Secret Prey

TWENTY-ONE

When Audrey Mcdonald opened her eyes the next morning, she knew something she hadn’t known when she closed them the night before.

"Helen," she said.

Helen had been talking to Davenport. Helen had always hated Wilson, and must have called Davenport anonymously. That’s how Helen would have done it, maneuvering to get rid of Wilson without damaging her relationship with her sister-and that would explain why Davenport thought he’d spoken to Audrey. Helen and Audrey spoke with the same soft Red River Valley accent, with the rounded and softened o’s of the Swedes; they said "boot" when they meant "boat."

Davenport had picked that up, but hadn’t known of Helen.

But this was new: Helen had realized that people were being murdered? Believed that Wilson had done it, and moved against him? Helen didn’t keep secrets very well: give her a secret, and she usually blurted it out the first chance she had.

Audrey would have to think about this: How much did Helen know, and how much had she guessed? How early had she caught on? Had she taken any notes, mental or otherwise, that might point away from Wilson and toward herself? And did she know about all the incidents? Did she know about McKinney and the Bairds?

When Lucas woke, he thought about Sherrill. The woman would sooner or later be a problem; maybe even a disaster. They worked too closely, on problems too complicated, for a romance to work very well. And when the word got out-and the word would get out-there would be serious sniping to deal with. He hoped Sherrill understood that: she was smart enough, she should.

He wished she was in his bed now. He rolled over, awake, feeling fresh, pivoted and put his feet on the floor, realized that he hadn’t felt quite this good for months.

And then he thought of Weather, and a touch of sadness came over him. He’d wanted to marry her. If she suddenly changed, and came back to him, he’d accept her in an instant.

But she was falling away now. Her influence was fading: he didn’t think of her as much. Like Mom’s death, he thought. When Lucas’s mother died, of breast cancer, he’d thought of her every few minutes for what seemed like a year. Things she’d said, images of her faces, moments of their life together. That was all still there in his head, and the images came back from time to time, but not like those first few months. His mother had gone gently away, and now came back only when he reached for her.

Like Weather.

He sighed, and headed for the bathroom. He was a late riser, and he looked back at the clock as he went: he wanted to be there when Audrey McDonald made her court appearance.

Audrey’s attorney, Jason Glass, showed up with a woman photographer, a load of photo equipment, a pair of gym shorts, and a soft halter top.

"This is Gina," Glass told Audrey. "We need to take some photographs of you, showing your injuries. This is absolutely critical for the case. Gina brought some terry cloth for modesty purposes…"

They shot the pictures in an unoccupied hospital room, against the white drape that ran around the bed. At Gina’s direction, Audrey limped into the small bathroom and put on the shorts and halter top, carefully brushed her hair, and went out to face the cameras.

"I’m sorry," Gina said before she started shooting. "I should have told you to leave your hair as it was. Nobody will ever see these photos except attorneys, and frankly, we want them to look as… severe… as possible."

Audrey nodded; she knew what was needed. She trundled back into the bathroom and flipped her hair back and forth, stirred it around, then brushed it away from the scalp wound. In the mirror, she looked like a photo of a nineteenth-century madwoman in Bedlam. And that, she supposed, was what they wanted.

"Excellent," Gina said, as she set up a couple of spindly light stands. "That is just beautiful."

When the photos were done, Glass, who’d waited in the hall, said to Audrey, "You look like you still hurt."

"I do," Audrey said, deliberately vague. She peered around as though she’d lost a pair of glasses, or her shoes, and her lip trembled. "I can’t believe Wilson is gone."

"I’m going to put you in a wheelchair before we head over to the courthouse," Glass said. "I think you’ll be more comfortable that way."

"Thank you," Audrey muttered.

A man named Darius Logan was saying, "I know I shouldn’t have done it, Your Honor, but the dude flipped me off, you know?" when a sheriff’s deputy wheeled Audrey into the courtroom, the two of them trailed by Glass.

Lucas was sitting in the back row, reading the St. Paul paper. Del sat next to him, thumbing through Cliffs Notes on Greek Classics. Two dozen other people were scattered around the courtroom, half of them lawyers, a couple of defendants’ wives, reporters for the local television stations and newspapers, waiting for the McDonald hearing, and two or three courthouse groupies following the TV people.

McDonald looked bad, Lucas thought. Her head was patched with white bandages, stark against her gray face. She was wearing a gingham dress with short sleeves, a summer dress really, but one that beautifully showed off the bruises on her arms and lower legs. She looked beaten, both physically and psychologically: then, as the bailiff wheeled her toward the defense table, she saw Lucas. And for a vanishingly small instant-a time so short that it must have been imaginary-Lucas felt her eyes spark. Not sparkle, but actually spark, as with electricity.

The judge, a prissy little blonde who was known for occasional bouts of judicial intemperance, had grown impatient with Logan. He said, "That’s all very well, Mr. Logan, but you’ve been here a number of times before and we’re getting a little tired of it. I’ll put bail at five thousand dollars and expect to see you back here at…" As he thumbed through a calendar, there was a meaty smack from the audience, as though somebody had just been punched. The impact came from the forehead of a young woman who’d just slapped herself with one heavy hand. The judge looked up and said, "Do you have something to say, young lady?"

The woman stood up and said, "Your Honor, if we got to pay some bail bondsman seven hundred and fifty dollars to get Darius out of jail"-she pronounced it "Dare-Ius"-"where in the hell am I gonna get the money for the kids’ dinners?"

The judge’s eyes clicked to the face of a well-known TV reporter, then back to the woman. "Why don’t you leave Dare-I-us in jail for a while?"

"Don’t dare do that," the woman said.

"Why not?"

"Just don’t dare."

"Okay. Sit down. Dare-I-us, are you gonna show up for the trial?"

"I sure will, Your Honor."

"All right. Bail’s set at one thousand dollars, and you’ve got the young lady to thank for it."

"Thank you, Your Honor."

As Logan left, the judge said, "Call the next one," and the bailiff called out, "Audrey McDonald."

"Here, Your Honor," Glass called back.

The woman who’d gotten the bail reduced on Darius Logan wedged herself down a line of spectators, out to the center aisle, and headed for the door. As she passed, she saw Del, and Del said, quietly, "Quick pregnancy."

"Shush," she said, and was gone. Del looked at Lucas and said, "Didn’t have any kids last week."

"It’s a miracle," Lucas said, turning to sports.

Audrey McDonald sat hunched in her chair, her back to Lucas, as the hearing routine broke around her, speaking only two words: "Not guilty."

"Your Honor, Mrs. McDonald’s attorney has offered Mrs. McDonald’s house as security for her appearance, and the state has no objection to that. As you may know, the circumstances around this particular incident could lead to a change in the charges against Mrs. McDonald…"

And a while later, it was all done. Audrey waited as Glass talked to the assistant county attorney over a few details, then said, "We’ve got to sign the papers and then I’m going to talk to the press. If I don’t, they’ll be parked outside your house, hassling you…"

She liked that, the press, though her face was determinedly grim.

"… I don’t really expect you to say anything," Glass was saying.

"I’ll talk to them, if that will keep them away," Audrey said.

The press caught them outside the courthouse, at the curb, where Helen Bell was waiting in her car. Glass made a short speech about spousal abuse, said he anticipated that all charges would be dropped, then asked Audrey if she wished to answer questions.

She bobbed her head. "Did you kill your husband, Mrs. McDonald," a woman reporter blurted.

She bobbed her head again. "Yes," she said weakly. "I couldn’t… I couldn’t… He was hurting me so bad…" She touched the bandage on her scalp and peered at the camera lens. "Oh, God…" A tear trickled down her cheek. "God, I miss him. I’m so sorry…"

"Why do you miss him?"

"He was my husband," she wailed. "I wish he could come back… But he can’t." She seized Glass’s arm. "I can’t…" She gasped.

"All right, all right," Glass said. "She’s really weak. She’s got to go. I’m pleading with you all. If you have any sensitivity, leave her alone."

"Mrs. McDonald…"

Then she was in the car and Helen was driving them away. "My God," Helen said. "My God, Audrey…"

"Just take me home."

"No, no. You’re coming to my place."

"No. I want to go home," Audrey said. "Helen, please don’t argue with me. Just take me home. Please. I just want to turn off the phones and get some sleep."

And back at the courthouse, Lucas said to Glass, "Quite a performance."

Glass was staring after Helen Bell’s car, turned to Lucas and said, "The last thing I expected."

"You didn’t prep her?"

"Hell, no. I figured she was such a sad sack, we couldn’t lose. I didn’t think we was gonna get Greta Garbo. Did you see that tear?"

"I didn’t get that close."

"A real tear," Glass marveled. "Ran right down her cheek, and it was the cheek that was turned toward Channel Three. Tell you what, Lucas-if I lose this case, I’m gonna want to borrow one of your guns, so I can shoot myself."

The house was silent: Audrey entered, listening for the footfalls of Wilson’s ghost. She heard creaks and cracking that she hadn’t heard before-but she’d never before listened. Helen came in behind her, tentatively. "You’re sure you’ll be okay?"

"I’ll be okay," Audrey said, peering around. The police had been through the place, and though they hadn’t been deliberately messy, the house looked… disheveled. "I hope the police didn’t steal anything."

"Do you want me to come over tonight?"

"No… no. I’m going to take a couple of pills and try to sleep. I just really need to sleep, I haven’t slept since before… before…"

"Okay. If you’re sure you’ll be all right."

"Do you, uh… You used to take Prozac," Audrey said. "Do you still use that?"

"Well, sure. Could hardly get along without it," Helen said.

"Do you think it would help? In the next few days?" Helen shook her head. "I don’t think it’s for your kind of problem, honestly. I could give you a few and you could try them, but I think a doctor could give you something better."

"Maybe if I could just try a couple. If I don’t sleep tonight…"

"Sure. We’ll talk tomorrow."

When Helen was gone, Audrey prowled through the house, already planning: she’d bundle up his suits, dump them at Goodwill and get a tax deduction. She got a notepad and wrote: "ACCOUNTANT/Taxes and Deductions," and under that, "Suits." Wilson had all kinds of crap she’d want to get rid of, starting with that XK-E. She wrote "Jag" under "Suits." And he had a whole wall full of bullshit awards and plaques-chairman of this charity in 1994, director of that community effort in 1997. All worthless: straight into the garbage can, she thought.

So much to do.

Audrey really did hurt from Wilson’s beating, and from her own enhancements to the damage. The scalp wound, in particular, felt tight, like a banjo head, its edges seeming to pull against the stitches. After half an hour of cruising through the house, she went up to the bedroom, set the alarm clock for nine P.M.,and tried to sleep.

But sleep, she found, wouldn’t come easily. Too many images in her head, a mix of plans and memories. If Wilson had only landed the chairmanship, none of this would have happened. She’d believed in him from the start, and the belief had only begun to falter after Kresge got the top job six years earlier. Kresge was a technocrat, and brought in other technocrats like Bone and Robles. They had no respect for family name, for fortune, for breeding or society. All they knew was how to make money. Wilson, running the mortgage division, which had always been one of the pillars of the bank, was suddenly out on a limb.

She didn’t know that sleep had come, but it must have. The clock went off: she sat up, a bit groggy, realized that the room was dark. She groped around the bedstand, found the clock, and silenced the alarm. Then she touched the light and swung out of bed.

A little tension now. She went straight to the shower and stood under it, breathing deeply, flexing the muscles in her back and shoulders. Stiff. When she got out of the shower, she downed four ibuprofen tablets, then dressed: black slacks, a deep red sweater, and a dark blue jacket over the sweater. She found a pair of brown cotton gardening gloves, and pulled them on. The best she could do for nighttime camouflage. Now for a weapon.

The police had been all through the house, but she remembered that when the closet rod broke in the front closet a year or so earlier, Wilson had tossed the broken dowel rod up in the rafters of the yard shed, where it lay with other scrap wood. She found a flashlight in the kitchen, let herself out the back, and walked in the dark to the shed. Inside, she turned the flash on. She could see the scrap wood overhead, but couldn’t reach it. The lawn tractor was there, and she stood on the seat, stretched to push the wood around, and saw the two pieces of the dowel rolling to one side. She got both of them down. One was a little more than six feet long, including the split; the other a little more than two feet long, including the sharp split end.

She carried them both back to the house in the dark, and inside the porch gave the shorter of the two pieces a test swing. A little lighter than a baseball bat, but it swung just as well. Wearing the gloves, she rubbed both of them down with WD-40, eliminating any fingerprints.

In the garage, she put both pieces in Wilson’s Buick, then climbed on top of the car hood, pulled the cover off the light on the garage door opener, and unscrewed the lightbulb. She climbed down from the car and put the bulb on the passenger seat.

Ready. She took a deep breath, started the car, pushed the garage door opener. The door came up, but no light came on. She backed out of the garage, lights out, then rolled down the long driveway to the street. The houses were far enough apart, and the street dark enough, that she should be able to get out without being seen… a calculated risk. If anyone saw her driving without lights, they’d remember it. A risk she’d take. She rolled into the street, drove a hundred feet, and turned on the lights. She’d gotten away with it, she thought.

On the south side of Minneapolis, she stopped in a beatup industrial area and threw the longer of the two pieces of dowel rod into a pile of trash; the other waited beside the passenger seat.

St. Anne’s college-St. Anne’s college for blond Catholic Girls, as Audrey thought of it-was a leafy, redbrick girls’ college in St. Paul, a short walk from the Mississippi. Davenport lived somewhere in the neighborhood, Audrey knew. The newspaper article didn’t say exactly where: just the Highland Park neighborhood.

Maybe to be close to the nun, she thought.

Audrey had spent four unhappy years at St. Anne’s, getting finished. She’d needed the finish, with her Red River farm background. And the unhappiness hadn’t counted for much, since she couldn’t ever remember being happy. She’d plowed through her courses, a smart, reasonably pretty brunette, and had carefully weeded out the likely husband prospects from St. James’s-St. James’s College for Blond Catholic Boys.

Wilson McDonald had been the result of her four years of winnowing.

On the southwest side of the campus, the residence squatted in sooty obscurity. A near-cube built of red brick like most of the other buildings on campus, it housed the declining numbers of the sisterhood of nuns who ran St. Anne’s. The newspaper article, "The Pals of Lucas Davenport," had mentioned that Sister Mary Joseph lived on campus, and continued to wear the traditional black habit on public occasions, including the classroom, though she sometimes went out in civilian clothing when working in area hospitals.

Audrey had never seen her in anything but traditional dress, and wasn’t sure she’d recognize her in civilian clothing. Still, she thought, she could pick her out.

Audrey parked on the street, and after sittingfor a moment in the dark, looking up and down, she got out, leaving her purse but carrying her cell phone, the dowel rod held by her side. She walked to the Residence along the sidewalk, and, in the dark space between streetlights, turned into the parking lot and moved quickly to the far corner of the building. She stood there, between two tall junipers, an arm’s length from the ivy-twined walls- the bare ivy like a net of ropes and strings climbing the bricks-and listened. She could hear voices, but far away; and a snatch of classical music from somewhere. More the feel of the conversation than the actual words and notes. The parking lot itself held only a dozen cars, most of them nunlike-black and simple; along with a few civilian cars.

She remembered this moment from the other times. The moment before commitment, when she could still back away, when, if discovered, she hadn’t done anything. The moment where she could wave and say, "Oh, hello, I was a bit confused here, I’m just trying to find my way."

And the thrill came from piercing that moment, going through it, getting into the zone of absolute commitment.

She took the phone from her jacket pocket, and punched the numbers in the eerie green glow of the phone’s information screen.

"St. Anne’s Residence." A young woman’s voice. Audrey had done this very job, answering the phone as a student volunteer, two nights a week for a semester, six o’clock to midnight.

"Yes, this is Janice Brady at Midway Hospital. We have a family-emergency call for a Sister Mary Joseph…"

"I think Sister is in chapel…"

The chapel was in the Residence basement. "Could you get her please? We have an injured gentleman asking for her."

"Uh, just a moment. Actually, it’ll be two or three minutes."

"I’ll hold…"

Then she heard more voices, close by. A man came around the corner, said something, laughed, walked into the parking lot.

Shit. This could ruin everything…

The man waved, walked to a car, fumbled with his keys, got in. Sat for a moment. Then started the engine, turned on the lights, and drove to the street.

And Sister Mary Joseph was there: "Hello?" Curiosity in her voice.

"Is this Sister Mary Joseph, a psychologist at St. Anne’s College?"

"Yes, it is…"

"There’s been a shooting incident, and one of the victims asked that you be notified. An Officer Lucas Davenport.""Oh no! How bad is he?"

"He’s in surgery. I really don’t have any more information; a priest on the staff has been notified-we assumed he was Catholic."

"Yes, he is. Is the priest doing extreme unction?"

"No, Officer Davenport is in surgery, but we thought a priest should be notified; it’s purely routine in these cases…"

"I’ll be right there."

"If you will check with the information desk at the front entrance, not the emergency entrance, you will be directed to the surgical waiting area."

And the nun dropped the phone on the hook.

Audrey braced herself against the wall.If the nun came out the main entrance, the entrance closest to the parking lot, and headed straight toward the lot, she’d pass Audrey at little more than an arm’s length. Audrey would have only a moment to determine if she was alone. If she wasn’t, Audrey would follow her to Midway Hospital and try there-the nun would have to walk some distance to the main entrance, and would probably be dropped off.

She was rehearsing it all in her mind when she heard the main door open. No voices, just the clank of the push bar on the door, and the door opening. Three seconds later, a woman in a black habit swept by, and down the walk. Audrey instinctively knew she was alone: she was moving too quickly, with too much focus, to be with another person. Audrey swung out from behind the junipers, her heart gone to stone in her chest, a step and a half behind the nun.

And she struck, like an axman taking a head.

The heavy rod hit the nun on the side of the head, glanced off, hit the nun’s shoulder; the woman sagged, her knees buckling, one hand going to the ground. She started to turn.

And Audrey struck her again, this time full on the head, and the nun pitched forward on her face… Audrey lifted the dowel rod, her teeth bared, her breathing heavy, and struck at the nun’s head again, but from a bad angle: the rod this time bounced off the side of the nun’s head and into her shoulder.

With building fury, with the memory of all these decades of slights and slurs against her, with the thought of all the people who’d held her back and down, with her father, her mother, with all the others, Audrey struck again and again, hitting the nun’s neck and back and shoulder…

And heard the clank of the door again, froze, looked wildly around-nowhere to run, not at this instant, this was the very worst moment for an interruption-and stepped back in the shadow of the junipers. The girl came around the corner no more than a second later, saw the nun, said, "Sister!" and bent over her.

And Audrey struck at her, hitting the girl on the back of the head. Like the nun, the girl pitched forward, onto her face. Audrey hit her again, and again, breathing hard now. Stopped, hovered over the two motionless women for an instant, jabbed at the nun’s leg with the end of the dowel rod, got no response, then scuttled away. Around the corner, onto the sidewalk, down the sidewalk to the car. Nobody on the sidewalk. Inside the car, dowel rod on the floor-a sudden touch of panic: she felt her pocket. Yes! The phone was there-and the car started and she eased away from the curb.

This was always the hardest part, staying cool after an attack. With her heart beating an impossible rhythm, Audrey drove slowly off the campus, to the Mississippi, left to the bridge and across to Minneapolis.

She stopped once, on a dark street, to throw the dowel rod down a sewer. She went on, dropped the cotton gloves one at a time out the window. She hadn’t seen any blood from either of the women, but it had been dark: she should burn these clothes, or get rid of them, anyway.

That would have to wait-she could wash them tonight, immediately-and throw them out tomorrow.

But now, there was more to do.

Twenty minutes later, headlights on, she pulled into her driveway, and into the darkened garage. She dropped the garage door, groped to the kitchen entrance, went inside and flipped on the light.

Upstairs, she took off her clothes, inspected them closely. Nothing she could see. Still, they’d go in the washing machine. She picked up the phone: no messages. Good.

She dialed, got Helen: "Hello?"

"Helen… I just… can’t sleep," she said, her voice crumbling. "I hate to bother you, have you come over here, but I’m just so blue, I’m just lying here thinking about Wilson." She began to weep, a bubbling, pathetic wail. "Help me."

"Oh God, hang on, Audrey, I’ll be right there."

"And H-Helen… b-b-bring a few of those Prozacs. Maybe they would help. I’ve got to try something."

"I’ll be right there. Hang on."

She hung up, satisfied. Cleared her face, gathered her clothes for the wash. She might not ever need the Prozac, she might not ever need Helen coming up the drive with her lights on, to muddy any witness statements-but who knew what the future might hold? Better to work all the possibilities now, than to regret it later.

She thought about the nun, lying on the sidewalk.

Wonder if she’s dead?

She never thought about the other woman at all; the other woman was irrelevant.