John Sandford - Phantom prey

Lucas tried the back door; locked. “Punch it twice, maybe…” Del punched it again and the lights flashed twice and Lucas felt and heard the lock pop. Lucas took a flashlight out of his pocket, took a last look around, and turned it on. The back of the truck was neat as a pin, with a long plastic storage box on one side, and a couple of plastic milk crates on the other. No trace of oil, of any kind, on the carpeted floor, no painter’s plastic sheets or any painting equipment.

Lucas leaned inside and pulled the latch of the storage box, looked inside. Camping equipment: sleeping bag in a stuff sack, stove kit, nylon pop-up bivy bag, pots and pans in a nylon bag, a bundle of socks, a big Ziploc bag stuffed with fabric, with the word “thermal” written on the outside of the bag with a Sharpie-long underwear. One of the plastic crates held a variety of rubber- soled shoes that might have been climbing shoes; the other held two pairs of hiking boots.

Del had gone in the side door, to look through the various front end storage bins: “Anything?”

“Nothing that shouldn’t be here,” Del said. “He’s tidy. He’s organized.”

Lucas took a long look around, said, “Let’s go,” and they shut the doors quietly and walked away.

“Got to give it to you-the key worked perfectly,” Lucas said. “Except for the fact that we got nothing,” Del said. “Except for that.”

Alyssa Austin sat barefoot in a big black- leather easy chair with her feet pulled up under her, her legs folded to the right, thinking about Frank Willett. Davenport knew that the four murders were linked, but didn’t know that they were linked through Alyssa.

If Frank had killed Frances, she thought, he had essentially killed the other three as well, by destabilizing her mind. If he were convicted of one, or of all four, it’d make no difference under Minnesota law. There was no death penalty, but there was a minimum sentence for first- degree murder, of thirty years. He wouldn’t get out, in any case. Not until he was almost seventy.

The car, Loren whispered. “Go away,” Alyssa said. Loren had been flickering in the mirrors around the house, like a weak over- the- air signal on an old television. She’d fought it at first, but had then grown tired of fighting. Let him-or whatever brain cells were misfiring to produce him-do as he wished. At times, he acted as an effective foil for her thoughts.

“I can’t go away. You’re my only chance,” he said. His voice became louder, clearer, whenever she acknowledged him. “I’m having trouble holding myself together-but you need me. You need me to talk to. To plan. You need the Fairy, too.”

They’d begun referring to Alyssa’s shadow aspect as the Fairy, because that’s what Davenport called her. “Why would I need her?” Alyssa asked.

“Because she does some things better than you do,” Loren said. “She kills better than you-you can’t kill at all. She does it quite easily. She comprises aspects of your real personality that you’ve repressed over the years. She was there when you were swimming, and winning, but all that mushy New Age shit pushed her under.”

“We’re all done with the killing,” Alyssa said. Loren was fully formed now, a man all in black, speaking from the mirror above the antique chest where they kept the board games and playing cards. “Maybe, but maybe not,” Loren said. “You made a big mistake when you brought Davenport into the picture. Fairy and I had it under control.”

“You had nothing under control,” Alyssa snapped. “You murdered those people; as far as I know, they had nothing to do with Frances.”

“Of course they did,” Loren shot back. “A spirit on this side pointed at the photograph, and now, I have to assume, I know, that it must have been her spirit. Who else would care? Willett may have killed her, but the others were involved. It was all part of a conspiracy. If only you could let go completely, we might be able to set up a line with Frances, if she’s not already gone on the boat.”

“Oh, God, go away.” She waved him off with the back of her hand. “Wait, wait, wait. We need to talk about Fairy. You need to talk about Fairy,” he said. “You are Fairy. You can let her out. You can free her and then put her back; but she’s more than you are, and you need her. Especially now, with the police sniffing around. You’ve got that car to deal with. You can’t forget about the car, you can’t let it go. And you’ve still got Frank Willett to deal with-what are you going to do about him? Fairy can work that out."

"You want her out, because she’ll let you out of the mirror,” Alyssa said.

“That’s true. She will-you will. If you let her out, if you relate to her, then, I think after a time, you’d integrate. You’d be both Alyssa and Fairy, with no conflict- she’d almost be like a strong mood,” Loren said. “Alyssa: you need her.”

Alyssa rolled off the chair and walked into the kitchen, got a single serving can of V8 out of the refrigerator, poured it into a wineglass, added a sprinkling of black pepper. Loren was there, in the kitchen, but only in fragments, in wisps of movements seen in the reflective parts of cabinet knobs and chrome sink fixtures. She looked out the kitchen window at the lake: late afternoon, the sun in the west, and the ice was like a slab of lead. She carried the glass of juice back to the black chair and closed her eyes and sipped it, and thought:

She had to get rid of the car. She had to help Davenport get at Willett. “Let her out,” Loren said. “Let Fairy out."

"How?” No real problem: sit in the big chair, legs crossed, eyes closed, relax

Fairy flowed into her. “There you are,” Loren said. “Not entirely,” Fairy said. “Alyssa’s here, too.” Fairy reached out to the surface of the mirror, pulled him through. He was wearing black slacks, a black silk shirt with a dark sport coat, and pointed black Italianate shoes. He followed her to the easy chairs and took one, opposite her, as she curled into the chair.

“Ideas?” he asked. “The car’s a problem because it’s soaked in blood,” Fairy said. “We can’t sell it, we can’t abandon it-they could find a few of my hairs in there, or something, along with the blood. If they do the DNA, they’ll connect us.”

“So we have to burn it,” Loren said. “That’s my feeling. We’ve got gas out in the garage. If we splashed five or ten gallons of gas inside it, it would burn right down to the wheels. Alyssa looked it up on Google.”

Alyssa flowed back. “As soon as I read about burning it, I tried to figure out ways to do it. But there are all these stupid problems. Like, how do I get home without witnesses?”

How to get home without catching a ride, without a cabdriver? She could, she thought, drop the car someplace where it could sit for a day or two, without being noticed, then drive in, set it on fire, and drive away. Maybe that would obscure a taxi connection. But then, what about surveillance cameras wherever she left it? What if somebody noticed it had been parked for a long time, and then checked it. What if she bumped into somebody she knew?

“That sounds like Alyssa talking,” Loren said. “It is,” Alyssa said. Fairy came back, speaking to Alyssa: “You know, honey, there aren’t any guarantees-and you’re making this way too complicated. You think we’ve got to get the car far away from here, but we don’t. If something happens with the car and they can match us to it, then we’re finished, no matter where it is. If we burn it completely, and they can’t make an ID, then it doesn’t make any difference if we do it right down the street.”