John Sandford - Phantom prey

"Stay in touch,” Lucas said. “Look-what about overtime? I’d like to get Jenkins back in here, but he’s not due until late afternoon. Then I’m supposed to be off, but I’d like to stay. I’d do it for free, but overtime would be nice.”

“I’ll fix the overtime,” Lucas said. “Call him in.”

Jackson showed up at ten o’clock and slid a half-dozen high resolution glossy prints across Lucas’s desk. Lucas picked them up. He’d seen the photos of Austin as a blonde, and the brunette hair, in the new photos, had transformed her. “Tricky part was her eyebrows, they might look a little fakey,” Jackson said.

“Look perfect to me,” Lucas said. “I heard about the arrests last night,” Jackson said. “That picture of Davis help out?"

"That cracked it,” Lucas said. “Everything came after that.” Jackson looked pleased. “I told them that the new gear was worth the money."

"If these turn out to be something,” Lucas said, holding up the photos of Austin, “I’ll talk to Rose Marie about making that van a permanent item on your equipment list.”

“Ah, man- that’d be great,” Jackson said.

Xai Xiong, the man who may, or may not, have sold the burned car to the Fairy, worked at a computer rehab place on University Avenue, fixing what could be fixed, putting in new hard drives. You could, he told Lucas, buy a good- as- new used Dell for $150.

“How long did you talk to the woman about your car?” Lucas asked.

Xiong was a small man with a brush cut and a pale burn mark on one cheek. He was maybe thirty. “Fifteen minutes? Twenty minutes? She didn’t know nothing about cars.”

“How’d you hook up with her?” Lucas asked. “I had the phone number in the window of the car, and she called

I said I needed nine thousand dollars, and she said that was okay, if the car ran good. I told her the car ran perfect and even had good rubber on it. The seats were sorta screwed, we welded them down, but I told her a lady would probably fit pretty good. So she said she was interested, and we met out there, and we drove the car a couple miles up the frontage road to this Purina place, and then back, and she said she’d take it.”

“Paid cash."

"Yup. Nine thousand dollars in hundred- dollar bills. Fresh in a bank envelope from Wells Fargo. Had me sign the papers, said she’d put them through, and that’s the last I heard from her. The cops tell me she never did put the papers through.”

“Was nine thousand dollars a fair price?” Xiong’s eyes drifted and he smiled. “That’s what I was asking,” he said. “So maybe… she could have negotiated."

"Some,” he admitted. “She never did. She just paid up.” She was rich, Lucas thought. As Frank Willett had said, the cost of a car was nothing. If Lucas could find a nine- thousand- dollar cash withdrawal from Austin’s account, at the right date, that would be a big plus. Lucas took the pack of photos out of his jacket pocket, slipped them out of the envelope. He handed them to Xiong and asked, “Does this look like her?”

Xiong shuffled through them quickly, cocking his head back and forth, then handed them to Lucas and said, “That is her.”

“You’re sure?"

"Yeah, man-that’s her,” he said.

So he had Austin as the Fairy, but no connection between the car and the crimes-and if the car had burned to the ground, there wouldn’t be one.

And what did she use the car for, anyway? To get back and forth from the killing ground, so that if anyone saw her, they couldn’t say the killer had been driving a Benz or a Jag? Possibly. Probably.

Xiong’s testimony would be challenged in court. Lucas would have to tie Austin/Fairy more tightly to the car, and to the Goth scene, before they could start pushing her directly.

He dipped in his notebook for names: a number of people had seen her. If he could get one or two more to make a positive ID… If he could figure out where she’d kept the car, and he could positively tie her to it, that would make good Xiong’s identification…

A bell dinged in the back of his mind. Where was the car burned? He called South St. Paul, was told that Janice Loomis- Smith, the cop who’d called him about it, was off. He told the guy on the phone what he was looking for, and the guy said, “Just down south of 494, on Concord, on the east side of the road. Why?”

“Where’s the South St. Paul airport? Isn’t that down there, somewhere?”

“It’s right up the hill. Six blocks, maybe. Why?"

"Making connections,” Lucas said. “Thanks.” And that’s where the Austins had an airplane hangar, but no airplane.

He looked at his watch: noon, and he was hungry, and not too far from home. The refrigerator was full of healthy stuff-salads, tofu, yogurts, turkey breast. He stopped at Baker’s Square Restaurant and had the French Dip without the dip, hold the fries, and a piece of raspberry pie as a replacement for the fries that were rightfully his.

He was finishing the pie when Shrake called from the Heather watch. “Maybe you better get over here.”

“What’s up?"

"Heather just took a call. She listened for five seconds, then she hung up, and right now she’s sitting on the couch, with her arms crossed, looking at the door.”

“Call SWAT. Tell them to stage up,” Lucas said. “No goddamn lights or sirens. Let’s get it on. I’m down on Ford parkway, I gotta get my vest, it’s in my truck. I’ll be there in ten.”

He threw fifteen dollars at the cashier, said, “Use the rest for a tip,” and ran to the car, pulled it around, headed up Mt. Curve and then over to Mississippi River Boulevard, running stop signs, punched up the garage door, ran up to the truck, grabbed the duffel bag with his vest, ran back to the Porsche and was out the driveway in four minutes. Eight minutes later, having parked around a full block, he was climbing the stairs to the apartment, hauling along the duffel bag.

Del was there, looking like a hippie except for his bulletproof vest, worn loose around his shoulders. Shrake and Jenkins hadn’t yet armored up, Kevlar helmets sitting on the table like lost turtles, vests on the floor. Shrake said, “St. Paul says the SWAT will be at the church in four or five minutes. They were all briefed yesterday afternoon, they were ready, so if this isn’t just a fuck- up, we oughta be good.”

“… in four or five minutes,” Lucas said, standing on his tiptoes, back in the dark, trying to see the street. “Nobody out there. Looks like fuckin’ High Noon.”

“I’m gonna feel like an asshole if nothing happens,” Shrake said. “Calling everybody in.”

“You are an asshole,” Jenkins said. “I want you to know, Jenkins made me do it,” Shrake told Lucas. “I mean, if this doesn’t work out."

"Anybody coming, anybody going?” Lucas asked.“Two cars, two minutes before you got here. Nobody in the apartment. Heather just sits there.”

“Well, something’s happening,” Lucas said.

Ten minutes. Lucas went to the bathroom to pee, came back out, said, “Somebody took all the paper towels.”

“Here’s something,” Del said. “She’s up.” Heather went to the door, opened it. A man was there in a dark blue peacoat and sunglasses, and she threw her arms around his neck, pulling herself up to his throat. He bent to kiss her, and two other guys crowded in behind him, and Shrake said, “Let’s go, let’s go…”

The guy walked past Heather, looked around, then moved up to the windows and pulled the shades. Lucas said to Del, “Put the glasses on him if he comes up to the window again. I don’t think that’s Siggy. He doesn’t walk like Siggy.”

“Then who in the hell was she kissing?” Shrake asked. The guy pulled the shades on the second window, and Del said, “Shit, he looks like Siggy, but I think you’re right. He’s a dummy."