John Sandford - Secret Prey

Lucas looked after her as she left: What was this all about?

Lucas and Sloan stopped at a Greasy Spoon on the way home, Lucas following Sloan out in separate cars. As they walked inside, Sloan said, "What if the sister did it?"

Lucas shook his head: "No way."

"Why not?"

"She was too young to kill her old man; I don’t care if he was groping her. But the big thing is, why would she ever risk calling attention to that whole string of killings?

Even if she blamed them on McDonald, there was always the possibility that McDonald would be able to prove that he didn’t do it… and if he could prove he couldn’t do any one of them, then all of them would be in question. Nope. Whoever killed these people-Audrey-is too smart to have called attention to them."

"But what… what if she saw Wilson McDonald going down, and shot Kresge specifically to pull McDonald down, so that Audrey would get his money? And then, when you get on top of Audrey, she decides to sacrifice Audrey? I mean, what if she’s three layers back, waiting for Audrey to die in prison? Or even planning to poison her if she’s acquitted?"

"No fuckin’ way," Lucas said. "You gotta know the people."

They found a booth, ordered beer and fries: "She scared the shit out of me, man. And I’ll tell you what, Glass was looking at that tape machine like it was solid gold," Sloan said. "Anybody who listens to that tape is gonna believe her too. Like a jury."

Lucas shook his head again: "Not if they listen to Helen at the same time. Helen is just… an innocent. She picked up on McDonald because the pattern became so clear to her over the years. She talked to them often enough that she knew when a promotion was up, and then she’d read about some guy from the bank being killed, and then it’d turn out to be a guy in McDonald’s department. Nope. She even waited longer than she should have. And why in God’s name would she offer her mother’s hair? If she knew her mother had been poisoned…"

They ran over it for another hour, building the case against Audrey. In the end, Sloan said, "You’ll have to admit, most of it could be built the other way."

"Naw: jury’d never go for it. And remember, she killed her old man."

Sloan shook his head. "Just wish there was some way to pry the sisters apart. Put one of them in Kansas while somebody’s getting killed in Minnesota."

As Lucas put the beer bottle to his mouth, the light went off in his head: "Oh, shit," he said, the bottle frozen in front of his face.

"What?"

"In the Arris killing. We never looked at that tape for women."

"Huh. Where’s the tape?"

"My place. St. Paul gave me a copy of it, and I left it at my place."

"Can I come along?"

They stuck the tape in Lucas’s VCR, and the bad picture came up on the screen. They watched Arris go by, followed by several women, and then, a minute later, another woman, walking rigidly down the hill. "There she is," Lucas said.

"That’s fuckin’ Helen," Sloan said.

"No, no, that’s fuckin’ Audrey," said Lucas. He ran the tape back. "Look at the way she walks."

"Looks like fuckin’ Helen to me."

"Remember, this is eight years ago. Audrey’d be thirty. Helen would only be in her mid-twenties… They look alike, but that woman is not twenty-six."

Sloan was on his hands and knees, peering at the screen. "Goddamn. Could be Audrey."

"Is Audrey," Lucas said.

"Selling it to a jury’ll be hard," Sloan said. "You’ll get one dumb shit on there who’ll believe nothing but his own eyes, and his eyes’ll say it’s Helen."

"I wonder if we can get this enhanced somehow," Lucas said. "Maybe the Feebs?"

"I don’t know… Tell you the truth, if there was a way to ditch the tape, I’d do it. It confuses things. But now that I keep looking at it, I think you’re right. She moves like Audrey does. She scuttles ."

The phone rang as they ran through the tape one last time. Sherrill. "Did you get her?"

"Yeah, I think-but it’s gonna be a close call," Lucas said.

"You want me to come over and comfort you?"

He didn’t, especially, but he said, "Come on over."

"Nah. You don’t sound like you mean it," she said. "Tomorrow night, though."

And she was gone.

"Fuckin’ cop-women," Lucas said.

"That’s what you’re doing," Sloan agreed.

"Fuckin’ was an adjective, not a verb," Lucas said.

"Could’ve been a verb," Sloan said.

Sloan left, and Lucas sat in his study for a while, doodling, running through the case in his mind, looking for loose ends. He didn’t find many, except to note that they’d have to reinterview half the people who worked at the bank. They’d have to find witnesses who saw Audrey McDonald firing the Contender pistol; they’d have to find witnesses who would testify about promotions, and who was competitive for them…

He finally trundled off to bed, lay restlessly for a while, finally fell asleep.

In the morning, he moved sluggishly around, looked at the clock: already nine. He dressed, stopped at a fast-food place for French toast, then headed downtown. He called the county attorney’s office and got Kirk.

"Had the bail hearing yet?"

"Yeah. The judge was a wee bit skeptical about the arsenic. J. B. did a pretty nice job. We got the bail up to a million, but she was ready for it."

"She’s out?"

"Twenty minutes ago," Kirk said.

"How about the arrest warrant on her mother?" "We’re slowing down on that. J. B. brought up this stuff about the old house they used to live in, and we heard about this business with her sister, so we’re gonna have the house checked and depose the sister. I mean, we’ve got her on a million, I don’t think she’ll run."

Sherrill dropped by at midmorning, carrying a doughnut and two cups of coffee. "She’s out, I hear."

"Yeah," Lucas said in disgust. "I’ll tell you what: if she was a black guy with a record, she’d be washing dishes in Stillwater by now."

"Sloan told me about that whole rap about her sister: that’s pretty weird."

"Yeah, I don’t understand that," Lucas said. "It’s a fucked-up defense. You put Helen on the stand, the truth is gonna come out."

"You don’t think there’s any chance that Audrey’s telling the truth? That it’s Helen?"

"No, I don’t."

"The one thing that’s hard for me to get over is her appearance," Sherrill said. "She’s only five years older than me…"

"Really? I thought you were sixteen…"

"Shut up. I’m being serious. The thing is, if you take the attack on Elle, where somebody beat her up with a ball bat, who do you think would be most likely to do that? Helen, who looks pretty active, pretty good shape, still young? Or Audrey, who looks old, slumped over?"

"Whatever she looks like, she’s only thirty-eight," Lucas said. "She-"

He stopped, put a hand to his forehead. "What?" Sherrill asked. "A stroke?"

"Aw, man," Lucas said. He picked up the phone book, talking fast: "I think this might have gone through my head the night we were at St. Anne’s, the night Elle got hit, but it went away; it’s like it was a stroke…"

"What, what?"

"If Elle takes the phone call, and grabs her keys, and runs out the door and gets jumped… whoever called her must’ve been standing right there. Must’ve been calling from the bushes. Must’ve used a cell phone, not a pay phone. All the other tips we’ve had have come from pay phones, it must’ve blocked me off or something…"

Sherrill snapped her fingers: "Phone records."

"Absolutely."

The man who could get the records was away, but was expected back before lunch. In the meantime, the company would try to reach him, to hurry things up.

Lucas said to Sherrill, "If this pans out, she’s dead meat."