Certain prey

Chapter Four

Lucas felt light: psychologically light. Nothing left to lose.

He hadn't spoken seriously with a woman since his break-up with Marcy Sherrill.

And he felt good: he'd been working out, shooting some hoops, running through the neighborhood, though he could feel it in his knees if he did more than five miles. Age coming on…

Money in the bank. All bills paid. The job under control, except for the

Cultural Commission. Even that had a calming effect on him. Like a boring concert, where the music never changed, the commission gave him three hours a week in which he had to sit still, his brain in neutral, his motor idling. He couldn't get away with sleeping during the meetings, but he'd managed to catch up on his reading.

Earlier in the year, before the Forty Days and Forty Nights, he'd felt himself on shaky ground, poised between sanity and another bout of depression. Marcy

Sherrill had changed that, at least. He felt as good as he could remember, if somewhat detached, disengaged, floating. His oldest childhood friend, a nun who was also a professor at St. Anne's College, had gone on a summer mission to Guatemala, giving thanks for a successful recovery from a terrible beating; half of his friends were on vacation. Crime, improbably, was down across the board.

And it was summer: a good one.

Lucas had been working four days a week, spending the three-day weekends at his cabin in Wisconsin. Five years past, a Northwoods neighbor, a flat-nosed guy from Chicago, had stocked a pond with large-mouth bass. Now the pond was getting good. Every morning, early morning, Lucas would walk a half-mile over to the

Chicago guy's house, push an old green flat-bottomed John boat into the water, and throw poppers and streamer flies at the lily pads until the sun got high.

The weight of the world dissolved in the mirror flashes of the smooth black water, the smell of the summer pollen, hot in the sun – the sun on his shoulders ? Eand the stillness of the woods.

Barbara Allen had been killed on a Thursday. Lucas tucked the memory of her sightless, upside-down body into a large mental file stuffed with similar images, and closed the file. On Thursday night, he left for the cabin. He missed

Friday's paper, but saw a Pioneer Press in a Hayward store window on Saturday morning: The main Page One story was headlined, 'Husband Questioned In Heiress

Slaying.'

On Sunday, the Star-Tribune's front-page piece started under a headline that said, 'Allen Murder Baffles Police' while the Pioneer Press went with 'Allen

Murder Puzzles Cops.' Lucas said to himself, 'Uh-oh.'

On Monday morning, he walked, whistling, into City Hall and bumped into Sherrill and Black. 'You were gonna keep me updated,' he said.

'That's right,' Black said, as they clustered in the hall. 'We were. Here's your update: we ain't got dick.'

'That's not entirely true,' Sherrill said, with an edge of impatience. 'There's a really really good chance that Hale Allen did it. Paid for it.'

'Well, good,' Lucas said, jingling his office keys. This was somebody else's job. 'Ship his ass out to Stillwater. I'll call ahead and reserve a cell.'

'I'm serious,' Sherrill said. 'We looked at him all weekend and we found out three things. One, the first thing he did after we talked to him is, he called

Carmel Loan.'

'Ouch,' Lucas said. He knew Carmel. If you were a cop pushing a marginal case, or a difficult one, you didn't want Carmel on the other side.

'Which doesn't make him guilty of anything but common sense,' Black observed mildly.

'Second,' Sherrill said, 'He's gonna inherit something like thirty or forty million dollars, tax free. So much that we can't even find out how much it is.

Her parents say the marriage was in trouble and that divorce was a possibility.'

'Nothing solid on the divorce?' Lucas asked. 'The way you said that…'

'Nothing solid,' Sherrill said grudgingly.

'The thing is, if Hale Allen is convicted of killing his wife, he can't inherit.

The money would probably go to her parents, who don't need it, but would definitely like it,' Black said. 'Can't ever be too rich or too thin, as the

Duchess of Windsor once told me, in a personal communication.'

'The money didn't come from them in the first place?' Lucas asked.

Black shook his head. 'Nope. The great-grandparents were timber barons here and land speculators in Florida. The money comes down through a whole bunch of trusts. It's hers. Her parents got theirs the same way. Hasn't one of them worked a day in their lives.'

'Third?' Lucas asked, looking at Sherrill. He added, 'The first two weren't so good.'

Sherrill said, 'Three, he's fuckin' a secretary in his firm. He's been doing it for a couple of years, and push was coming to shove. She was gonna go see the old lady, and tell her about the affair. Allen was stalling, but the hammer was comin' down.'

Lucas looked at Black. 'Now that's something.'

Black shrugged. 'Yeah. That's something.'

'Though they usually kill the girlfriend, not the wife,' Lucas said, going back to Sherrill.

Sherrill shrugged it off. 'Not always.'

'You look at the girlfriend?'

'Yeah. She was working when Barbara Allen was hit. Taking shorthand in a conference about some guy's will. She's got about six hundred and fifty dollars in her bank account, so we figure she probably didn't hire a pro.'

'Maybe she saw a movie,' Lucas said.

'Or read one of those Murder for Dummies books,' said Black.

'What about Allen? You hit him with the girlfriend?' Lucas asked.

'Not yet,' Sherrill said. She looked at her watch. 'We're gonna do it in about ten minutes.'

'By the way,' Black added, 'We should also update you on the Feebs.'

'The Feebs? Are they in this?' Lucas' eyebrows went up.

'Maybe. They want a meet, so we're walking over this afternoon,' Black said.

'Got some guy in from Washington.'

'The nation's capital,' Sherrill said.

'You wanna come?' Black asked. 'We could use some of that deputy-chief bullshit.

That special shine.'

'They love you so much anyway,' Sherrill concluded.

'Give me a call,' Lucas said. 'I'll be around all afternoon.'

Carmel Loan, wearing bloody-red lipstick, arrived at City Hall to find Hale

Allen sitting in the homicide office, across a grey metal desk from Black and

Sherrill. The homicide office looked like a movie set for a small-town newspaper.

'Why are we here?' she asked, taking charge. She dropped her purse on Black's desk, pushing aside some of his papers; a calculated move – she was the important one here. 'I thought we covered everything on Friday. And when are you going to release Mrs. Allen? We need to make arrangements.'

'We'll release her as soon as the chemistry gets back, which should be this afternoon or tomorrow,' Black said. 'We're rushing it.'

'You know the sensitivity of the issue,' Carmel said, leaning into him. She had an effect on most men. Black was a not-quite-out-of-the-closet gay, and the effect was blunted.

'Of course,' Black said, with equanimity. 'We're doing everything we can.'

'So why're we here?' Carmel pulled a chair over from another desk, sat solidly in the middle of it, turned to Allen before Black or Sherrill could answer, and asked, 'How're you feeling?'

He shrugged. 'Not so good. I can't catch my breath. We need to get something going on the funeral.' He was absolutely gorgeous, Carmel thought. The weariness around his eyes added a depth he hadn't seemed to possess before; a certain fascinating sadness.

'So,' she said, turning to Sherrill. 'What?'

Sherrill leaned across the desk and asked Allen, 'Do you plan to marry Louise

Clark?'

Allen sat back as though he'd been slapped. Carmel took one look at him, instantly understood the question, fought down a surge of insane anger, and blurted, 'Whoa. No more questions. Hale – out in the hall.'

When they were gone, Sherrill looked at Black and grinned: 'He didn't tell her.'

Carmel literally saw red, as though blood clots had drifted over her pupils. In the corridor outside Homicide, she grabbed Hale Allen by his coat lapel and shoved him against the wall. She was not a large woman, but she pushed hard, and

Allen's shoulder blades were pressed against the stone.

'What the fuck are they telling me?' she hissed. 'Who is Louise Clark?'

'She's a secretary,' Allen mumbled. 'I've been… sleeping with her, I guess.'

'You guess?' Carmel demanded. 'You don't know for sure?'

'Yeah, I know, I should have told you,' Allen said. 'But I didn't think anybody would find out.'

'Jesus H. Christ, how dumb are you? How dumb? What else didn't you tell me? Are you fuckin' anybody else?'

'No, no, no, God, I hate that word. Fucking.'

Carmel closed her eyes for a moment: she couldn't believe this. She could believe that he was sleeping with another woman. She just couldn't believe that an actual lawyer could be this damn dumb.

'You have a law degree?' she asked, opening her eyes. 'From an actual college?'

'Carmel, I don't…'

'Ah, shut up,' she said. She turned away, took a couple of steps, then swung around to face him. 'I oughta quit. If I weren't a friend of yours and

Barbara's, I would quit.'

'I'm sorry,' Allen stuttered. 'I've told you everything else, honest to God.'

Carmel let out a breath. 'All right. I can yell at you later. And I will. Now tell me about this Louise Clark. Are you gonna marry her?'

Allen shook his head: 'No, no, it was never like that. It was physical…

She's really… into sex. She's a goddamn sex machine – what can I tell you?

She kept hitting on me and finally one day we had a closing on a motel over in

Little Canada and one of the rooms was unlocked…'

'Ah, man…' Carmel pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead.

'What?'

'You've heard the word motive, right? It's a legal term, often used by lawyers?'

'I didn't know Barbara was gonna get murdered, for Christ's sake,' Allen said, his voice rising. A little angry now, flushing, tousled hair falling down over his forehead.

'All right, all right. Is it done with this woman?'

'If you say so,' Allen said.

'I say so,' Carmel said. 'But I've gotta talk to her.'

'All right. I'll call her.'

'We'll have to talk to the cops about it, sooner or later, but not right now.

Maybe tomorrow'

'How do we avoid it?'

'Gotta work 'em,' Carmel said. She chewed at her thumbnail, tasted blood, spit and chewed some more.

Carmel walked back into the Homicide office with Allen trailing behind. Black and Sherrill were still sitting at the desk, Black with his feet up. Before

Carmel could open her mouth, Sherrill asked, 'Wanna hear a horse-walks-into-a bar joke?'

'Sure,' Carmel said.

'Horse walks into a bar, sits down, and in this sad voice, says, "Give me a bourbon, straight up." The bartender gets the drink, slides the glass across the bar and asks, "Hey fella – why the long face?" '

Carmel showed an eighth-inch of smile and said, her voice flat, 'That's fuckin' hilarious.'

'I don't get it,' said Allen, looking worried.

'Sit down,' Carmel said. To Black and Sherrill: 'My client tells me that he has had a sexual relationship with Louise Clark. He hadn't told me earlier because he assumed it wasn't relevant. He's right: it's not relevant. On the other hand, we can see how you might think it is. I've got to talk to him some more, and also to Louise Clark. If you don't leak any of this to the papers, we'll come back tomorrow and answer your questions. If you do leak it, then screw ya: we're done cooperating.'

'So come back,' Black said. 'Nobody's gonna hear about this from us.'

'Ten o'clock tomorrow morning,' Carmel said. 'I assume you've already talked to Louise Clark and suggested that she not talk to anybody about it. Including me.'

Sherrill nodded: 'Of course.'

'Of course,' Carmel said.

Sherrill called Lucas a little after three o'clock: 'We're going over to the bureau office, if you want to come.'

'Let's go,' Lucas said. He tossed the Equality Report on the floor. 'Let me get my jacket.'

The sunlight was blinding; another good day, Lucas thought, as he slipped on his sun glasses. A great day up north – a day to stretch out on a swimming float, listen to a ball game on a tinny transistor radio and let the world take care of itself.

'… thought she was gonna kill him,' Sherrill was saying.

Lucas caught up with the conversation. 'So Carmel didn't know?'

'No. She wasn't faking it, either. When we hit her with it, her eyes actually bulged? Sherrill said happily. 'I didn't see what happened out in the hall, but when they came back in, he looked like a sheep that'd been shorn.'

'Huh… any vibe off the affair? Was he hiding it?'

Sherrill shrugged, but Black shook his head: 'I didn't get a goddamn thing. He looked surprised -like, surprised we'd even ask. He didn't look scared, he didn't look like he was covering…'

The heavily armed male white-shirt-and-tie receptionist rang them through into the FBI's inter sanctum, where they found a lightly sweating assistant agent-in charge waiting in a conference room with a man who looked like an economics professor, a little harassed, a little unkempt, the lenses on his glasses a little too thick; on the other hand, he had a thick neck. He smiled pleasantly at Lucas, looked closely at Sherrill, and nodded at Black.

'I'm Louis Mallard,' he said, pronouncing it Louie. 'Mallard like the duck. You know Bill.' Bill Benson, the assistant AIC, nodded, said, 'Hey, Lucas.'

'What's going on?' Lucas asked.

'The Allen killing,' Mallard said. 'Anything at all?'

Lucas looked at Sherrill, who looked at Mallard and said, 'We're looking at her husband, a lawyer here.'

'Mafia connections?' Mallard asked, breaking in.

'No, nothing we've seen. You have information…?'

'Never heard of him,' Mallard said. 'Couldn't find any record of him at all, in our files – he never served in the military. Never even got a traffic ticket, as far as I can tell. A dull boy.'

'We've been looking at his wife, too,' Sherrill said, 'Trying to figure out something in her background that might get the attention of a pro, if this was a pro…'

'It was,' Mallard said.

'What…?'

'Go ahead with what you were going to say about the wife.' He had a precise way of speaking, just like an economics professor.

'We've been looking at her,' Black said, picking up for Sherrill. 'We've had some of our business guys looking over her assets, but there's nothing there. Her money's been managed for decades. No big losses, no big gains, just a nice steady eleven percent per year. No changes. We looked at this charity she works with, too. Her grandfather set it up, and she and her parents are on the board, with some other relatives.

But it's mostly taking care of old folks. We can give you all the stuff, if you want it, but we don't see anything.'

Mallard looked at Lucas, then at Benson, the assistant AIC, then said,

'Goddamnit,' in a professorial way.

'Tell us,' Lucas said.

"The woman who did it is a pro,' Mallard said.

'She's not very tall – maybe five-three or five-four.

She once lived in St. Louis, or the St. Louis area. She might have a southern accent. She became active about twelve or thirteen years ago, and we think she's killed twenty-seven people, including your Mrs. Allen.

We think she's got some tie with some element – maybe just a single person – in the St. Louis Mafia crowd. And that's wh^t we got. We would really like to get more.'

'Twenty-seven,' Lucas said, impressed. 'Could be more, if she's taken the time to get rid of some of the bodies, or if it took her a while to develop her signature – the silenced pistols, close up. But we're sure it's at least twenty-seven. She does good research, gets the victim alone, kills them and vanishes. We think she does her research to the point where she picks out the precise spot for the murder, in advance…'

'How would you know that?' Black asked.

'Because the caliber of the pistol is always appropriate for the spot. If it's out in the open, it's usually nine millimeter or a. 40. If it's enclosed with concrete, like it was here, and a few other places, it's always a . 22 – you don't want to be in a concrete stairwell with nine millimeter fragments flying around like bees. She uses standard-velocity. 22 hollow points which turn the brain into oatmeal but stay inside the skull, for the most part.'

"That's it? That's what you've got?' Black asked.

'Not quite. We think she drives to the city where the hit takes place. We've torn passenger manifests apart for the airlines, all around the suspect killings, looking for anything that might be a pattern.'

'And nothing,' Black said.

'Oh, no. We found patterns,' Mallard said. 'All kinds of patterns. We just didn't find her pattern. We've looked at several hundred people, and we've got nothing.'

'She always works for pay?' Sherrill asked.

'We don't know what she works for. Some of the hits have been internal Mafia business – but some of them, maybe half, look like straight commercial deals.

We just don't know. Twenty-seven murders, and there's never been a conviction,'

Mallard said. 'There have been a couple of situations in which wives were killed, and we suspect the husband was involved, but there's nothing to go on.

Nothing. In none of the cases was it even remotely possible that the husbands were present for the killing: they were always in some well-documented other place.'

'Can we get your files on her?'

'That's what I'm here for,' Mallard said. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a square cardboard envelope, and slid it across the table at Sherrill.

'Duplicate CDs: everything we've got on every case where she's been involved.

Names, dates, techniques, suspects, photographs of everybody and all the crime scenes. The first file is an index.'

'Thanks.'

'Anything you get,' Mallard said. 'No matter how thin it is, please call me. I want this woman.'

Louise Clark decided that she could talk to Carmel only after Hale Allen convinced her it was okay. 'I'm a lawyer, Louise,' Allen said. 'It's all right to talk to Carmel – the cops are just busting our balls.'

'If you're sure,' Clark said anxiously. She was a thin, mousy woman with lank brown hair, a fleshy nose, and nervous, bony hands. 'It's just that the police said…'

Clark did not look like any sex machine Carmel had ever seen; but, she thought to herself, you never know. 'He's sure,' Carmel said abruptly. They were sitting in Denny's, and had been talking for ten minutes and the woman had started whining. Carmel didn't like whiners. She looked at Hale Allen. 'Why don't you take a walk around the block? I want to talk to Louise alone.'

So Hale Allen went for a walk, his hands in the pockets of his light woolen slacks, wearing a great blue-checked sportcoat over a black t-shirt. The coat emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, and both women watched him as he held the door for a woman coming into the restaurant with a child; the woman said something to Allen, who gave her the great grin, and they had a little conversation in the doorway.

After a few seconds, Allen continued on his way; and Carmel and Louise had their talk.

Carmel had a king-sized bed with two regular pillows and a five-foot-long body pillow that she could wrap her legs around when she slept. Although she told people that she slept nude – all part of the image – she actually slept in an extra-large Jockey t-shirt and boxer shorts. With the shirt loose around her shoulders and her legs wrapped around the pillow, she lay in bed that night and re-ran mousy Louise Clark.

For the most part, Clark's story was the same oF story. She and Allen spent time alone, in their work. They shared a lot of stress. His wife didn't understand him. They developed a relationship based on mutual respect, bla-bla-bla-bla. They fell into bed at the Up North Motel. Then the

Mouse stuck it to Carmel.

'The first time I saw him naked in the motel there, it was afterwards. Really, after we made love, he was just so… beautiful. He's a beautiful man.'Then her eyes flickered, and she added, girl-to-girl, a little giggle, a half-whisper,

'And he's really large. Beautiful and really, really, large. He filled me up.'

Carmel squeezed the pillow between her legs and tried to squeeze the image out of her head. Hale Allen and the Mouse. Large.

The alarm went off at seven o'clock sharp. Carmel pushed out of bed, slow and grumpy, robbed of her usual sound sleep. Large? How large? She scratched her ass, yawned, stretched and headed for the bathroom. A half-hour later, she was drinking her first cup of coffee, eating her second piece of toast, and checking the Star-Tribune for leaks about Allen and Clark, when the phone rang.

'Yes.'

'Miz Loan? This is Bill, downstairs.' Bill was the doorman.

'What?' Still grumpy.

'We got a package for you, says Urgent. I was wondering if we should bring it up.'

'What kind of package?'

'Small one. Feels like… looks like… could be a video tape,' Bill said.

'All right, bring it up.'

Bill brought it up, and Carmel gave him a five-dollar bill and turned the package in her hand as she closed the door. Bill was right: probably a video.

Plain brown wrapping paper. She pulled the paper off, found a note written with a ballpoint pen on notebook paper. All it said was, 'Sorry.'

Carmel frowned, walked the tape to the media room, plugged it into the VHS player, and brought it up.

A woman's image came up, and Carmel recognized it immediately. She was looking at herself, sitting in the now-understandably bright light of Rolando's kitchen, just a little more than a month ago.

The on-screen Carmel was saying, 'Only kind I drink.' And then, 'So you made the call.'

A man's voice off-camera said, 'Yes. And she's still working, and she'll take the job.'

'She? It's a woman?'

'Yeah. I was surprised myself. I never asked, you know, I only knew who to call.

But when I asked, my friend said, "She."'

'She's gotta be good,' the on-screen Carmel said. The off-screen Carmel decided that the camera must have been in the cupboard, shooting through a partly open door.

'She's good. She has a reputation. Never misses,' the man's voice said. 'Very efficient, very fast. Always from very close range, so there's no mistake.' A man's hand appeared in the picture, with a mug of coffee. Carmel watched her on screen self as she turned it with her fingertips, then picked it up.

'That's what I need,' she said on-screen, and she took a sip of the coffee.

Carmel remembered that it had been pretty good coffee. Very hot.

'You're sure about this?' asked the man's voice. 'Once I tell them "Yes," it'll be hard to stop. This woman, the way she moves, nobody knows where she is, or what name she's using. If you say, "Yes," she kills Barbara Allen.'

The on-screen Carmel frowned. 'I'm sure,' she said. The off-screen Carmel winced at the sound of Barbara Allen's name. She'd forgotten that.

'You've got the money?' the man asked.

'At the house. I brought your ten.'

The on-screen Carmel put the mug down, dug in her purse, pulled out a thin deck of currency and laid it on the table. The man's hand reached into the picture and picked it up. 'I'll tell you this,' the voice said. 'When they come and ask for it, pay every penny. Every penny. Don't argue, just pay. If you don't, they won't try to collect. They'll make an example out of you.'

'I know how it works,' on-screen Carmel said. 'They'll get it. And nobody'll be able to trace it, because I've had it stashed. It's absolutely clean.'

'Then if you say "Yes," I'll call them tonight. And they'll kill Barbara

Allen.'

Carmel, off-screen, had to admire her on-screen performance. She never flinched, she just stood up and said, 'Yes. Do it.'

The tape skipped a bit, then focused on a black telephone. 'I'm really sorry about this, but you know about my problem. I'm gonna have to have twenty-five thousand, like, tomorrow,' the man's voice said. 'I'll call and tell you where.'

The tape ended. Carmel took a long pull on her coffee, walked into the kitchen, poured the last couple of ounces into the sink, and then hurled the cup at one of the huge plate-glass windows that looked out on her balcony. The cup bounced, without breaking. Carmel didn't see it; she was ricocheting around the kitchen, sweeping glasses, dishes, the knife block, a toaster, silverware, off the cupboards and tables and stove and onto the floor, kicking them as they landed, scattering them; and all the time she growled through clenched teeth, not a scream, but a harsh humming sound, like a hundred-pound hornet.

She trashed the kitchen and then the breakfast area; and finally cut herself on a broken glass. The sight of the blood flowing from the back of her hand brought her back.

'Fuckin' Rolo,' she said. She bled on the floor. 'Fuckin' Rolo, fuckin' Rolo, fuckin' Rolo…'