Phantom prey

20

LUCAS ARRIVED at Willett’s house at nine- fifteen, a little later than he’d intended. The crime- scene crew had already gone in with the search warrant and was doing a preliminary walk- through with a dope- sniffing German shepherd. Lucas waited until they finished with the office nook off the kitchen, then got all the paper he could find, and began looking for Frances’s fifty thousand dollars.

He didn’t find it-no receipts for large purchases, no bank deposits, no new warranties. On the other hand, if the fifty thousand had gone for dope, there wouldn’t be any of that-but there should either be a surge of money from somewhere, or there should be some dope. Willett hadn’t been carrying anything in the truck, money or dope, and now the mutt couldn’t find anything at the house.

When the dope- sniffing dog was gone, the search began in earnest: it would go on for most of the day, but ten minutes after it started, one of the crime- scene guys whistled: “Got a knife.”

Lucas got up to look. The crime- scene guy had taken all the clothes out of the bottom drawer of the unpainted bureau in Willett’s bedroom. There, in the back, a butcher knife’s handle protruded from a rectangle of cardboard-the knife blade had been slipped into the edge of the cardboard, and pushed deep, with the cardboard acting as a scabbard.

As Lucas watched, they took photos of the room with the bureau drawer open; then a medium shot that included only the bureau, with the knife visible in the bottom of the open drawer; and then a close- up of the knife in place, with a scale next to it. Then they repeated the sequence with a second camera, as a backup.

When they were done, the tech lifted the knife out of the drawer with gloved hands, holding it by the edge of the cardboard, put it three inches under his nose, and said, “Huh. I think we’ve got some blood.”

“Let me see."

"Don’t touch,” the tech said, as he held the blade three inches below Lucas’s nose. “Look right where the blade goes into the handle. See that brown crust?”

There wasn’t much, but it was there. “Can’t believe it’s a pork chop,” Lucas said.

“We’ll find out,” the tech said. Lucas snagged the supervisor: “I want to get the knife back to the lab right away. I want to know whether it’s human, and the blood type, if you’ve got a big enough sample to do that without fucking up the DNA.”

The supervisor squinted at the knife, turned it over, made a supervisory decision and eased the blade out of the cardboard by a half- inch, said, “Got a little more on the back… should be enough.”

“How long on the DNA?”Lucas asked. “If we pound it… thirty- six hours."

"Pound it. We don’t care about budget or overtime. Pound it.”

NOT MUCH to do until the preliminary results came back, which would be early afternoon. On the way back to St. Paul, thinking about Willett and the knife, he found the car drifting off I- 94 and up the Snelling Avenue exit. He rolled past Heather Toms’s apartment and around the block: he’d never watched her at midday. When he pulled up to the drugstore, he saw Del’s car, and then Del, coming down the street with a sack from a bagel place and a cup of coffee.

“Thought you were tied up this morning,” Del said, when they met at the door into the apartment level.

“So’d I,” Lucas said. He told the story about the knife, and Del said, “That’s the stupidest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard. He’s running because he thinks he might get hit by the cops, but he leaves behind a knife he’s used to kill four people, with blood on the blade? What the fuck was he smokin’?”

“Well, he might have been smokin’ something,” Lucas said. “He’s been into dope, and he might’ve had that fifty grand to play with.”

THE TOMS apartment was empty. Heather had gone someplace and taken the baby. Lucas told Del about the phone call from Chattanooga, and he said, “Wonder if she’s running?”

“She’d be leaving a lot behind."

"That’s how Siggy punked us the last time,” Del said. “Parked his car at Target, walked away from it, never looked back."

"You think Heather would leave the kid’s jammies?” He passed the glasses to Del, who took them, did a tour of Heather’s apartment as he chewed on one of the bagels, then said, “Probably not.”

“She would have taken the jammies,” Lucas said. “Unless she’s a totally heartless bitch.”

“Could be that,” Del said. “That guy she was screwing-that was Hilaire Jukos, another Lithuanian, Siggy’s left- hand man. I looked him up."

"What’s this with Heather and Lithuanians?”Lucas asked. “Well, they got a reputation, you know-Lithuanians tend to be very well hung, the best in Europe. That could turn the head of a former Edina High School cheerleader.”

“I thought the Italians…” Del was shaking his head. “That’s getting it up-Italians lead the league in getting it up. Lithuanians are purely size."

"Sounds like you’ve done your research.” Del shrugged: “I’m a professional detective.” At that moment, a man came out of the apartment building, looked both ways down the sidewalk, zipped up his jacket, and walked away from them, wobbling a bit. Lucas put the glasses on him, the way he walked-was that the cowboy from the mall? No. This guy was shorter, with long hair, and seemed to be younger, but still had that wobbling, pointy- toed walk.

Lucas took the glasses down. “Sonofabitch."

"What?"

"I just had an epiphany,” Lucas said. “You can get some ointment for that."

"No-I’m serious,” Lucas said. “I’ve been seeing all these guys in cowboy boots, and I remember-I told people this at the time-the guy who shot me seemed to have a limp. He didn’t have a limp-he was running in cowboy boots.”

“Yeah? Is that a big deal?"

"I don’t know,” Lucas said. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and punched up Austin’s cell. She came up and said, “Hello, Lucas. Are you still mad at me?"

"Yup-but that’s not why I’m calling,” he said. “The other day when you were loading those cartons of Frances’s clothes into the pickup truck for Goodwill-did you hire that driver? Did you know him?”

“That was Ricky Davis, Helen’s boyfriend. Why?"

"What’s he do?"

"I think, uh, he works nights for a wrecker service in South St. Paul

Then he’s got a plow blade for his pickup and he plows snow in the winter. He sells firewood… that kind of thing.”

“Okay,” he said. “So tell me…"

"Nope. Last time I told you, you blabbed. I don’t think this is anything, anyway, just that the guy was wearing cowboy boots, and I find that interesting,” Lucas said. “But, let me ask you a favor. I don’t know how to put this, delicately…”

“You don’t have to be delicate,” Austin said. “Okay. Could you please keep your fuckin’ mouth shut about this? That I asked about Helen’s boyfriend? Just keep it shut."

"I swear to God, I will,” she said. “Besides, with Frank, I didn’t exactly blab-it was business."

"And don’t start looking sideways at Helen,” Lucas said. “I promise… I sometimes go days without even seeing her. I’ll just stay away for a while."

"Do that,” Lucas said. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow or the next day.” Del was curious. When Lucas got off the phone, he asked, “Break the case?"

"I don’t know,” Lucas said. “Something might have happened.” He dialed Carol. When she came up, he said, “Hey- we’ve got another job for Jackson and his camera.”

HEATHER CAME into her apartment carrying grocery sacks, as Lucas was on the phone, and then went back out, and came back a minute later with more sacks as Lucas got off, and Del said, “That’s a lotta food for Momma and baby.”

“I’m telling you, Siggy is coming,” Lucas said. “If he was in Chattanooga last night, he’ll be in northern Illinois tonight, and up here tomorrow afternoon or evening, depending on how hard he’s pushing it. Not too hard, I think, because he wouldn’t want to get stopped for speeding.”

“He wouldn’t be driving under his own ID,” Del said. “Still, he wouldn’t speed. He didn’t last as long as he did, dealing big- time dope, being careless.” Del, with the glasses, said, “Uh- oh."

"What?"

"She just unloaded a six- pack of Heineken.” Lucas could see the green bottles with his naked eye. “There you go,” he said. “She hasn’t had a drink since the bump showed up."

"Whoops… looks like a bottle of Stoli.” Lucas said, “ Siggy- Siggy- Siggy… come to Mama.”

THE LAB TECH called a little after noon, about the blood on the blade. “It’s human and it’s A- positive. No prints on the knife. I’ve started the DNA, we got a good sample, we’ll crush it, but it’ll be a couple of days.”

“Thirty-six hours, I was told,” Lucas said. “That’s two days, unless you want the results at midnight,” the tech said. Lucas called Harry Anson, the Minneapolis homicide cop: “We’re looking at a guy who was an employee of Alyssa Austin’s. Hit his house this morning.”

“I heard.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, but things were moving. Anyway, we got human blood on the knife, no prints. The blood is A- positive. I don’t have the paper right here on the three who were killed in Minneapolis.”

“It’s Patricia Shockley. A- pos,” Anson said. “Sonofabitch. You started the DNA?”

“Thirty-six hours. We got the guy locked up in Ramsey on a California warrant, it’s probably good for two weeks.”

He explained the California problem and Anson said, “If we can’t nail it down in two weeks, we won’t get it. Hell, the knife is probably enough. The circumstances, if he was nailing Frances and her mother… there’s plenty of motive in that, somewhere. Get a shrink on the stand…”

“We could do that."

"Lucas, I knew there was some reason I liked you,” Anson said. “I just couldn’t put my finger on it."

"Yeah, well, I’m heading over to Ramsey to squeeze Willett’s pointy little head,” Lucas said. “You better be there."

"Gimme a time.”

WILLETT HAD A public defender named Tony Mose, rhymed with Rose, who met Lucas in the lobby of the Ramsey jail and trailed him back to the interview room, where Willett was already waiting with a deputy. Mose was dressed in a somber black suit and white tie, like a guy going to a funeral. He was not, Lucas thought, a bad attorney.

“You get a chance to talk to him?” Lucas asked Mose on the way back.

“I did. I’ll tell you what-this time, for once, I might actually have an innocent guy."

"Nah.” Lucas shook his head. “I’m serious, Lucas, the guy’s got that thing about him-he didn’t know what in the hell I was talking about when I asked him about the knife,” Mose said. “He said you must’ve put it there.”

“You hardly ever hear that,” Lucas said. “The cops must’ve did it."

"The difference is, I think he meant it,” Mose said. Willett had had a bad night, as Lucas had hoped-his eyes were puffed with fatigue, and when they came in the room, he looked up and said, “Now what?”

Mose laid it out: Lucas had some questions. Mose would stop any questions that were improper, and any questions that Willett didn’t feel like answering, he didn’t have to answer.

“I didn’t do a thing,” Willett said. “Wait, I did, you know? I had some bud back in San Francisco, but it was all for personal use. I wasn’t dealing or anything. This Frances thing, this is crazy. I had nothing to do with Frannie getting killed.”

“Did Frances know that you’d been sleeping with her mother before she was sleeping with you?” Lucas asked.

Mose said, “Keep in mind, you don’t have to answer."

"But also keep in mind that sleeping with both of them isn’t a crime and we can prove that you were anyway-we’ll be giving Mr. Mose a copy of a note we took out of Frances’s purse, addressed to you,” Lucas said to Willett.

Anson came through the door: “Did I miss anything?"

"Just started,” Lucas said. He turned to Willett. “You’re in a lot of trouble, Frank. We need to talk about the knife, but we need to talk about this other stuff, too. If you did it, we’re going to put your ass in prison. If you didn’t, we’re your best chance of staying out. Now-did Frances know?”

Willett bobbed his head a couple of times and then said, “I think she found out. I don’t know when. But things were going sour at the end. I hadn’t even talked to her for a week before she disappeared.”

“You didn’t exactly hurry up to give the cops whatever information you had, after she disappeared,” Anson said.

“What would you have done?” Willett asked. “I didn’t know where she went, or why she went. But if a rich girl disappears, and the poor guy she’s been hanging out with, it turns out they were breaking up, and if that guy’s got a dope thing hanging over his head… well, what are the cops going to think?”

He was right about that, Lucas thought: that was what he did think.

HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH Frances peaked in the summer, Willett said, then cooled off in the fall, and by December, they’d stopped sleeping together. “I told her right from the start that she couldn’t let her mother know. I mean, I knew what would happen if she did-Alyssa would be all over the place. I’d lose my job, Frances would be gone, I’d be back at Snowbird flippin’ burgers. When we started breaking it off, I said, ‘Please, please, don’t tell your mom. She’ll fire me.’ And Frannie said she wouldn’t tell. We didn’t hate each other, but she was getting all corporate, and I am… what I am. We could see that we weren’t going to make it.”

“How often were you over at the Austin house?” Lucas asked. “When I was going with Alyssa, you know, a couple times a week,” Willett said. “I never went there with Frannie. I mean, we were afraid that Helen would tell Alyssa, and that’d be it. There wasn’t any reason for us to go there. We went to Frannie’s place, or mine.”They pushed and pried, with Mose as an umpire, but couldn’t get Willett to admit any animus toward either of the Austins. “You know, I think sex is a perfectly natural process, and I’ve had relationships with quite a few very nice women and I valued all of them and I’m still friends with most of them and some of them still sleep with me sometimes, and that’s all cool,” Willett said. “It’s not like I’m some crazy geek, and when a woman goes away, that’s it, my world is over. There are women all over the place, and lots of them are pretty good.”

“Good in bed?” Anson asked. “That’s not what I meant-I meant, pretty good. In general,” Willett said. “Good people. With a few witches mixed in."

"You a Goth?” Lucas asked. “Do I look like a Goth? No, I’m not a Goth,” he said. “Frances was a Goth for a while, but she was beginning to see that it was all pretty make- believe. She said to me, one time, ‘I’d like to meet a Goth who could change a flippin’ tire.’ So she was pretty much done with that scene, I think. Play- acting.”