Chosen Prey

19

LUCAS WAS TALKING with Rose Marie Roux the next morning when her secretary poked her head in the door, looked at Lucas, and said, "A hysterical woman is on the phone, looking for you. She says it's an emergency."

"Switch it in here," Rose Marie said. The secretary backed out of her office, and a few seconds later, Rose Marie's phone burped. She took the receiver off the hook and handed it across the desk to Lucas.

"Lucas Davenport."

"Officer Davenport, this is Denise Thompson…" The woman seemed to be falling apart, her voice pitched high and wobbly with stress.

"Denise…?"

"Thompson, Helen Qatar's secretary. You know she died-"

"What?"He stood up, scowling, astonished. "She died? How'd she die?"

"She died at her desk. I don't know, I don't know, she just died. She was at her desk with a cup of coffee and she must have had a stroke or something."

"Did she call out or-"

"No, no, I wasn't here, it was before anybody got here this morning. I saw her door open and her light on and so I went in, and I just saw her legs on the floor and I went around to see… she was gone. I called 911…" Now she did break down and began a breathy weeping.

Lucas let her go for a few seconds, then said, "Okay, okay, Mrs. Thompson. Police came?"

"And the ambulance, but it was too late. I could see it was too late."

"Okay."

"I don't know why I'm calling you except that you'd been to see her and she was joking about being Miss Marple and now she's gone."

"I'll talk to the medical examiner and make sure there was nothing improper," Lucas said. "We'll make sure. Are you the contact on that, or…?"

"Her son is, really, if he's not too wrecked. He was pretty wrecked this morning. I called him, and he ran right over. He went a little nutty."

"All right. Well, thank you for calling," Lucas said.

"Mr. Davenport… I don't know, I'm not sure I should even bring this up…"

"Bring up anything you want," Lucas said.

"Well, I'm sure it was a stroke or something, something regular, she was an older woman… but-she didn't bring her newspaper."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Every day for years, as long as I've worked here, she would carry her newspaper in. She told me that she would get up, she would eat raisin bran or bran flakes and a cup of yogurt, and she would make her list of things to do for that day. She wouldn't get the newspaper until she had her list. Then, when she left for work, she'd pick up the newspaper from the front porch and carry it in. If the carrier didn't bring it or something, she would stop at a box on the corner and buy one."

"Every day."

"Every day. When she got here, she would put the paper in her in-basket and make a cup of coffee, and then she would answer all of her e-mail and write e-mails to people she corresponded with. I would come in with my paper and we would work on her to-do list until break time, and then we would read our newspapers at the same time. But today… she didn't bring her newspaper."

"So what do you…?"

"It's just strange. Of all days… I'm sure it's nothing, but it's just strange. I wanted to tell somebody."

"Thank you. We will look into it all," Lucas said.

WHEN THOMPSON WAS gone, he looked at Rose Marie and said, "Shit."

"It didn't sound good from here."

"A little old lady is dead-Helen Qatar, down at St. Pat's. It's possible that she was taken off by the gravedigger. Goddamnit. She joked about being Miss Marple, and we think the guy may be around there somewhere, and I never told her to back off or be careful."

"Try not to get too deep into the guilt," Rose Marie said.

"I won't. But I liked her. One of those active old birds. Smart. Still working. Goddamnit." He ran both hands up through his hair, then locked them behind his head. "Just wish… I don't know. There's something going on that we don't see. We're a lot closer to him than we think, and somehow we dragged her into it."

On his way out of Rose Marie's office, he stopped at the secretary's desk and dialed the number of an investigator at the ME's office. "Yeah, we got her in," the guy said. "I can't tell you much, except that there's no sign of violence and she was older and was taking some heart drugs."

"Could you do everything?" Lucas asked. "There's a chance that somebody took her off. I've been told that she died while she was drinking coffee, so check for poison, or weird drugs, anything like that."

"You say everything, we'll do everything," the investigator said. "I'll tell the doc, and get him to push it a little."

"Thanks. Let me know."

"Sure. Hey, you know she's got a son, right? He's here now, somewhere, I think. I haven't seen him leave. Probably doing papers."

"Hold him, will you?" Lucas said. "I'm gonna run over."

He was going out the door when he saw Anderson and Marshall talking in a doorway. He went that way instead, and when Marshall looked up, said, "You hear?"

Marshall pushed away from the door. He was wearing a hip-length rough-leather coat lined with fleece, and with his rough face and hands, looked like a Marlboro ad. "I guess not," he said. "It must not be good, from the way you sound."

"Helen Qatar's dead. She was found dead this morning by her secretary. She's over at the ME's office, and her son's there. I was just heading over."

"I'm coming with you," Marshall said. He turned to Anderson and said, "Catch you later, Harmon."

On the way through the secret tunnel, Lucas said, "You and Anderson seem to be getting along."

"Yeah. Can't tell you why. He's just a good old boy, though he looks like an old geek or something."

Lucas nodded. "Smart guy. A pretty damn good street cop, when he was on the street."

"That's what I see," Marshall said. "I'm a pretty good street cop myself, and I'll tell you what-if I make it to heaven, I wouldn't mind spendin' part of eternity sitting in a tile room with a bunch of street cops, drinkin' coffee and tellin' stories."

"Well, goddamnit, Terry, you oughta be a poet." Marshall shut his mouth and seemed embarrassed by Lucas's reaction. Lucas picked it up and said, "I know exactly what you mean, though. That would not be a bad way to spend some time. Let me tell you what happened when Del ran into this chick with these pinking shears…"

They were laughing when they got to the ME's, and stopped just a minute to sober up before they pushed through the door at the end of the tunnel. Lucas stuck his head into the investigator's office and asked, "Where's the son?"

"He's down talking to the doc… right there, second door."

QATAR WAS A small man-not short, but willowy, and bald, with a narrow face. His baldness seemed to push his features too far down on his oval head, so that his deep-set eyes, delicate nose, full lips, and rounded chin were all pressed into the lower half of the oval. His face was pink as a lamb chop; he'd apparently been weeping. The doc was behind his desk, and a remote, smooth-faced blonde was perched on a swivel stool next to a drawing table; she was wearing a white blouse and a skirt the precise pale green color of her eyes. She had long legs, and most of their length was visible.

After Lucas knocked, the doc invited them in and said, "Mr. Qatar is having a hard time with this."

"I'm sorry," Lucas said. "I only met your mother a few days ago, but I liked her. She seemed like a really nice woman."

"She was," Marshall said. "I liked her a lot too."

"Jeeminy Christmas," Qatar said. "I knew, I knew, I knew…"

"Mr. Qatar," the doc started.

Qatar got it out on the fourth try: "I knew this could happen anytime. She had the heart problem, but she seemed, no problem, yesterday, no problem. She looked perfectly good. I saw her at three o'clock and I had to rush off I don't even think I said goodbye I just said, 'Look, I gotta go,' and I took off and just left her standing there and I never thought…"

He started sniffling again, and Lucas and Marshall both looked quickly at the woman, who didn't appear to work there, but neither was she comforting Qatar. When tears appeared in his eyes, Marshall slapped an arm around his shoulder and said, "I dealt with a lot of these things in my life, son, and the best thing for you to do is go home, find someplace comfortable, and put your feet up. Let it all out when you have to."

Lucas jumped in. "Did she tell you anything about talking to the police over the last few days? Of looking around for somebody who might have been at a museum event a year ago last fall? Anything…"

Qatar was shaking his head. "No. No, nothing like that. Everything we talked about, it was just so… inconsequential. I still have so many things to say to her… God, I've got to do something about a funeral, I've got to call somebody…" He flapped his arms around, looked all around himself as if disoriented, and said, "I've got to get going, I've got…"

The blonde hopped off the stool. "I can help for a while," she said. "This gentleman is right," she said to Qatar, tipping her head at Marshall. "Why don't I take you back to your place, and, you know, I'll hang around."

"You're a friend?" Lucas asked.

The woman patted Qatar on the shoulder and said, "Yes. James and I have been seeing each other…" She looked at Lucas a little too long, a full extra beat, and down in his heart Lucas thought, Hmm.

"Take care of him," Marshall said, and the doc added, "We'll get back to you about your mother sometime this afternoon, so you can make arrangements."

Qatar had started leaking again, and the blonde led him out of the room with a quick backward glance at Lucas. The door shut behind them, and they gave them time to get a decent distance away, then the doc shook his head and said, "Guy was losing his shit. I was glad to see you guys."

"Was it real, or was it bullshit?" Lucas asked.

Both Marshall and the doc looked at him. "That was real, as far as I could tell," the doc said. "He was freaking out. You think it might be something else?"

He thought about the bald man. "Nah, not really. He seemed a little overcooked," Lucas said. "On the other hand-do the chemistry."

"Wanna watch?"

"No, thanks. A nice clean piece of paper would be fine," Lucas said.

On the way back to City Hall, Lucas said, "This is it-we pull everybody off everything else, and we take St. Pat's apart. The guy is over there somewhere."

"Unless she had a heart attack."

"Maybe she did, but you know what? The photograph down by the statue, Ware remembers talking to somebody who might have been a priest, you dug up that thing about the lawn party, Neumann getting killed, now Qatar gone: This shit is telling us something."

"Hope it's not a priest," Marshall said.

"So do I." He stopped and looked back at the ME's door.

"What?"

"I don't know. I should have figured something out from this, but I didn't," Lucas said.

"There's so much stuff."

"That's not what I mean," Lucas said. "I mean, I know something, but I missed it. You ever have that feeling?"

"Yeah. Street-cop stuff. It'll come to you."

"RANDY'S AWAKE," DEL said. He caught them walking back toward Lucas's office. "He's hurtin', but he's up."

"You going?" Marshall asked.

"Yeah." Del nodded. "I got any company?"

Marshall nodded and said, "Me," and Lucas said, "I want to come, but let me talk to Marcy first."

Marcy, Black, and Swanson were drinking coffee and looking at paper when he walked in with Del and Marshall trailing. "All right, people, we're ripping everything up and turning it around. We're gonna look at nothing but St. Pat's. The guy is over there somewhere." He told them about Helen Qatar.

Swanson said, "Whoa," and Black said, "Wasn't her heart-I got a hundred bucks says it wasn't. Goddamnit, she was a nice old bat."

"I'm with you," Lucas said. "I think she knew the killer, and somehow tipped him off. Marcy, I want you to get everyone you can find over there with copies of the artist's sketch. I want you to interview all of her old friends. I want you to go through her house. Check her mail. Look at her e-mail, first thing."

"We got all the lists we need," Marcy said. She looked at Black and Swanson. "Now we need complete bios. Let's start cross-interviewing people. Not about themselves, but about people they know who do art."

"All we need is a name," Lucas said. "If we get a name, Randy should be able to identify him. I want a name."

RANDY WAS IN the ICU at Regions Hospital in St. Paul. There was a uniformed St. Paul cop outside the door who nodded at Lucas and said, "His lawyer's in there."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know. Somebody from the public defender's."

Lucas knocked, stuck his head inside. Randy was lying almost flat, his head elevated two inches; his shoulders seemed narrow and ratlike in the hospital gown. An IV drip was fastened into one arm. He looked like a deflated version of the Randy they all knew and hated. The lawyer sat next to him, a man Randy's age, early twenties, in a battered black suit and too-narrow tie. A Samsonite briefcase sat next to him on the floor.

Lucas said to the lawyer, "I'm with the Minneapolis police. I need to talk with you."

"Later," the lawyer said. "I'm talking with my client right now."

"Do you know how much later?"

"Whenever I'm done," the lawyer said. "Wait in the hall."

"Better be pretty quick," Lucas said. "We don't have a lot of time here-"

"Hey! When I'm done," the lawyer said.

Lucas backed out, and Del said, "Oh, boy."

"Officious little prick," Lucas said. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and called the Minneapolis dispatcher. "Could you get me Harry Page's number over at the Ramsey Public Defender's Office?"

She came back a minute later with the number, and Lucas poked it in. Page, the number-two man in the PD's office, came on the line a moment later. "Lucas Davenport. I think you still owe me three dollars for that egg-salad sandwich I bought you when we were on that panel up at White Bear-Century College, whatever it was."

"Yeah, yeah. Christ, you been whining about it for months," Lucas said.

"I need the money. I'm thinking of getting a divorce."

"I'll send it tomorrow. I'd hate to see your wife starve," Lucas said. "Listen, I'm over at the hospital and we've got a situation."

"What's the situation?"

"You got this officious little prick over here talking to Randy Whitcomb, and if Randy gives us the help we need, it'll get him out of a lot of the trouble he's in."

"Uh, Whitcomb is the guy the cops shot…"

"Yeah. And we found blood all over his apartment, which he was trying to clean up with paper towels when we broke in. Then the St. Paul cops found the body of his girlfriend in a dumpster behind an Indian restaurant, and her blood matches the blood in his apartment. So he is in a shitload of trouble, but we might be able to get him off the murder charge if he gives us a little help."

"How?" Page sounded as if he was eating a sandwich between words.

"The killing looks a lot like the killings by this gravedigger guy, and we know that Randy has been in touch with him. Randy sold some jewelry that came off one of the victims. If we can get an ID from Randy, we think the murder charge'll go away. There's a good chance, anyway. But your officious little prick won't even let us in the door."

"Which officious little prick did we send over there?" Page asked.

"Real young. Black suit looks like it was run over by a tractor. He's got a plastic briefcase bigger'n your dick."

"It's a wonder he could lift it," Page said. "The little prick's name is Robert call-me-Rob Lansing, like in Michigan. You say you're in the hallway?"

"Yeah."

"Stand right there. He'll come talk to you."

Lucas hung up, and ten seconds later, they heard a cell phone ring inside the room. A minute after that, Lansing popped out into the hallway.

"Which one of you assholes called Page?" he asked.

"I did, you officious little prick," Lucas said. "You want to talk about the welfare of your client, or you want to play status games?"

THE LEGAL MATTERS took five minutes to straighten out. Lansing told the cops that they could not ask any questions directly about the killing of the woman or the shooting at the apartment when the cops broke in. They were allowed to ask about the gravedigger and show Randy the artist's drawing.

When they went into the room, Randy seemed to have gone back to sleep. But when Lansing said "Mr. Whitcomb," his eyelids lifted slowly and his eyes drifted over the four of them as they stood at the end of the bed. Then they drifted back and stopped at Lucas.

"You fuckin' asshole," he said, his voice as arid as the hum of a paper wasp.

"Yeah, yeah, blow me," Lucas said. "Randy, you are in a shitload of trouble, but God help me, I'm here to try to get you out of some of it. Do you know the man who killed your girlfriend? Killed Suzanne?"

"Not me," he whispered.

"Who did?"

"Some fuckin' asshole."

"You got a name?"

Randy shook his head. "Can't remember. Head's all fucked up."

"Look at this picture," Lucas said. He showed him the artist's sketch of the actor from Day of the Jackal. "Is this the dude?"

Randy looked at the picture, his eyes drooped and his head turned away, and a moment later he seemed to pull himself together and he whispered, "No, man. I don't know the dude."

"You don't know him," Lucas repeated.

"He doesn't know him," Lansing snapped.

Del said, "You want him to know the guy. You got the concept here?"

"Hey, listen, you-"

"Shut up," Marshall said to Lansing. And to Randy: "A first name, a last name, somebody else who knows him, anything?"

"I gots to think," Randy said. "I'm all fucked up."

They came at the question nine different ways in the next ten minutes, but Randy shook his head as hard as he could and finally seemed to doze off.

"That's all," Lansing said.

Lucas looked at Marshall and Del. "It's a problem."

"Maybe tomorrow," Del said. "He's still got a lot of shit in him."

Randy came back, looked at Lucas. "Can't feel my legs, dude."

"They're working on you, Randy. You got good doctors," Del said.

"Yeah…" And he was gone again.

Out in the hall, Lucas said to Lansing, "I got a few words of advice for you. When cops want to talk to you or your client off the record, ninety percent of the time, you oughta do it. If you don't, you've got your head up your ass. We're not going to try to get somebody to incriminate himself off the record with his lawyer standing there. If we say we think he can help us and we can help him, we're telling the truth."

"To quote the famous Lucas Davenport," Lansing said, "blow me."

LUCAS LED THE way out to the car, with Marshall and Del trailing. Halfway across the parking lot, Lucas heard them start laughing and looked back and said, "What?"

"We were talking about your interpersonal relations technique," Del said. "Terry thinks you might need a course."

"Fuck Terry and his course," Lucas said. "The officious little prick."

Marcy was the only person in the office when they got back. "We've got everybody down at St. Patrick's," she said. "We got some chemistry back from the ME's office: They think maybe she was smothered."

"I knew it," Lucas said. "Might have been spontaneous rather than planned… but if it was spontaneous, it had to be somebody who knew her well enough to get her back to her office. What was her kid's name? James?"

"Yeah."

"Doesn't fit the picture, but the picture could be crap," Marshall said. "He doesn't look like the right movie star. He looks more like Yul Brynner."

"You think he could kill his mother?"

"The gravedigger could because he's crazier'n hell," Lucas said. "But we saw him over at the ME's office and he was pretty fucked up. Marshall had to hold him."

"I'm always pleased when strong men allow themselves to show a little tenderness," Marcy said to Marshall.

"Fuck you, little lady," Marshall drawled. He'd caught on to Marcy's act. "I just patted him on the back."

"What happened with Randy?"

"We ran into this officious little prick…" Lucas told her the rest of the story, while Del and Marshall found chairs.

"Gotta get back to him," Marcy said. "He's still got the key."

"I know, I know… Goddamnit, it looked like it was gonna be easy. Instead, it's like counting votes in Florida."

A lot seemed to be happening, but there didn't seem much to do-the trouble was sweeping them along, and they couldn't get a handle on it. "So what do we do?" Del asked Marcy.

"There're plenty of people to talk to down at St. Pat's."

"Ah, shit," Del said. "All right, I'll do it."

"I'm gonna go talk to Harmon," Marshall said. "Maybe the computers will spit something out."

"They did, this morning. Those names Ware gave us-remember those-we got two hits. One guy for dope, possession of cocaine after a traffic stop, the other guy for crim sex III, problem with his wife. I pulled the mug shots, and they do sorta look like our picture."

Lucas shook his head. "Keep them in mind, but they're not our guy. Not even Ware thought so. I'll go on down to St. Pat's with Del, and we'll hook up with the other guys. He's down at St. Pat's."

THE REST OF the afternoon was tedious. They all stopped at two o'clock to catch a cup of coffee and a sandwich, then went back-looking for professors, talking with students, pushing to find friends of Helen Qatar. At the end of the day, they'd struck out.

"I got one possible, an anthropologist who took drawing lessons so he could draw signs and statues and shit like that. He's a little crazy and he looks sorta right, but he claims he got his Ph. D. from USC six years ago and never set foot in Minnesota before then… and other people in his department say that's right," Del said.

"Better'n me," Swanson said. "I didn't find anybody."

"I got a guy who looked like a very distant possibility, but, uh…" Black turned away and said, "I need another sandwich."

"But what?" Lucas asked. "What about the guy?"

"He sorta came on to me," Black said. "He, uh, isn't oriented toward women at all-and I got that confirmed from his department."

"Maybe something repressed," Swanson said. "Maybe when he's pushing fudge, all he's thinking about is killing women."

They all sat chewing for a moment, then Del started to laugh, and then both Lucas and Swanson. Black, who was gay, said, "Fuck all of you bigots."

JUST BEFORE THEY quit, Lucas said to Del, "You and Cheryl are coming for lobsters tonight, right?"

"Hell yes. Gotta keep this mass-murder shit in proportion."