Invisible Prey (20 page)

“You might work
that
into something.”

“Yeah. A whole-life policy,” Anderson said.

The redhead laughed, blew smoke and screeched, “Run away, run away.”

A
NDERSON WOUND UP
staying for almost two hours and failed to raise a single penny—but she scored in one way. An hour and forty-five minutes into the reception, she took a cell-phone call from her supervisor, who “just wanted to check how things were going.”

“I’ve eaten too much cheese,” Anderson said, sweetly. She understood her dedication was being tested and she’d aced the test. “But the art’s okay. Carrie Sue is right over here, isn’t she a friend of yours?”

“No, no, not really,” her supervisor said hastily. “I’d hate to bother her. Good going, Amity. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Five minutes later, she was out of there. She drove a Mazda, cut southwest across town, down toward Edina. Time for a gutsy move. She knew the truth, and now was the time to use it.

A
ND SHE
didn’t want much.

A couple of years in France, or maybe a year in France and another Italy. She could rent her own house, bank the money, come back in a couple of years with the right languages, she could talk about Florence and Venice and Aix and Arles. With a little polish, with the background, she could move up in the foundation world. She could get an executive spot, she could take a shortcut up the ladder, she wouldn’t have to go to any more Arctic Circle Red receptions.

Worth the risk. Of course, she needed to be prepared. As she turned the corner at the top of the last block, she reached under the car seat, found the switchblade, and slipped it into the pocket of her velvet pants.

T
HE
W
IDDLER HOUSE
was an older two-story, with cedar shingles and casement windows, built on a grassy lot, with the creek behind. She glanced at her watch: ten-fifteen. There was a light in an upstairs bedroom and another in the back of the house. An early night for the Widdlers, she thought.

She parked in the drive, went to the front door, and rang the bell. Nothing. She rang it again, and then felt the inaudible vibrations of a heavy man coming down a flight of steps. Leslie Widdler turned on a light in the hallway, then the porch light, squinted at her through the triple-paned, armed-response-alarmed front door. Widdler was wearing a paisley-patterned silk robe. As fucked up and crazy as the Widdlers might be, there was nothing inhibited about their sex life, Anderson thought.

Widdler opened the inner door, unlocked and pushed open the screen door, and said, “Well, well. Look what washed up on our doorstep. Nice to see you.”

Anderson walked past him and Widdler looked outside, as though he might see somebody else sneaking along behind. Nobody. He shut the door and locked it, turned to Anderson, pushed her against the wall, slipped one big hand up under her blouse, pulled her brassiere down, and squeezed her breast until the pain flared through her chest. “How have you been?” he asked, his face so close that she could smell the cinnamon toothpaste.

Her own hand was inside his robe, clutching at him. “Ah, Leslie. Where’s Jane?”

“Upstairs,” Leslie said.

“Let’s go up and fuck her.”

“What a good idea,” Widdler said.

A
ND THAT’S WHAT
they did, the three of them, on the Widdlers’ king-sized bed, with scented candles burning all around.

Then, when the sweat had dried, Anderson rolled off the bed, found her purse, dug out a cigarette.

“Please don’t smoke,” Jane said.

“I’ll go out on the back porch, but I need one,” she said. She groped for her pants, said, “Where’s that lighter?” She got both the lighter and the switchblade. “We need to talk.”

They didn’t bother with robes; they weren’t done with the sex yet. Anderson led the way down the stairs in the semidarkness, Leslie poured more wine for himself and Jane, and got a fresh glass from the cupboard and gave a glass to Anderson. They moved out to the porch, and Jane and Anderson settled on the glider, the soft summer air flowing around them, while Leslie pulled a chair over.

“Well,” Jane said. She took a hit of the wine, then dipped a finger in it, and dragged a wet finger-pad over one of Anderson’s nipples. “You were such a pleasant surprise.”

“I want a cut,” Anderson said. “Of the Connie Bucher money. Not much. Enough to take me to Europe for a couple of years. Let’s say…a hundred and fifty thousand. You can put it down to consulting fees, seventy-five thousand a year.”

“Amity…” Leslie said, and there was a cold thread in the soft sound of her name.

“Don’t start, Leslie. I know how mean and cruel you are, and you know I like it, but I just don’t want to deal with it tonight. I spotted the Bucher thing as soon as it happened. It had your names written all over it. But I wouldn’t have said a thing, I wouldn’t have asked for a nickel, except that you managed to drag
me
into it.”

After a moment of silence, Jane said,
“What?”

“I got a visit from a cop named Lucas Davenport. This afternoon. He’s an agent with the state police…”

“We know who he is. We’re police consultants on the Bucher murder,” Leslie said.

Anderson was astonished; and then she laughed. “Oh, God, you might know it.”

But Jane cut through the astonishment: “How did he get to you?”

“He hooked the Bucher murder to the Donaldson case. He’s looking at the Coombs murder. He
knows.
”

“Oh, shit.” Anderson couldn’t see it, but she could feel Jane turn to her husband. “He’s a danger. I told you, we’ve got to do something.”

Leslie was on his feet and he moved over in front of Anderson and put a hand on her head and said, “Why shouldn’t we just break Amity’s little neck? That would close off that particular threat.”

Anderson hit the button on the switchblade and the blade
clack
ed open. She pressed the side of the blade against him. “Take your hand off my head, Leslie, or I swear to God, I will cut your cock off.”

Jane snorted, amused, and said, “A switchblade. You know, you
should
take off about four inches, just to make him easier to deal with.”

“I’ll take off nine inches if he doesn’t take his hand off my head,” Anderson snarled. She could feel the heat coming off Leslie’s thighs.

“Fuck you,” Leslie said, but he moved away and sat down again.

Anderson left the blade extended. “One good reason for you not to break my neck: Davenport will then know that the thieves are close. And when they investigate either my death or disappearance, the police will unlock the center drawer of my desk, where they will find a letter.”

“The old letter ploy,” Jane said, still amused, but not as amused as she’d been with the switchblade.

“It’s what I had to work with,” Anderson said. “About Davenport. He’s working on the Bucher case and now on Donaldson and Coombs, but he’s also working on a sex scandal. There was a story in the paper this morning. Some state legislator guy has been screwing some teenager.”

“I saw it,” Leslie said. “So what?”

“So Davenport is running that case, too, and that’s apparently more important. He was interviewing me and he had to run off to do something on the other one. Anyway, I heard him talking on his cell phone, and I know the name of the people involved. The girl’s name.”

“Really,” Jane said. “Is that a big deal?”

“It could be,” Anderson said, “If you want to distract Davenport.”

11

S
ANDY THE INTERN
was sitting next to Carol’s desk when Lucas came in. He was running a little late, having taken Sam out for a morning walk. He was wearing his grand-jury suit: navy blue with a white shirt, an Hermès tie with a wine-colored background and vibrating commas of a hard blue that the saleslady said matched his eyes; and cap-toed black tie-shoes with a high shine. His socks had clocks and his shorts had paisleys.

Sandy, on the other hand, looked like she’d been dragged through hell by the ankles—eyes heavy, hair flyaway, glasses smudged. She was wearing a pink blouse with plaid pants, and the same scuffed shoes she’d worn the day before. Somebody, Lucas thought, should give her a book.

She stood up when she saw him, sparks in her eyes: “He’s innocent.”

Lucas thought, “Ah, shit.” He didn’t need a crusader, if that’s what she was morphing into. But he said, “Come on in, tell me,” and to Carol, “I’ve gotta be at the Dakota County courthouse at one o’clock and it’s a trip. I’m gonna get out of here soon as I can and get lunch down there, with Virgil.”

“Okay,” Carol said. “Rose Marie called, she’s got her finger in the media dike, but she says the leakers are going crazy and she doesn’t have enough fingers. The governor’s gone fishing and can’t be reached. Kline has issued a statement that said the charges are without foundation and that he can’t be distracted because he’s got to work up a budget resolution for a special session in July.”

“I bet the papers jumped on
that
like a hungry trout,” Lucas said. “You’re in a news meeting and you have the choice of two stories. A—President of the Senate works on budget resolution. B—President of the Senate bangs hot sixteen-year-old and maybe her mother, too, and faces grand-jury indictment. Whatta you going to do?”

“You think he did them both at the same time? I mean, simultaneously?” Carol asked.

“I don’t want to think about why you want to know,” Lucas said. “Sandy, let’s talk.”

S
HE SAT ACROSS
the desk from him with a four-inch-thick file. “Lots of people have sex when they’re sixteen,” she ventured. “Probably, now, most.”

“Not with the president of the Minnesota Senate,” Lucas said. He dropped into his chair and leaned back. “When did you get in?”

“I came back last night, about midnight. Then I stayed up reading until five…I had some luck down there.”

“Start from the beginning,” Lucas said.

She nodded. “I went down and found the Polk County Courthouse. Des Moines is in Polk County. Anyway, I went to the clerk’s office, and there was this boy there—another intern. I told him what I was looking for, and he really helped a lot. We got the original trial file, and Xeroxed that, and then we discovered that Duane Child—that was the man who was convicted of killing Toms—we found out that Child
appealed
. His attorney appealed. They claimed that the investigation was terrible, and that the trial judge let a lot of bad information get in front of the jury.”

“What happened with the appeal?” Lucas asked.

“They lost it. Child is in prison. But the appeals court vote was six to three for a new trial, and the three judges who voted for it wrote that there was no substantial evidence, either real or circumstantial, that supported conviction.”

“So…”

She held up a finger: “The main thing, from our point of view, that Bill showed me…Bill is the other intern…is that when they appealed, they got the entire police investigative file entered as evidence. So I got that, too.”

“Excellent!” Lucas said.

“Reading through it, I cannot figure out two things: I cannot figure out why he was indicted, and I cannot figure out how he was convicted,” Sandy said. “It was like all the cops testified that he did it and that was good enough. But there was almost no evidence.”

“None?”

“Some. Circumstantial,” she said.

“Circumstantial is okay…” Lucas said.

“Sure. Sometimes. But if that’s all you’ve really got…”

“What about connections between the Toms murder and the others?” Lucas asked.

“That’s another thing, Mr. Davenport…” she began.

“Call me Lucas, please.”

“That’s another thing, Lucas. They are almost identical,” she said. “It’s a perfect pattern, except for two things. Mr. Toms was male. All the others are female. And he was strangled with a piece of nylon rope, instead of being shot, or bludgeoned. When I was reading it last night, I thought, ‘Aha.’”

“Aha.”

“Yes. The killers are smart enough to vary the method of murder, so if you’re just looking at the murders casually, on paper, you’ve got one woman clubbed to death, one woman shot, one woman dies in a fall, and one man is strangled,” Sandy said. “There’s no consistent method. But if you look at the killings structurally, you see that they are otherwise identical. It looks to me like the killers deliberately varied the method of murder, to obscure the connections, but they couldn’t obscure what they were up to. Which was theft.”

“Very heavy,” Lucas said.

“Yes. By the way, one of the things that hung Duane Child is that he was driving an old Volkswagen van, yellow, or tan,” Sandy said. “The night that Toms was murdered, a man was out walking his dog, an Irish setter. Anyway, he saw a white van in the neighborhood, circling the block a couple of times. This man owns an appliance company, and he said the van was a full-sized Chevrolet, an Express, and he said he knew that because he owns five of them. The cops said that he just
thought
the van was white, because of the weird sodium lights around there, that the lights made the yellow van look whiter. But the man stuck with it, he said the van was a Chevy. A Chevy van doesn’t look anything like the Volkswagen that Child drove. I know because I looked them up on Google. I believe the van
was
the killers’ vehicle, and they needed the van to carry away the stuff they were stealing.”

“Was there a list of stolen stuff?”

“Yes, and it’s just like the list Carol showed me, of the stuff taken from Bucher’s house. All small junk and jewelry. Obvious stuff. And in Toms’s case, a coin collection which never showed up again. But I think—and Carol said you think this happened at Bucher’s—I think they took other stuff, too. Antiques and artworks, and they needed the van to move it.”

“Have you read the entire file?” Lucas asked.

She shook her head. “Most of it.”

“Finish it, and then go back through it. Get some of those sticky flag things from Carol, and every time you find another point in the argument, flag it for me,” Lucas said. “I’ve got to do some politics, but I’ll be back late in the afternoon. Can you have it done by then?”