Phantom Prey (26 page)

"What do you want?" Fairy asked.

He smiled: "Not much. A little time, a little conversation. A little piano playing, a sing-along."

"I'm crazy, aren't I?"

"You have to be a little crazy to see me, but you're not insane, if that's what you mean. I'm really here."

"I'm insane," she said, and she turned away from him.

"No, no," he said, the anxiety high in his voice. "Don't go away. Don't go. I can help you. . . ."

He told her about death. About rising up from his own body, then losing sight of it. He'd been in water, he thought, with other people around, but he couldn't see them after he died. He'd been wandering in a fog forever, it seemed like, coming upon little shafts and rectangles of light, and looking through them, realized that he was looking out of mirrors. All over St. Paul, all over the whole area. . . . He'd been inches from living people, but they'd never seen him.

And then he'd seen Alyssa, first drawn by her body. Then one day, he'd played a few notes on the piano that was in the mirror with him, a reflection of the piano in Alyssa's music room.

And he'd seen her
react.

"I can't tell you how excited I was. You
heard
me."

He knew
about Frances. Knew she was dead. Could feel her there, on the dead side of things.

"She's gone for good, isn't she?" she asked.

"Not yet from this plane," he said. "She's restless, she wants to move on--but can't, not yet. She can't find peace."

"Could you find her for me?"

"No. I can't see anybody else here. It's like night, like a foggy night. . . ."

"Maybe she'll come to me," Alyssa said.

"Finding the way is . . . hard," Loren said. "From here, you can't se
e a
nything but lights from the mirrors, and other shiny things, little threads of light here and there, and rectangles and circles of it, the mirrors. I found your mirror, at random. The mirrors look like camp
-
fires around a lake. When I go back, during the day, I sit there, waiting for night to come, so I can see the mirror again. And the light. I'm afraid sometimes that night will come and your mirror will be gone and I'll be wandering, crazy, looking for it, seeing all those people on the other side, eating and fucking and playing music, and all I get are shadows. . . ." He was running on, and he shuddered.

He said,
"Frances can't leave here until she has justice. She can't go on."

"Go on to what?"

"To heaven. To rebirth. To whatever it is--I don't know myself."

"Why haven't you gone?"

"I don't know. I just can't . . . I can't . . ."

"Let me
help you find justice," he said.

She was skeptical: "How will you do that, mirror-man?"

"We can work this through. We can explore it. We can get . . . documents. Talk to people."

"People will talk to a ghost?"

"No, but I can advise you. I can come with you when you hunt them . . . you can pull me through."

"Pull you through," she said. She stepped back, out of reach.

"Pull me through," he said. He couldn't hide the eagerness in his voice. "Take my fingers, pull me through. I can't stay, I fade when the sun comes around, but for a few hours I can be with you."

"You'll hurt me," Fairy said.

"No, no." His eyes widened, and his hands spread, palms up, in supplication. "I could never hurt you. You're the only person who can see me--you're the only person I can talk to. Without you, I'm alone."

"You have a cruel lip; I can see the cruelty in it."

"No, no . . ."

The relationship
took time.

She walked away from him the first night, heard him crying as she left the room; and when she came back, he wasn't there, nor was he there the next night. The third night, he was back again and she walked away. She walked away for three, four nights.

"You almost ruined it," he said, almost choking on the words, the words tumbling in his rush to get them out. "You didn't believe in yourself, you thought I was imaginary. I'm not imaginary, I'm right here. I'm
human."

On the fifth night, she pulled him through. The night after that, he touched her; and the night after that, they made love, though that wasn't exactly what it was.

Loren was cold as ice. He didn't really want sex; he wanted heat.

And as they lay side by side, talking of Frances and justice, he told her about the other side, the underworld, the dark and dim place where he spent his days. "I know--I just know, I can't tell you how-- that other people move on. I haven't. Maybe I was made to stay here to help you find Frances. I don't know."

"You don't even see them when they go? When their spirits move over?"

"No. They're here, I think, but we can't see each other--the dead.

Sometimes, though, I'd wake up and find myself outside, along the Mississippi in St. Paul. Nobody else on the streets. Dark, foggy, wet. Streetlights--I could never see the lights, but there'd be these cones of light coming down to me. Then I'd come to a bluff, and I'd see a riverboat down there. Casting off, pulling away. As though I were just too late to make it. . . . Going somewhere." "You've never run down to catch it?"

"I can't get there," he said. "It's like one of those dreams where you can't find a classroom, or you can't find a locker, and every time you think you're getting close, you take a wrong turn. The boat would be down there, and I could see the street going down the hill, but I'd always take the wrong turn and wind up somewhere else."

And after
the sex they'd gone hunting.

N
ow
that
was done.

She was a killer and Loren Doyle, the fault in the wetware, the bad cells, still called to her from the mirrors.

Had to
manage this. Had to manage it, right through whatever shreds of insanity were left, whatever came back to haunt her, she had to manage it.

She lay
there for a few more moments, thinking about it, then launched herself from the bed. First thing: rubber gloves and garbage bags.

She walked down to the kitchen, her mind clear now, not a flicker of Loren. Opened the utility closet and looked at the supplies: it'd been a while since she'd done this. She was pleased to see that Helen kept the place stocked. She took a fresh pair of rubber household gloves and a tie-top garbage sack.

Climbing the stairs again, she turned away from the master bedroom, walked past Hunter's bedroom, past the last guest room, to the door there; opened it and climbed the stairs to the attic.

A plastic storage box from Target, under a pile of old jigsaw puzzles. She pushed the puzzles off to the side, opened the box, took out the Fairy costume and the wig, stuffed them in the garbage bag.

Carried the bag down to the laundry, left it there, got a flashlight, and went out to the car, opened the passenger door, and after a moment of minute examination of the seat and armrests, experienced the warm and holy glow known to people who have had a stroke of the purest luck.

She could not find the smallest spot of blood.

When ihe'd looked at herself in the mirror, when she turned on the bathroom light, she'd seen blood on her face and hands, and she'd had blood on her blouse and slacks, but only on the front; some of that, undoubtedly, would have rubbed off in the small car. But by the time she'd gotten to the Benz, the blood on her hands had apparently dried, and her back and the back of her legs had been cleaned: so there was no blood on the leather steering wheel, or the seats.

She sat back on her heels, and a smile crept across her face. All right.

And Loren whispered to her,
You see, the Powers wanted it this way. The Powers are on your side, Alyssa. Alyssa, listen to
me. . .

"Fuck you," she said aloud. "You're just a couple of bad brain cells. That's all done now."

A burden
off her back, she returned to the house, to silence, and frowned: Should it be this quiet? Ah: the washer.

She went back to the laundry, took the clothes, wet, out of the washer and put them in the dryer, moved into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. She picked a green spider-leg tea from Japan, added just a finger twist of ground rose hip, and brewed a cup; this particular combination was good for centering yourself when you were under stress.

She had to get rid of Fairy's clothes, and, come to think of it, she might as well get rid of the stuff in the dryer. Wouldn't wear them again anyway.

She sat with her tea and thought about it: she could put them in the fireplace, put on a little lighter fluid. But what if the police checked and found residue? The wig was real hair, what if a neighbor smelled burned hair?

The tea calmed her down, redirected her mental energy through a calm space, and when she finished the tea, she had determined the best possible way to dispose of the clothing.

She did the Fairy clothes and the wig, first, then got the clothes from the dryer, before the end of the cycle, still damp.

She was still working when the phone rang.

She looked at the caller ID, Davenport. She knew what he'd say: that there had been a new killing. She licked her lips, drew a breath, picked up the phone: "Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no. Lucas . . ."

He would see her tomorrow, he said.

She'd pulled it off.

An hour later,
she was at her spa in Highland Park--not far from Davenport's house. He'd be in bed, probably. She'd have to think about Davenport, already regretted inviting him in on the case. He was too smart--he'd have to be dealt with.

How to do that? She'd think about it overnight.

The spa was dark, silent. She went back to the women's locker room, into one of the bathroom stalls, and carefully and slowly fed the shredded wig and the Fairy costume and her clothes from the evening, all carefully scissored into one-inch squares, down the toilet.

There.

Let the police find that.

She gave it a couple of extra flushes to make sure nothing had gotten blocked, and walked out to her car. She wasn't sleepy yet. She remembered the crime-scene crew working in the kitchen after Frances disappeared . . .

Maybe she could go on the Internet and find out if there was anything about destroyed DNA. If there was a cleaning product, she'd take the time to clean out the Benz, even though there was no visible blood. Then, maybe, trade it. She'd been told that a lot of low-mileage traded Mercedeses wound up in Mexico. If that were true, they'd never locate it. . . .

Outside, she paused in the parking lot, her hand on the car door. Not a bad night, she thought. The air was cold, but you could smell the spring just around the corner.

Tomorrow, she'd figure out the small car.

And Davenport.

And maybe Fairy.

Chapter
16.

Lucas got up
angry, felt the mood settling in for a stay. Knew it, suppressed it at breakfast, but both the housekeeper and Sam picked it up: he was trailing the anger around like a faint odor of skunk. He called Austin before he left for the office, and she told him that she was at the Highland Park spa. If he could stop on the way to work, she said, she had some thoughts.

"We could use a few thoughts," he said.

"Then I'll see you in ten minutes?"

Austin was wearing
a form-iitting bloodred tracksuit, a peculiar shade of red that always looked good on blondes, and that only blondes knew about. She was talking with another client, who patted her on the shoulder, then gave her a squeeze. Lucas recognized the other one's face, but couldn't remember her name. Then Austin looked past her friend and the woman turned, eyebrows went up and she stuck out a hand and said, "Dalles Burger, Stone & Kaufmann. Lucas, how are you?"

"Sure, Dallie"--like he knew who she was all the time, doing a little tap dance while his brain retrieved her file card: lawyer--"I don't think I've seen you since, what, the no-strike committee meeting. Are you going to arbitrate?"

She was flattered that he remembered: "I will. We'll be doing it right on the spot, so it'll be touchy."

"Ah, you'll work it out."

"I've got to talk to Lucas for a moment," Austin told Burger. "He's investigating what happened to my daughter."

"Oh, boy. Let me get out of here," Burger said. And, "I want you to call me. If you need
anything,
just call. I'll run errands, whatever."

"Thanks, Dallie; I'll call."

When Burger was gone, Austin pointed Lucas at a chair and asked, "What was this committee? No-strike? Arbitration?"

"The building trades have agreed to a no-strike provision on the Republican convention work, but they wanted arbitration if there was a disagreement. The governor's people put together an arbitration committee."

"Ah. Politicians." Austin settled back in her own chair.