John Sandford - Secret Prey

"Because we’ve got things to think about," she said. "We don’t have time for you to get drunk. We have to figure out what to do with Kresge dead."

"I already got his job," he said, with unconcealed satisfaction.

"What?" She was astonished. Was he that drunk?

"O’Dell and Bone agreed I could have it," he said.

"You mean… you’re the CEO?"

"Well… the board has to meet," he said, his voice slurring. "But I’ve already been dealing with the PR people, putting out press releases…"

She rolled her eyes. "You mean they let you fill in until the board meets."

"Well, I think that positions me…"

"Oh, for Christ’s sake, Wilson, grow up," she said. "And go put some pants on. You look like a pig."

"You shut the fuck-"

He came at her again and she pitched the vodka at his eyes. As he flinched, she turned and ran back into the living room, looked around, spotted a crystal paperweight on the piano, picked it up. Wilson had gotten the paperweight at a Senior Tour pro-am. When he came through the doorway after her, she lifted it and said, "You try to hit me again and I swear to God I’ll brain you with this thing."

He stopped. He looked at her, and at the paperweight, then stepped closer; she backed up a step and said, " Wilson."

"All right," he said. "I don’t want to fight. And we gotta talk."

He looked in the corner, at the liquor cabinet, started that way.

"You can’t have any more…"

She started past him and he moved, quickly, grabbed her hand with the paperweight, bent it, and she screamed, "Don’t. Wilson, don’t."

"Drop it, drop it…" He was a grade school bully, twisting the arm of a little kid. She dropped the weight, and it hit the carpet with a thump.

"Gonna fuckin’ hit me with my paperweight," he said, jerking her upright. "Gonna fuckin’ hit me."

He slapped her again, hard, and she felt something break open inside her mouth. He slapped her again, and she twisted, screaming now. Slapped her a third time and she fell, and he let her go, and when she tried to crawl away, kicked her in the hip and she went down on her face.

"Bitch. Hit me with, hit me, fuckin’ bitch…" He went to the liquor cabinet, opened it, found another bottle. She dragged herself under the Steinway, and he stopped as though he was going to go in after her, but he stumbled, bumped his head on the side of the piano, caught himself, said, "I’m the goddamned CEO," and headed back up the stairs to the tub, his fat butt bobbling behind him.

Audrey sat under the piano for a while, weeping by herself, and finally crawled out to a telephone, picked it up, and punched a speed-dialer.

"Hello?" Her sister, Helen, cheerful, inquiring.

"Helen? Could you come get me?"

Helen recognized the tone. "Oh, Jesus, what happened?"

"Wilson’s drunk. He beat me up again. I think I better get out of the house."

"Oh, my God, Aud, I’ll be right there… hang on, hang on…"

Lucas arrived at the office late Monday morning, neatly dressed, neatly shaved, dead tired. The simpler things in life could be done on automatic pilot: take the clothes to the cleaners, shower, shave, and eat. Anything more complicated was difficult. Exercise took energy, and a heavy workout was impossible after a month without sleep.

He’d been the route before. The last time over the edge, he hadn’t recognized what was happening, hadn’t seen it coming, and it’d almost killed him. This time the process felt slightly different. He could feel it out there-the depression, the breakdown, the unipolar disorder, whatever the new correct name for it was-but it didn’t seem to be marching on him with the same implacable darkness as last time.

Maybe he could fight it off, he thought. But he still dreaded the bed. The minute his head touched the pillow, the brainstorm would begin. Sleep would come only with exhaustion, and then not until after daylight…

In the winter just past, Weather Karkinnen, the woman he’d been about to marry, had been taken hostage by a killer looking for revenge against Lucas. Weather had managed her attacker: she’d talked him into surrender. She’d given him guarantees. But nobody on the outside knew.

When Lucas closed his eyes at night, he could see the two of them walking down the narrow hospital corridor toward him, Weather in front, Dick LaChaise using her as a shield, with a pistol to her head. He could also feel the pressure at his back, where a hidden police sniper, a kid from Iowa, was looking at LaChaise through a rifle scope.

Lucas’s job was to talk the gun away from Weather’s head, if only for half a second. If he could just get LaChaise to move the muzzle… And he did. The Iowa kid was cold as ice: Dick LaChaise’s head had been pulped by the mushrooming.243 slug.

Weather, whose face was only inches away from La-Chaise, had been showered with bone, brain, and blood. She had recovered, in most ways. She could work; she could even forget about it, most of the time. Unless she saw Lucas. They tried to pull the relationship back together, but three months after Dick LaChaise died in a hospital hallway, she was gone.

Gone for good, he believed.

And Lucas was staring into the darkness again.

"Hey, Lucas?"

Lucy Ghent, a secretary, was calling down the hall from the chief’s office door. She was one of the older women in the office, who competed with her peers on hairdos. "Chief Roux is down in Identification. She wants to see you right away."

"Trouble?"

Ghent flopped a hand, dismissively. "Just… weirdness."

Rose Marie Roux was sitting at a cluttered desk in Identification, chewing Nicorette, paging through a document Lucas recognized as the departmental budget. She looked up when Lucas came in and said, "I swear to God, if you killed the smartest guy on the city council, the average IQ in Minneapolis would go up two points. Don’t quote me."

"What happened?"

"The York case."

"Yeah?"

Morris York, two years on the force, found with a halfounce of Mexican bud in a Marlboro box behind his patrol car visor. His marijuana habit had been detected by a departmental mechanic who claimed he was getting a contact high off the car’s upholstery. Internal Affairs made movies of York getting mellow on the job.

"Tommy Gedja says this morning, at the council meeting, if that’s all we’re doing in our cars, why do we need new cars? I think he was serious. I think they’re gonna try to pull twelve cars out from under us."

Lucas shrugged: "Life sucks and then they cut your budget. What’re you doing down here?"

"More budget problems." A piece of white paper, wrapped in a plastic folder, lay on the desk’s otherwise empty typewriter tray. She picked it up and handed it to him. "Came in the mail, first thing this morning."

Dear Chief of Police Roux:

One week ago, Mr. Kresge sent a memo to Susan O’Dell which said that her department would not be allowed to continue with a planned expansion because of budget constraints. Mrs. O’Dell has worked on the expansion for a long time and when she got the memo, her quote was, "God Damn him, I’m going to kill him." There were three people in the room at the time: Sharon Allen (assistant to the vice president), Michelle Stephens (executive secretary), and Randall Moss (assistant head cashier). I can’t tell you my name, but I thought you should know.

"Not much here," Lucas said. He snapped the paper with his index finger. "We could interview Stephens to see how serious she thinks it is. Or if she’s just trying to torpedo O’Dell."

"Stephens?" Roux had the gene that allowed her to lift one eyebrow at a time, and her left brow went up.

Lucas nodded. "She’s probably the one who sent it- sounds like somebody who actually heard O’Dell say it, but she misuses the word ‘quote,’ which means not a lot of education. On the other hand, everything is spelled right, and secretaries spell things right. She’s very aware of titles and refers to Kresge as ‘mister,’ which means she saw him as somebody with a lot more status than she has: not an associate. She wouldn’t put herself first on the list, because that would make her nervous. And an assistant head cashier probably has a college education."