Phantom Prey

14

The usual scrum of official cars were parked outside Shockley’s house, along with two remote TV crews. Lucas parked off a fire hydrant on a side street, tossed his ID card on the dash, and walked back in the dark, zipping his leather jacket against the cold night air. His leg hurt. Not the fire, anymore, but an ache, as if one of his thigh muscles were clenching into a fist. He ignored it.

He knew the uniform working the sidewalk, who said, “Hey, man,” and Lucas said, “Hey, Jerry.” The flash from a strobe reached out across the street at them, and Lucas blinked it away and said, “Looks like we got media.”

“Yeah. They’re asking about the other ones, too. Ford and Carter, like the presidents.”

“Shit.” There was a high- pitched whistle from across the street, the kind a movie New Yorker might use to hail a movie Yellow Cab. Lucas looked that way, and saw the Star Tribune crime reporter, Ruffe Ignace, drifting down the opposite sidewalk, looking at him, his cell phone to his ear.

Lucas turned away and asked the cop, “Is Harry Anson up there?"

"Yup. And the usual bunch.” On the way up the stairs, his cell phone rang and he took it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID: Weather. She said, “Ruffe called here one minute ago, and said he saw you going into this woman’s house, and he wants to know if the three stabbings are related to Frances Austin.”

“Ah, poop. What’d you tell him?"

"I told him I was going to bed and not to call back,” Weather said. “But he’s figured it out."

"Yes, he has. And good luck and good night.”

Anson was leaning on a second- floor banister, overlooking the stairwell, talking to an ME’s investigator. He saw Lucas coming and said, “Help!”

“What the fuck happened?"

"Patricia Shockley, stabbed eight or ten times, bled out in place

Probably two hours ago. Found by her roommate… Leigh…” He flipped a page in his notebook.

“… Price,” Lucas said. “Price. Who is now next door.” He pointed down the hall with his pencil. Lucas climbed the last couple of steps. “Eight or ten times. So she was killed like Frances Austin. Not like the others.” Anson nodded. “Except that the body wasn’t moved. Other than that, and from looking at the Austin photos, I’d say they’re almost exactly alike. Bigger knife this time, but it looks like there was a struggle. Some blood got thrown around. Take a look.”

The apartment was being processed, and Shockley’s body, still uncovered, lay spread- eagled on the floor six feet from the door. “Ah, Jesus,” Lucas said.

“This will get in the papers and on television, and people will become extremely upset,” Anson said. He was pretending to be funny, but his voice wasn’t funny, and his eyes weren’t. “‘Why didn’t the police warn the people of the Twin Cities that a serial killer was roaming loose?’ I’m working out the answer in my little notebook.”

“The answer is, because it wouldn’t do any fuckin’ good,” Lucas said. “We got the fairy’s face out there, looking for help…”

“Not the same."

"Ah, fuck it. What have you got?” Anson said, “We have a witness who lives here, a Bob George, who looked out his window and saw an unfamiliar woman walking away from the house about the time of the murder. He’d heard a noise, but didn’t know what it was-he thinks now that it might have been a muffled scream. He lives downstairs from here, says he only heard the sound once, and so he didn’t look to see what it was. He’s heard other sounds like it, and wasn’t even sure it was in the house.”

“Did she look like the fairy? The woman he saw leaving?"

"No. He couldn’t see much of her, but she appeared to have lighter hair. Anyway, not black, or dark brown,” Anson said. “Something between blond and medium brown, but the lights aren’t so good outside, so he’s not sure. Just an impression.”

“Body style?” Lucas asked. “Hard to tell. He was up here, the angle was bad."

"Gotta be the fairy. She’s changing her look.” Lucas was pissed and washed with sorrow for the young woman on the floor. He took in the scene, as much as he could with the administration of murder going on around him, and then he headed down the hall to talk to Price.

Price was dressed in mourning black, as she’d been the first time he’d seen her, with the little phony Raggedy Ann rips and tatters. Tonight, though, she had dark rings under her eyes, and a trembling disbelief in her lip. An older woman, a dyed- redhead in jeans, was sitting with her when Lucas stepped past a uniformed cop into the living room.

“Ah, God,” she said, and she stood up and stepped over to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, her head on his chest, and she started weeping. The uniform cop watched with interest, and Lucas let it go for a few seconds then pried her loose and said, “Easy. You better sit down. Really, you better sit down.”

“She was just… she was just trying, trying, to get on with her life,” Price groaned.

“Did she give you any idea…"

"She was going to go to law school,” Price wailed. “She was practicing the LSATs. She was going on a diet. Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with everybody?”

“Why would the person who killed Frances, come and kill Pat?” Lucas asked. “Why? There must be something that ties them together.”

“I don’t knowww…"

"Frances took fifty thousand dollars in cash out of her bank account. Could she and Patricia have been involved in some kind of business deal? In something, in… in…”

But he didn’t know what, and she looked at him with a stupefied frown, as if he were speaking Norwegian or something, and finally asked, “What? Fifty thousand dollars?”

“Were they involved in… What would they do with fifty thousand dollars in cash?”

“I don’t know,” Price said. “They hardly ever talked to each other. Why would they…? Fifty thousand? What can you do with fifty thousand? You couldn’t start a pop stand with fifty thousand dollars. I mean, I’ve got fifty thousand dollars."

"I thought… I don’t know. Drugs? Gambling? Politics?” Price’s lips trembled again. “You don’t know what’s going on here-you just don’t know. Drugs and gambling, that’s crazy. There was no fifty thousand dollars. I would have known about that…”

When he had no more questions, Price asked, “Is this fairy coming after me? If I’d been here, it would have been me that was dead, wouldn’t it be? You’re looking for a fairy and I would have seen… Oh.” Her fingers went to her lips.

“Oh, what?"

"She always kept the chain on the door,” she said. “Patty. Always

The door wasn’t bashed in or anything, was it? I didn’t see anything like that.”

“I don’t think so,” Lucas said. “Then she had to know the guy,” Price said, eyes wide. “She never took the chain off. When I was out late, she’d wait up until I got in, so she could get the chain. If she went to sleep, I’d have to pound on the door until she got up, because the chain was on.”

“The chain wasn’t on when you got home tonight?"

"No… and… I mean, she was right there, dead, when I pushed the door open, but I was already worried a little bit when I saw the chain wasn’t on, I was about to call her. I knew she was supposed to be there, because I saw her leaving the club.”

Back in Shockley’s apartment, Lucas checked the door; the door was fine. Anson came over and asked, “What?” and Lucas told him about the chain.

“Well, that’s something,” Anson said. “She let her in. If it’s a her."

"And Price says she wouldn’t have let a stranger in the door. Not even a woman, since this shit started.”

“So who is it?"

"Dunno,” Lucas said. “But I should.” He thought about that for a moment, and then said, “You’re tearing the place apart?"

"Naturally."

"I want to know about money. I want to know how much she had, and where it went, and if she got new money, or if she spent a lot recently. That fifty grand plagues me-it’s all over my ass.”