Secret Prey

TWENTY

LUCAS WAS SITTING IN MCDONALD'S STUDY, FLIPPING through a batch of American Express statements that went back, apparently, forever. Both Wilson and Audrey Mc-Donald were Platinum Card holders, upgraded six years earlier from the Gold. The most interesting statement involved charges on McDonalds card in the days before Andy Ingall sailed off on Lake Superior and vanished.

The day before Ingall disappears, McDonald spends four hundred bucks at Marshall Field in Chicago. That night, and the night before, hes at the Palmer House, Lucas said to Franklin. That means if he rigged the boat, he had to have done it at least a couple of days beforehand, or, if he came home that day, he had to go right up to Superior and rig the boat the night before. That seems tricky.

Franklin, enormous in a plaid shirt and jeans, had been going through the check stubs and investment papers. I aint finding anything here. Its all too general. They were pretty well off, though. Hes got a trust account at Polaris with about three-point-four million divided between stocks and bonds, heavy on the bonds. Plus an account at Vanguard worth another three million, all in the stock market. And if Im reading it right, hes got another nine hundredthousand in stock at Merrill Lynch. Cash in bank accounts, about twenty-four thousand, plus a money market account with a hundred and seventy thousand… thats apparently a tax account. He put the papers down, and looked at Lucas. I dont know. With that muchthats gotta be moren seven millionyou think hed be killing to get even richer?

I asked the same thing, Lucas said. The answer is, he was chasing power, not money. He was a bully in high school, he beat his wife, he killed people to eliminate competition for the promotions. He got off on power trips. Hed be running the lives of a couple thousand people if he took over the bank.

Franklin sighed: Id like to get anicekiller sometime.

A uniformed cop stuck his head in the door: You know how you told us to find that Jag?

Lucas nodded without looking up. According to a file they found in the house, and confirmed by the Department of Motor Vehicles, Wilson McDonald owned a 1969 XKE, which was not in their three-car garage.

We talked to McDonalds old man, the uniformed cop said. His name was Lane, and he wanted to be a detective. The car was in a downtown parking garage, already covered up for the winter. And guess what?

Lucas looked up now. What?

Lane stepped fully into the room, held up a transparent plastic baggie. Inside, a small automatic pistol. Ta-da.

I dont believe it, Lucas said. He took the bag, held it up, and peered at the gun. The caliber,. 380, was stamped on the slide. Thats the one… You touch it?

No, of course not. The safetys on, and we just bagged it. Figured, who knowsif he didnt shoot it much, maybe its got some of the same shells from the Arris or ODell deals.

Get it downtown, Lucas said, handing it back.

Do I get a medal? Lane asked.

Yeah. Youll get a size eleven medal right in the ass if you dont get it downtown.

Lane left, and a few minutes later, Franklin, whod fallen into an odd reverie sitting in an overstuffed chair with the bank statements in his hands, staring at an English hunting print on the wall above McDonalds desk, suddenly said, I know what it is.

Im glad somebody does, Lucas said.

You know whats wrong with this place?

Lucas looked around. Looks pretty nice. There are no fuckin books, Franklin said. He got up, walked around the study, checking the shelves full of ceramic figurines. They even got a couple of bookends, with no books between themthey got these fuckin Keebler elves, or whatever they are.

Hummels, Lucas said. But they do have a computer. He nodded at the Hewlett Packard crouched on the desk.

Aint a book, Franklin said. Im going to look around.

Lucas finished the American Express statements, extracted the statement that showed McDonald in Chicago, and stacked the rest on the desk. Slow going. Hed just gotten up when Franklin came back: I could find five books in this whole fuckin house. A dictionary, a cookbook, a bartenders guide, and travel books on California and Florida.

Maybe they took turns reading the dictionary, Lucas said.

You dont think its weird?

The pinking shears thing with Delthat was weird, Lucas said. No books? Thats not weird, thats just a little unusual.

I think its weird, Franklin insisted. People with seven million, they oughta have books. He frowned, and said, Hey, you know what else?

He left the room, and Lucas trailed after him. Theres no CD player. I dont think theyve got any CDs. They got no goddamn record player, Lucas.

Yeah, well…

Franklin turned and said, These people are very strange. He looked around the room again, spotted a studio portrait of Wilson and Audrey McDonald smiling down from another knickknack shelf. The photo was so heavily retouched that the two of them looked like puppets. Look at her eyes, Franklin said. Lucas looked. They follow you. Man, they areverystrange.

AUDREY MCDONALD LAY IN HER HOSPITAL BED AND thought about Davenport. He seemed to know something. To knowher. The others had shaken their heads when they saw her, had essentially apologized for their maleness in view of what another male had done to her. The hospital had provided female attendants to care for her, as if a male doctor or male nurse might somehow further the damage done.

Not Davenport. He was ready to crucify her. She would have to move on this.

She dozed for a while, in a little pain, and woke up, calculating.

The lawyer said shed be here overnight, and then would be wheeled into court for a preliminary hearing on an open charge of murder. She would be allowed to enter a plea not guiltyand bail would be set. If she was willing, hed said, she could use her house as security. The assistant county attorney handling the case had already indicated that the state would have no objection, so the deal was as good as done, and she could go straight home from the courthouse.

Murder? Shed croaked. They're charging…?

Dont worry: theyre already backing off, Glass had said. When the police finish investigating, theyll almost certainly find that it was self-defense. Right now, its ninety-ten for no charges at all.

So Audrey had agreed to use the house as security, and had given him a limited power of attorney so that he could get all the paperwork. Shed be out tomorrow afternoon.

And that would be the time to handle the Davenport problem.

Shed thought she was doing that when she pitched the Molotov cocktail through Weather Karkinnens window. From what she could tell by questioning Wilson, and careful questions to others at the bank, Davenport had been the only reason that Wilson had been looked at so closely. Audrey had attacked Karkinnen in an effort to turn Lucas aroundthe same tactic had worked in the past, with the McKinney situation and the Bairds. And from what she could tell of the investigations pace, and from stories in the newspapers, the attackhaddiverted him for a time. Investigators had vanished from the bank, thered been two days of silence from the police… and then suddenly, they were back, and all over Wilson.

Wilson.

She sighed, and let a little tear start at the corner of her eye. She already missed Wilson. Shed known, in her heart of hearts, that someday shed have to kill him, the love of her life. He would inevitably get in her way, or even become a danger to her. And he finally had. If the police had put pressure on him, he wouldve pointed them at her, because he was basically a coward. He had no grit. Wilson

…

She wrenched her mind back to Davenport. The problem with the Karkinnen diversion was that the police investigation hadnt led anywhere. The newspapers said the police were simply mystified. Theyd run down every single clue and theyd found nothing at all. After a while, there was nothing left to do, so they went back to Wilson and had apparently stumbled over something that pointed at the Arris killing. If theyd been preoccupied with Karkinnen a little bit longer, they might never have found whatever it was.

Now they were looking at her. Or at least, Davenport was. She didnt quite understand why. Shed given him an answer to his questionher own dead husband.

Shed actually given him an earlier answer, the answerto who killed Kresge, but he either hadnt gotten the message or had ignored it.

The Kresge murder weapon had the fingerprints of Kresges caretaker all over it. Hed been the one who put it away the last time Audrey saw it. A few of the lingering partygoers had been sitting around with Kresge, talking and cleaning the guns. When they were done with each one, theyd pass it to the caretaker, whod put it away.

Kresge had told her, on the shooting range, that she shot the Contender better than he did. That hed never shot it at all, after the first few times. So the caretakers prints should still be on it. But the papers hadnt had a whisper about the gun, and Wilson said nobody had even bothered to interview the caretaker. Something was screwed up, she thought. Typical. Very few people could act with her intellectual rigor…

Audrey was crazy and smart and she knew how to do research: shed taken an undergraduate degree in English from St. Annes, and then, while she was pushing Wilson through law school, shed taken a masters degree from the University of Minnesota in library science. She was still working in the library when computers moved in, and shed more or less kept up with them over the years, and when the bank went on-line. When Davenport became a problem, shed looked him up in theStar-Tribunelibrary node on the Internet.

And there shed found a treasure trove.

TheStar-Tribunehad done a lengthy feature on Davenport after hed cleared the kidnapping of a psychologist and her two daughters by a madman named John Mail. Davenport and His Pals had pictured Davenport with Weather Karkinnen, with Sister Mary Josephwhom hed known since their childhood togetherand with a variety of cops, lawyers, TV and newspaper reporters, doctors, jocks, and street people, all friends of his.

The two obvious targets for a diversionary attack were the nun and the surgeonDavenports oldest friend and hislover. She decided on Karkinnen because Karkinnen was simpler.

Audrey knew Sister Mary Joseph from her college days: the nun had been her instructor in basic psychology, and Audrey remembered her as an intense young woman with a face terribly scarred by adolescent acne. But the nun, who was still at St. Annes, lived in a communal dormitory-style setting in which intruders would be instantly noticed. And attack would be risky.

Karkinnen, on the other hand, was out in the open. Audrey had been puzzled that the year-old article implied that Karkinnen was Davenports live-in lover, while Audreys search turned up different addresses, but she assumed there was something that she didnt know. She considered the possibility that theyd broken up, but then found an engagement announcement only a few months old…

So shed gone for Karkinnen. Shed thrown the bomb through the window, concerned not a whit for the possibility that she might kill the woman, but very concerned at the possibility of being caught. The final attackout of the car, across the lawn, throw, back in the car, ten seconds minimized the possibility, but it had still taken nerve.

Shed need the nerve again: but nerve had never been a problem for her. Audrey McDonald had nerve, all right.

She thought again about the possibility of going after Davenport himself. There were two problems with that: First, he was large and tough-looking, and carried a gun. He would be difficult to get at quickly without exposing herself. She couldnt get close enough for poison, couldnt risk a gun attack; if she missed, shed be dead. And he was a cop, so might be a little more wary than the average citizen. Further, she didnt have time to research him as she had Arris and Ingall. And the second big problem was that killing him might lead the cops investigatinghiskilling to take a harder look at his current investigations, includingher.

A diversion would lead them away from her… So it would have to be the nun.

Her legs twitched down the bed, a kind of running motion, as she began working out a possible plan. Shed have to do it the minute she got out. Shed have to emphasize her injuries, complain of cracked ribs, something that wouldnt show on X rays, but would keep her from doing anything heavy. Shed have to hobble and whimper and limp and make people feel sorry for her, and the instant she was alone, she had to go for the nun.

Shed have no trouble with this. Shed been undercover for more than twenty-five years now. She might not ever come out.

FRANKLIN HAD BEEN IN A LONGTIME 401K PLAN. THE stocks had gone through the roof during the summer, so, like any Good American, hed borrowed against the fund to buy a new black Ford extended-cab pickup truck, which he and Lucas walked around, Lucas shaking his head. Finally Franklin said, So what next? Just wrap it up? Were done?

Wrap it up, Lucas said. They were standing at the curb outside McDonalds house. McDonalds the man, and hes dead: outa reach. Ill spend a couple days trying to figure out the firebomb thing with Weather, then maybe go up to the cabin.

Going up alone? Franklin asked.

Cut some firewood, put the snow blade on the Gator, haul the snowmobiles out and get them checked, Lucas said.

Going up alone?

Get the batteries out of the boat, put the boat away. Maybe figure out some way to cover it. I had some squirrels get in it last year, in the shed, and the damn thing was full of decapitated acorn shells when I got it out this spring.

Jesus, I wish I was single again, sometimes, Franklin said. And had a cabin up north. Nothing like a little strange pussy in November.

If youd asked me, I could have advised you against getting a Ford, Lucas said. Anyway, see you around.

See you around, Franklin said. Lucas walked back up the long driveway to the house, where hed parked, while Franklin strolled once more around the truck, rubbing out a couple of imaginary blemishes with the cuff of his coat. I love you, he said aloud. He was back at the drivers side door, and about to get in, when Lucas arrived at the Porsche, a hundred and fifty feet away.

Going up alone? Franklin bellowed.

Lucas threw him the finger and got in the car.