivoted and began kicking her legs with his heavy bare feet, the kicks landing on her calves and thighs. She abandoned the pedals, crawled toward the other side, where a row of silk plants lined the edge of a low window. Behind her, she left traces of blood; when she kicked his hands off her legs, he’d peeled two-inch strips of skin away and her legs were bleeding profusely; and she was still bleeding from her nose, blowing bubbles of blood out on the beige carpet.
"Oh no you don’t," McDonald said, as she crawled toward the plants. He stood up and lurched to the far side of the piano, kicked one of the fake plants out of the way, and stooped over to meet her.
But she’d already reversed herself and squirted out the other side of the piano; she spotted the broken golf trophy on the floor, picked it up, and turned to
face him.
"This what you want to do, Wilson?" she shrieked. She hit herself in the face with the trophy, and the edge of it cut her cheek from the corner of her left eye almost to her jawline. McDonald had been trying to get across the jumble of plants; now he stumbled, stopped.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I’m beating myself up, so you won’t have to do it," she screamed. "Here, I’ll do it again," and she hit herself again, slashing back at her skull with the broken edge. This drew real blood, and McDonald gawked at her.
"Now," she said, more quietly, "you take your turn…" And she pitched the trophy at him, hitting him square in the chest.
McDonald, reflexes working, trapped the trophy against his chest, still gawking at the bloody hulk of the woman ten feet away. Audrey turned and ran toward the back bedroom, and McDonald, carrying the trophy in one hand, drunk but struggling now for self-control, said, "Jesus Christ, Audrey, I knew you were fuckin’ nuts, but what the hell is this?"
Audrey pushed back out of the bedroom, carrying Granddad’s favorite twelve-gauge. She looked like a nightmare from a horror film, blood matting her hair, running down her cheek into her blouse, bubbling from her nose over her lips and chin down her neckline, and running from her legs down to her feet; she’d left a row of bloody footprints into and out of the bedroom.
"You loser," she said, through the dripping blood. A sad look came over McDonald’s bully face as he looked into the muzzle of the gun: "I was afraid you’d killed all those people; but I didn’t want to know," he said.
"Well, now you do," she said.
"You don’t have to kill me."
"Wilson, that goddamned Davenport is snuffling around after you, and he’s going to get you. He already knows about some of the other killings, and once he has those figured out-you’d cave in like a house of cards. My problem is, you might still be able to prove you were out of town for a couple of the killings. And I’ll tell you what, Wilson, after all the shit I put up with married to a goddamn loser…" The booze was beginning to have an effect, and she blinked once, twice, almost lost her line of thought. "After all that shit, I couldn’t stand going to jail for it."
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