John Sandford - Certain prey

'I'd rather have them ask me about it,' Lucas said. 'I don't want it to be an obvious plant. Rumors are better than actual stories. In fact, if the newsies hear about it, I'll probably deny it.'

'Refuse to comment,' Sherrill said. 'That always makes their little weenies hard.'

Carmel heard about it almost immediately. 'They're what?'

'They're tying you to Louise Clark. If they can tie you to her, you could be in trouble.'

'But I didn't do anything,' she said with asperity.

'Yeah, well, whatever. Listen, things are getting a little warm around here. I'm getting out of the information business for a while, okay?'

'You mean, "Don't call,'" Carmel said.

'I'm not trying to be an asshole, but they're pulling out all the stops. They've got a half-dozen guys working on it. Davenport told somebody that they'll have you inside by the end of the week.'

'That's absurd.'

'I thought you'd want to know… so I'm signing off, okay? This last one's a freebie.'

'Fuck your freebie,' Carmel snarled.

Black found an invitation to a lawyer's Halloween Ball organized by members of several downtown firms. A photo of four of the women who organized the ball, including Carmel, was on the back of the program, and Louise Clark's name was in the list of people who'd volunteered to help out.

'What you should do,' Lucas told Black, after he'd seen the photo, 'Is get in touch with these other women, and ask them about the relationship between Carmel and Clark. How closely did they work together? That kind of thing.'

'I think Clark was probably a flunky – Xeroxed the invitations, or something.'

'That's fine, but ask anyway,' Lucas said. 'One of the people you ask will call Carmel, and tell her you're asking.. .'

Then Sherrill came up with a strong tie, one that surprised everybody: Louise

Clark's phone records showed two calls to Carmel Loan's unlisted home phone in the week before Clark was killed. Both calls were late at night.

'I can't think why they would be talking – why Clark would be calling her. But it's an amazing tie,' Sherrill said.

'It's almost enough by itself,' Lucas said. 'You know what? I want you to go over and brace Carmel about this, face-to-face. Tell her it's part of the Clark investigation, and we just want the question answered… no big deal.'

Carmel's face was the color of her fabulous bloody-red silk scarf: 'She never called,' Carmel shouted. 'She never called.'

'Ms. Loan, somebody called – from her house to yours. This isn't bullshit – this is the list straight from the phone company. I brought a Xerox copy for you.'

Sherrill was sitting in front of Carmel's desk, and she unfolded the Xerox and pushed across the leather desk pad. '… and you can call the phone company yourself, if you don't think this is accurate.'

Carmel snatched the Xerox copy from the desk, looked at the two underlined phone calls. She shook her head angrily, said, 'No. This is…' But then she trailed off, and her head swung sideways and down, a pensive look crossing her face.

'You know what this is?' she asked finally, looking up at Sherrill. 'That sonofabitch was calling me from her house. He was sleeping with me three nights a week, and when we weren't together, he was sneaking over to her place.'

Sherrill looked doubtful: 'Well…' She stood up. 'If you say so.'

'That's what it is,' Carmel shouted, shaking the Xerox copy in Sherrill's face.

Lucas was not amused by the story. He shook his head, fiddled with a sport-coat button. 'I'm starting to feel sorry for her,' he said. 'Almost.'

'My question is, where are you going with this? I mean, exactly where?' Sherrill asked.

They were alone in Lucas' office, streetlights coming on outside the single window; a soft glow lingered in the sky. A perfect summer night, a night for walking around the lakes, Sherrill thought. Lucas said, 'You're the only one who knows about the shell I found in her bedroom closet.'

'Unless you told somebody else,' Sherrill said.

'No. It's just you and me,' Lucas said. He pulled out the typewriter tray on the top corner of his desk, leaned back in his chair and put his feet up. 'But something happened to get that shell in there. Somebody dropped a box of shells, somebody ejected a shell and didn't pick it up, or somebody was punching a bunch of shells into a clip and fumbled them… If Carmel sees me find a shell there, and if I find it in just the right circumstances, I think she'd come after it. Either her, or the shooter.'

'You mean like… any shell.'

'Sure. Any shell. Any. 22. Whatever happened to get that shell in the closet,

Carmel will know about. If I find a shell in the closet, she'll know she's fucked. Especially if she hears about the scratches on the back of Rolo's hand and our other corroborating evidence, whatever it might be.'

'What'll she do?'

'Suppose I find the shell on a Friday night. Suppose everybody has left her apartment, except me, and I find the shell while I'm taking a last look around.

I know where I found the original, so I'll find this one in exactly the same place. I show it to her, and she claims I planted it, or whatever. And I say,

"The only shells I have to plant are already fired. If we get a metallurgical match on these slugs and some of the killer slugs, Carmel, you're all done." And then I tell her I know she's involved… from the phone messages, or something.'

'And…'

'And I say, "We'll let you know first thing Monday morning." Then I put the shell in a baggie, and I leave. I go home. Drive slow, give her a chance to catch me. And we put a net around the house, and I hang around.. .'

Sherrill frowned. 'You think she'd come after it?'

'If she knows that it'll match. And she probably knows that. If we give her the whole weekend to stew about it.'

'Boy. The whole thing smells a little like entrapment.'

'Look, you and I know she's involved,' Lucas said. 'If she comes after me, then we've got her. If you try to entrap somebody, and their response is to shoot you

… I mean, you can't defend yourself against entrapment with attempted murder.

And, in fact, we can outline some of this to the other guys – tell them that we're trying to lure the killer in. That we'd never use the fake shell. That way, we avoid the entrapment charge.'

'But we won't tell them that there once was a real shell.'

'No…'

'It's getting trickier by the minute.'

'Mmmm. Be nice if we could find a few more things to tie Clark to Carmel…'

'Well, hell, we're inventing the shell, and the whole relationship, we could invent a few ties, too,' Sherrill said. 'Like… suppose we find out where she took a vacation, and we leak the word that Clark took a vacation there at the same time. There's no way for Carmel to know that she didn't.'

'I hope this is getting through to her,' Lucas said. 'I hope her leak in the department's still good.'

'We need to write a script,' Sherrill suggested. 'When we get the warrant for her apartment, we could drop all of these little nuggets. You could say something, I could drop something, Sloan…'

Lucas nodded, looked at his watch. 'Good idea -think of some stuff. And I'll think of some. But right now, I've got to go to the Reality Commission, we're talking about non-certifiable minorities tonight.' He thumped the Report which sat on one side of his desk. He was on page four hundred and thirty.

'Non-certifiable… what is that?'

'Well, you know: minorities that don't fit into racial, handicapped, sexual determinant, age-determinant, religious, ethnic, or national-origin groups.'

'Jeez, I would have thought that covered everything.'

'Oh, no. There was a case in Wisconsin of a white, Episcopalian male in his early thirties, non-handicapped, heterosexual, English heritage. ..'