John Sandford - Secret Prey

She hadn’t bought any gold, but she’d found the tour interesting.

A tall, bony redheaded woman was working at the desk, looked up and said a cheery "Hello" as Audrey tentatively poked her nose through the door.

"Hello. Are the shops open?"

"Sure. Go on down. Do you know…?"

"Yes. I’ve been here before."

Audrey scuttled away down the wing, walked past the open fire door that led to the smelting area, slowed, looked inside. A sign beside the door said, "Please come in and watch; but please be quiet."

One man was working at an exhaust hood; three other hoods were vacant. He looked up, focused on her.

"I’m sorry," she said. "Is it… okay?"

"Sure. Come on in. I’m just smelting a little gold, here." She walked in with her purse clutched in front of her, an old lady. She’d have to work on this image, a little, she thought. If she got in the newspapers, perhaps she should look younger…

The goldsmith had gone back to his work, a small crucible that he worked with a torch; she couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but didn’t particularly care. She wasn’t interested in goldwork. With her eyes fixed on the torch, she drifted to another one of the exhaust hoods. The table beside it was empty. Goddamnit. She passed behind him, now looking around at the equipment, then turned so she could watch him from the other side. He was vaguely aware of her, she thought, but he was used to being watched, and paid no real attention.

She moved up to the next exhaust hood, and saw the bottle.

That was it. She stood next to the table, and when he momentarily turned away, his back more toward her, she reached carefully out, picked it up, and slipped it into her coat pocket. It was small, no bigger than a shotgun shell or an old iodine bottle. With the bottle in her hand, she moved closer to him.

"Very interesting," she said finally, as he finished a small pour into what looked like a lump of plaster.

"Simple enough, after you’ve done it awhile," he said.

She had no idea of what was going on, said, "Thank you," and still looking carefully around the smelting room, drifted out the door. She stopped at two of the shops, looking at their small display cases. Then, glancing at her watch-it was already past ten o’clock-she headed for the door.

"Have a nice day," the redhead said, as she left.

You betcha .

Twenty minutes later, after a quick stop at a drugstore to buy a pack of razor blades, she fixed the pill in the parking lot of a Burger King. First, she took one of the Prozac capsules she’d gotten from Helen, carefully pulled the cap apart, spilled the drug into the palm of her hand and flicked it out the car window. Then she took out the bottle she’d stolen from the Gold Bug and looked at it. The simple label said, CAUTION , and below that, in small letters, Sodium Cyanide . And below that, Poison: If ingested, get physician’s help immediately. For industrial use only .

When the club ladies had visited the gold workshop, one of the goldsmiths had joked about using the cyanide to purify recycled gold. The same stuff Hitler’s boys had used to kill themselves, he’d said. She hadn’t known exactly what he was talking about-purifying the gold-but she remembered what he’d said about Hitler’s boys.

The cyanide was an off-white powder, innocent enough. She poured a little on the sandwich box, cut it up with the razor blade, then carefully refilled the Prozac cap with the cyanide. Then she slipped the top back on the cap: not bad. If you looked at it closely, it wasn’t quite right. But who looked at pills that closely?

She wrapped the pill in a napkin and put it on the car seat; the sandwich box she carried to a trash can and pushed it inside. A pay phone hung on the wall just inside the Burger King door, and she went in and dialed Helen’s number. Helen should be working, Connie should be at school. No answer. As a double check, she got the number of the auto parts place from directory assistance, called, and asked for Helen. Helen answered a second later, and Audrey clicked off as soon as she recognized her sister’s voice.

Helen’s house was no more than ten minutes away. If she tried to do something subtle, to sneak in, she’d probably draw more attention in the neighborhood than if she barged right in. She parked on the street, waited until she could see no one on the sidewalk, then hurried up the walk, through the outer porch, and rang the doorbell. No answer. She leaned on it the next time, ringing for a solid minute. Nothing.

Good.

She took her keys from her purse, found the key for Helen’s house, opened the door and went inside. The house was deathly quiet. She went straight through to Helen’s bedroom, to the corner where she kept her computer. Switched it on, took the floppy disk from her pocket, went to the My Documents folder. Helen had written a note to herself two months earlier, but the computer would update the time to show the last entry. Audrey slipped the floppy in the drive, brought up the text she’d written that morning, pasted it into the earlier note. Then she cut the text of the note itself, and checked her work.

If I die … the note began.

I’m sorry about everything! I killed those people, not Audrey! But Audrey was my only support, and I had to do something if Wilson was going to move up at the bank! If Wilson had lost his job all those years ago, what would have happened to Connie and me? Without the money from Audrey, we would have been on the street! My former "husband" is good for NOTHING!!! But I didn’t kill Mr. Kresge! I think that must have been an accident! And Chief Davenport, if somebody shows this to you, yes, I called you. I could no longer stand the way Wilson was treating Audrey! I was afraid he would kill her! I thought you would do an investigation and his treatment of her would come out and nobody would ever know it was me that called you, and Audrey could keep helping me, because now, if they got divorced, she’d get all kinds of money! Connie-I love you. You go stay with your aunt Audrey, because she really loves you. I’m sorry for all of this!!

And at the bottom of the note, she’d left all the fragments of sentences that she’d pushed while editing: I fearedilling heraaacidentkill treeting Wil;slon Mister Kresge Without money I got from Audrey .

It would, she hoped, look like a practice note; she was especially proud of all the exclamation points. Helen used them everywhere, as though they were periods.

She closed the file, shut down the machine, put the disk in her purse, and headed for the bedroom. Helen carried a pill case with a chiming clock to remind her to take the pills; she took one at noon every day. The Prozac bottle itself she kept in the bedroom, in her bureau drawer. Audrey found the bottle, unscrewed the top, looked inside. A dozen pills. Carefully unwrapping the cyanide pill in the napkin, she let it drop on top of the pills in the bottle, and replaced the bottle, shut the drawer.

Out of the house: she’d been inside no more than ten minutes, she thought. As she drove away, she moved in the car seat and felt the cyanide bottle in her pocket. She should ditch it somewhere, she thought. But she liked the idea of it. A bottle of death. She thought about it for a while, then stopped in a park, where a thin shell of woods surrounded a small drainage lake. She stepped just inside the tree line,picked out a good-sized oak, walked over to it and sat down. Probed the ground with her car key: Damn. Frozen.

She looked around, spotted a culvert protruding from the edge of an embankment. She walked over to it, pushed the bottle well under the culvert. The bottle should be safe for years, she thought. Did cold weather affect cyanide? She had no idea.