John Sandford - Secret Prey

"What if it’s Helen’s phone?"

"That’d be a problem," Lucas said.

"So we wait?"

"We wait." Lucas looked at his watch. "Shouldn’t be more than an hour or so."

Del stopped in: "I’m being haunted by these old ladies," he said.

"Tell them if they insist on going to jail, they’ll be raped by bull dykes," Sherrill suggested.

"I think some of them are gonna need to be rehabbed," Del said. "They’re all getting different lawyers; there’s gonna be fifty-eight lawyers to deal with."

"Too bad the pinking shears thing wasn’t fatal," Lucas said nastily. "Think how much better off you’d be."

"That’s the truth," Del said sincerely. "Jesus, what a mess."

"When’re you going to Cancu?n?" Sherrill asked.

"In a week," he said. "Hope this is done by then. I’d hate to have it hanging over my head for the whole time I’m down there."

"The thing is,"Sherrill Said, after Del had gone, "what if Helen really loves Audrey-they’ve been through a lot together, and they’re sisters-and decides to help her out? What if we go talk to Helen, and she starts taking the fifth? Audrey gets on the stand, blames everything on Helen, and Helen refuses to talk…"

"I don’t think that would happen. Audrey killed their mother and…"

Lucas trailed off and Sherrill said, "What? Again? Something else?"

"Yeah. What if Helen wasn’t here to defend herself?"

Helen was working at the auto parts place. Lucas found the name in the Yellow Pages, called her. "You’ve got to take time off, and meet us at your house," Lucas said. "I’m sorry, but this is critical for both you and Connie. I’ll talk to your boss if you want."

Lucas took the Porsche. Sherrill, getting the go-ahead from Frank Lester, trailed in a city car. The bomb squad was ten minutes behind her, a crime scene crew a few minutes behind that.

Lucas thought of the lie that Audrey had told during the interrogation, how harsh, straightforward, how honest it seemed. But not unrehearsed. And there was a smugness about her when they came to take her away. She must have known that whatever case she could make against Helen would be denied by Helen, and that Helen’s denials might even be provable in some cases. She may have understood that Helen was simply more believable than she was. She might even have understood that finding a hank of hair with arsenic in it didn’t mean much unless Helen was there to swear that the hair had been taken from her mother…

She must have deduced that the police case rested squarely on Helen; and that if Helen was dead, Audrey had all kinds of defenses available.

And that little spark in her eyes, that smugness at the very end.

She thought Helen was out of it. How would she do it? She’d used firebombs, guns, and poison. Guns were out, because she couldn’t have known that she’d be free. Some kind of bomb was possible. Some kind of poison.

Helen arrived resisted. "I know Audrey. She would never do anything like this. Never. We’ve been together since we were children."

"Mrs. Bell-we’re pretty sure she killed your mother and father…"

"She says she didn’t," Bell said stubbornly.

"We think she did. And if you don’t think there’s any chance, why did you give us that lock of hair?"

"I…"

"Believe what you want," Sherrill said gently. "But just let us look. If we’re wrong, no harm has been done."

No bomb.

The bomb squad went in with sniffer equipment, found nothing. They checked the furnace and gas water heater for tampering or gas leaks. Nothing there either.

"Pills," Lucas said. "What kind of pills do you take? Aspirin? Something in capsules, I think…"

"Prozac," she said. "I take Prozac."

"Where do you keep it?" Sherrill asked.

"In my bedroom."

She got the bottle of Prozac and they poured the pills out on a clean garbage bag on the kitchen table. One of the crime scene techs had a hand glass, and Lucas used it to look at the capsules. After a minute, he shook his head. "I don’t see anything."

"We do have aspirin," she said. "Not in capsules, though."

"We could take a look," Lucas said.

"And I’ve got some antibiotics left over from a cold last winter. And there’re some of those timed cold pills; now those are capsules, I think."

"We’ll take them all," Lucas said. "The problem is, we don’t want anything Connie would take. How about food? Is there any food that is absolutely yours, that Connie wouldn’t eat?"

"I’ve got some of that diet drink, but the cans are sealed…"

"We better take a look," Lucas said.

"Look: I’ve got to get back to work," she said. "Since it’s not a bomb, maybe we could do it this evening?"

"I suppose," Lucas said. "Jesus: it’s gotta be something."

"Unless you’re wrong about her."

"I’m not wrong," Lucas said. "I’ve got…"

He heard the tinny music in the back of his head, but didn’t react until he noticed Helen looking at her purse, a peculiar expression on her face. "What?" he asked.

"That’s my pillbox," she said. "I keep a pillbox in my purse, it’s got a little alarm clock so I always take my pill at the same time every day. I just filled it up this morning."

Lucas picked up the purse, clicked it open, found the pillbox. The box was playing "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean."

"Push the button to stop it," Helen said, as the two guys from the crime scene crew stepped up to Lucas to look at the box. Lucas carried it into the kitchen, dumped it on the garbage bag.

"Gimme the glass," he said.

He spotted the pill in a half-second: "Got it."

"No." Helen didn’t believe it.

"That goddamn pill has been messed with," Lucas said. He handed the glass to the crime scene man. "What do you think?"

The crime scene man squinted through the glass: "And guess what? There’s nothing better in the world than gelatin for picking up a fingerprint."

"There’s a print?" Lucas asked.

"A piece of one, anyway," the crime scene man said. "Gimme a Ziploc, somebody."

"No," Helen said. "No."

They pulled the capsule apart with forks, avoiding what appeared to be a fingerprint smudge. White powder spilled out. Lucas pulled apart one of the Prozac capsules from the bottle. "It’s different stuff," he said.

The lead crime scene tech got down close to the table,an inch from the white powder, barely inhaled, then straightened up, wiping his nose.

"What?" asked Lucas.

"Almonds," the tech said. "That stuff is cyanide."

Lucascalled the County attorney from Helen Bell’s house, told him about the pill: "All right, that’s it," Towson said. "Pick her up. We’ll put her away this time. No bail. No nothing."

Lucas hung up and nodded to Sherrill: "We’re gonna go get her. Want to follow me over?"

"I’ll ride with you," she said. "You can always drop me back here to get the car."

"Let’s go," he said. "We’ll get a squad to meet us there."

Four miles out, Dispatch called and said a man from AT &T Wireless was on the phone.

"Patch him through," Lucas said.

"There’re dozens of calls from that account in the past week," the AT &T man said. "What was the time and date?"

Lucas gave it to him and said, "Look for a 699 prefix."

After a moment’s wait: "Here it is. Here it is, by gosh."

Audrey was talking to a Fidelity account manager when the phone rang in her purse. "I better take that," she said, pleasantly. She was wearing her best, acting the banker’s wife: she wanted to get the money out of Fidelity before some legalism held it up. If she could get the cash and stash it somewhere, she would be good for at least a few years, no matter what else happened.

"Let me get the rest of these numbers," the manager said. She was a young woman dressed in a nice Ann Taylor suit, with a pretty silk scarf, nothing flashy, nothing too expensive. Audrey approved; maybe Fidelity wasn’t throwing her money away on exorbitant salaries.