Mortal Prey

2

Lucas Davenport parked in the street.

A rusty Dumpster blocked his driveway, which had become a bog of black-and-tan mud anyway, so he parked in the street, climbed out of the Porsche, and looked up at the half-finished house. The place had been framed and closed, and the rock walls had been set, but raw plywood still showed through the second story and parts of the first, although most of it had been covered with a black weather-seal. The lawn between Lucas and the house was a wreck, the result of construction trucks maneuvering over it after an ill-timed summer rain.

Two men in coveralls were sitting on the peak of the roof, drinking what Lucas hoped was Perrier water out of green bottles, and eating a pizza out of a flat white box. Given that they were roofers, and that when they saw him they eased the bottles down behind their legs and out of sight, he suspected that the bottles did not contain water. One of them waved with his free hand and the other lifted a slice of pizza, and Lucas waved back and started across the rutted lawn toward the front porch.

He crossed the ruts and rain puddles gracefully enough. He was a large, athletic man in a dark blue suit and nontasseled black loafers, with a white dress shirt open at the throat. His face and neck contrasted with the easy elegance of the Italian suit-old scars marked him as a trouble-seeker, one scar in particular slicing down across an eyebrow onto the tanned cheek below. He had kindly ice-blue eyes and dark hair, old French-Canadian genes hanging on for dear life in the American ethnic Mixmaster.

The house was his-or had been his, and would be again. Now it was a mess. An electrician stood on a stepladder on the new front porch working on overhead wiring. A couple of nail guns were banging away inside, sounding like cartoon spit balloons — pitoo, pitoo-and as he walked up to the porch, a table saw started whining. He could smell the sawdust, or imagined he could.

Listening to all the commotion, he thought, All right. Two guys on the roof, an electrician on the porch, at least two nail guns inside and a table saw. That was a minimum of six guys, and if there were six guys working on the house, then he wouldn't have to scream at the contractor. Seven or eight guys would have been better. Ten would have been perfect. But the house was only a week behind schedule now, so six was acceptable. Barely.

As he climbed the porch steps, he noticed that somebody had pinned a four-by-four beam in the open ceiling, down at the far end. It would, someday soon, support an oak swing big enough for two adults and a kid. The electrician saw him coming, ducked his head to look down at him from the ladder, and said, "Hey, Lucas."

"Jim. How's it going?"

The electrician was screwing canary-yellow splicing nuts onto pairs of bared wires that would feed the porch light. "Okay, I'm getting close. But somebody's got to put in that telephone and cable wiring or we're gonna get hung up on the inspection. The inspector's coming Tuesday, and if we have to reschedule, it could hold things up for a week and they won't be able to close the overheads."

"I'll talk to Jack about it," Lucas said. "He was supposed to get that guy from Epp's."

"I heard the guy fell off a stepladder and broke his foot-that's what I heard," the electrician said, pitching his voice down. "Don't tell Jack I mentioned it."

"I won't. I'll get somebody out here," Lucas said.

Goddamnit. Now he was back in yelling mode again. Much of the problem of building a new house was in the sequencing-sequencing the construction steps and all the required inspections in a smooth flow. One screwup, of even a minor thing like phone and cable-television wiring, which should take no more than a day, could stall progress for a week, and they didn't have a lot of time to spare.

Besides which, living in Weather Karkinnen's house was driving him crazy. He didn't have any of his stuff. Everything was in storage. Weather had even lost her TV remote, and never noticed because she watched TV only when presidents were assassinated. For the past two months, he'd had to get up and down every time he wanted to change channels, and he wanted to change channels about forty times a minute. He'd taken to crouching next to the TV to push the channel button. Weather said he was pathetic, and he believed her.

Inside the shell of the new house, everything smelled of damp wood and sawdust-smelled pretty good, he thought. Building new houses could become addictive. Everybody was working on the second story, and he made a quick tour of the bottom floor-four new boxes were piled on the back porch; toilet stools-and then took the central stairs to the second floor. One nail-gun guy and the table saw guy were working in the master bedroom, fitting in the tongue-in-groove maple ceiling. The other nail gunner was working in the main bathroom, fitting frames for what would be the linen closet. They all glanced at him, and the guy on the saw said, "Morning," and went back to work.

"Jack around?"

The saw guy shook his head. "Naw. I been working. Harold's been kinda jackin' around, though."

"Rick…" No time for carpenter humor. "Is Jack around?"

"He was down the basement, last time I saw him."

Lucas did a quick tour of the top floor, stopped to look out a bedroom window at the Mississippi-he was actually high enough to see the water, far down in the steep valley on the other side of the road-and then headed back downstairs. His cell phone rang when he was halfway down, and he pulled it out and poked the power button: "Yeah?"

"Hey." Marcy Sherrill, a detective-sergeant who ran his office and a portion of his life. "That FBI guy, Mallard, is looking for you. He wants you to get back to him soon as you can."

"Did he say what he wanted?"

"No, but he said it was urgent. He wanted your cell phone number, but I told him you kept it turned off. He gave me a number to call back."

"Give it to me." He took a ballpoint out of his jacket pocket and scribbled the number in the palm of his hand as she read it to him.

"You at the house?" she asked.

"Yeah. They're about ready to put in the toilets. We got four of the big high-flow American Standard babies. White."

He could feel her falling asleep, but she said, "Getting close."

"Two months, they say. I dunno. I'll believe it when I see it."

"Call Mallard."

In the basement, Jack Vrbecek was peering up at the ceiling and making notes on a clipboard. "Hey, Lucas. Seven guys today."

"Yeah, that's good. That's good. Looks like things are moving. What're you doing?"

"Checking the schematics on the wiring. You're gonna want to know where every bit of it is, in case you need to get at it."

Lucas bent his head back to peer at the ceiling. "Maybe we ought to put in a Plexiglas ceiling, finish it off-but then we'd be able to see everything."

"Except that the workshop would sound like the inside of the brass-band factory every time you turned on a saw," Vrbecek said. "This will be fine. We'll get you a complete layout, and with the acoustic drop ceiling, your access will be okay and you'll be able to hear yourself think."

Lucas nodded. "Listen, we've got to get somebody to do the cable and telephone stuff, and I heard someplace today, down at City Hall, I think, that the guy from Epp's broke his foot. If we don't get that in, with the inspector coming Tuesday…"

"Yeah, yeah. We're moving on it." He made a note on his clipboard.

"And one of the guys up on the roof is drinking what might be Perrier water, but might not be, and if he falls off and breaks his neck, I'm not the one who gets sued."

"Goddamnit. They're supposed to be in a twelve-step program, and if that's a goddamn bottle of beer…" They started for the basement stairs. At any other time, Lucas might have felt guilty about ratting out the roofers. But this was the house.

Two months earlier, Lucas had stood on the edge of a hole where his old house had once been, looking into it with a combination of fear and regret. Both he and Weather wanted to remain in the neighborhood, and they were old enough to know exactly what they wanted in a house, and to know they wouldn't get it by buying an older place. Building was the answer: taking down the old house, putting up the new.

Only when he looked into the hole did he realize how committed he'd become, after a long life of essential noncommitment. The old house was gone and Weather Karkinnen was, as she'd announced, With Child. They'd get married when they had time to work out the details, and they'd all live happily ever after in the Big New House.

As he'd stood on the edge of the hole, the low-spreading foundation junipers clutching at his ankles as though pleading for mercy-they'd get damn little, given the practicalities of building a new house-he'd expected to live with the regret for a long time.

He'd bought the place when he was relatively young, a detective sergeant with a reputation for busting cases. He was working all the time, roaming the city at night, building a web of contacts-and working until five in the morning writing role-playing games, hunched over a drawing board and an IBM Selectric.

A couple of the games hit, producing modest gushers of money. After wasting some of it on a retirement plan and throwing even more down the rathole of sober, long-term investments, he'd finally come to his senses and spent the remaining money on a Porsche and a lake cabin in the North Woods. The last few thousand made a nice down payment on the house.

Standing at the edge of the old basement, he'd thought he'd miss the old place.

So far, he hadn't.

The hole had been enlarged, the new foundation had gone in, and in short order, the frame for the replacement house had gone up and been enclosed. He found the process fascinating. He'd enjoyed the design stage, working with the architect. Had enjoyed even more the construction process, the careful fitting-together of the plans, and the inevitable arguments about changes and materials. He even enjoyed the arguments. Sort of like writing a strategy game, he thought.

The old house, though comfortable, had problems. Even living in it alone, he'd felt cramped at times. And if he and Weather had kids, the kids would have been living on top of them, in the next bedroom down the hall. The Big New House would have a grand master bedroom suite with a Versailles-sized bathroom and a bathtub large enough for Lucas to float in-Weather, a small woman, should be able to swim laps. The kid-kids? — would be at the other end of the hall, with a bathroom of his own, and there'd be a library and workrooms for both himself and Weather and a nice family room and a spot for Weather's piano. The new house was a place he thought he could happily live and die in. Die when he was ninety-three, he hoped. And with any luck, it should be finished before the kid arrived…

Right now, he didn't want to leave. Not even with the screaming up on the roof. He wanted to hang around and talk with the foreman and the other guys, but he knew he'd just be sucking up their time. He walked around the first floor once more, thinking about color schemes that would fit with the rock he'd picked for the fireplace. Twenty minutes after he arrived, he dragged himself back to the car.

And remembered Mallard. He took the cell phone out of his pocket and leaned against the Porsche and punched in the number written in the palm of his hand. An old lady went by on her bike, a wicker basket between the handlebars. She waved, and he waved back-a neighbor making her daily trip to the supermarket up the hill on Ford Parkway.

"Mallard."

"Is that pronounced like the duck?" Lucas asked.

An instant of silence, then Mallard figured it out. "Davenport. How far are you from the airport?"

"Ten minutes, but I ain't flying anywhere."

"Yeah, you are. You've got a Northwest flight out of there in, mmm, two hours and eight minutes for Houston and from there to Cancun, Mexico. Electronic tickets are already under your name. It's all cleared with your boss, and your federal tax dollars are picking the tab. I'll meet you at IAH in about six hours, and you can buy some clothes there."

"Whoa, whoa. I hate flying."

"Sometimes a man's gotta do…"

"What's going on?"

"Six weeks ago, somebody shot and killed a Mexican guy outside a Cancun restaurant and wounded his girlfriend. The guy who got killed was the youngest son of a Mexican druglord, or a guy who's supposedly a druglord, or maybe an ex-druglord… something like that. So the Mexicans started sniffing around, and word leaks out to a DEA guy. The shooter wasn't aiming at the druglord's son. It was a mistake."

"That's really fascinating, Louis, but Cancun is outside the Minneapolis city limits."

"The shooter was going for the girl, see. She was wounded, and the cops put out the word that she was dead, until they could find out what was going on. So after she got out of the hospital, she went out to the druglord's ranch outside of Mйrida-that's a city down there-for a month, recovering. Then she disappeared. Like a puff of smoke. Everybody was looking for her, and eventually we get this request from the Mexican National Police about these fingerprints they'd picked up at the ranch. We had one print that matched. Came off a bar of soap."

Lucas finally caught up. "It's her?"

"Clara Rinker," Mallard said.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Get your ass down to Houston, first thing. The DEA has hooked us up with the National Police, and we're gonna talk to some people who knew her down there. You got a better feel for her than anybody. I want you to hear it."

Lucas thought about it for a minute, looking up at the half-completed house. "I can do it for a couple of days," he said. "But I got stuff going on here, Louis-I mean, serious stuff. My fiancйe is gonna be pissed. She's in the middle of planning the wedding, she really needs me right now, and I'm running off-"

"Just a couple of days," Mallard said. "I promise. Listen, I gotta go. I'm just coming up to National right now, and I gotta make some more calls before I get out of the car."

"Is Malone coming?"

"Yeah, she's coming, but you're engaged."

"I was just asking, Louis. You got something going with her?"

"No, I don't. But she does. Have something going. I gotta hang up. See you in Houston."

Weather would be upset, Lucas thought, looking back at the construction project. The house was only halfway done and needed constant supervision. The wedding planning was completely disorganized, and needed somebody to stay on top of it. Finally, there was a political pie-fight going on at City Hall, as a half-dozen candidates jockeyed for position in the Democratic primary for mayor. The political ramifications of the fight were severe-the chief was already dead meat, her job gone. Lucas, as a political deputy-chief, was on his way out with the chief. But with a little careful maneuvering, they might be able to leave the department in the hands of friends.

He could leave the politics, though-the chief was a lot better at it than he was. The real problem was Weather. Weather was a surgeon, a maxillofacial resident at Hennepin General. She and Lucas had circled each other for years, had had one wedding fall through. Lucas loved her dearly, but worried that the relationship might still be fragile. To leave her now, five months into the pregnancy…

Weather's secretary answered at Hennepin General. "Lucas? A patient just went in."

"Grab her, will you? I've got to talk to her right now," Lucas said. "It's pretty serious."

Weather came on a second later, showing a little stress. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

She was exasperated. "Lucas, when you call like this, and you say it's important, and you've got to talk to me right away, tell Carol, 'I'm not hurt, but it's important.' That'll keep me from an early coronary. Okay?"

Lucas sighed. "Yeah, sure."

"So what's going on?" she asked. She was looking at her watch, Lucas thought.

"Mallard called…" He told her the story in thirty seconds, then listened to four seconds of dead silence, and opened his mouth to say, "Well?" or apologize, or something, but didn't quite get there.

"Thank God," she blurted. "You're driving me crazy. You're driving the entire construction company crazy. If you'll just get out of the country for a few days, I could finish the wedding plans and maybe the builders could get some work done."

"Hey…" He was offended, but she paid no attention. She said, "Go to Cancun. God bless you. Call me every night. Remember: Flying is the safest way to travel. Have a couple martinis. Or better yet, there's some Valium in my medicine cabinet. Take a couple of those."

"You're sure you don't-"

"I'm sure. Go."

"You're sure."

"Go. Go."