Secret Prey (27 page)

‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘Yeah. You getting laid again?’’

‘‘Jesus, you married guys don’t think about anything but sex.’’

‘‘That’s true,’’ Lester said. ‘‘Well, let me know what happens.’’

Lucas nodded. ‘‘I will.’’

‘‘And say hello to Sherrill for me. You know, when you see her.’’

SLOAN HAD GOTTEN THROUGH THE SHOOTING, AND
now was working backward: Did Audrey McDonald know that her husband was suspected of committing a number of murders?

‘‘No . . .’’ A little fire now, but in a prissy way. ‘‘That ridiculous Davenport person is pushing this. Wilson would never kill anybody. He’d lose control and he’d beat me up, but sometimes I was asking for it. Last night . . . last night I just couldn’t help myself, I ran into the bedroom to hide and there was the shotgun and the shells on the floor and he was coming and I knew how to load it . . .’’ She started rambling down the path to the shooting again, and Sloan cut her off.

‘‘Did your husband own a pistol?’’

‘‘No. Well, yes, years ago . . .’’

‘‘State firearms records indicate he purchased a .380-caliber Iver Johnson semiautomatic pistol at North Woods Arms in Wayzata in 1982.’’

‘‘I’m sure you’re right. But he never used it. He called it his car gun because he had to work down in the colored area sometimes, way back when.’’

‘‘Do you know where he kept it?’’

‘‘No, I assumed he gave it away. Or disposed of it.’’

‘‘He doesn’t have it in his car now?’’

‘‘I don’t think so; I think I would have known . . .’’

‘‘Do you remember how you heard the news that Andy Ingall was lost up on Lake Superior?’’

‘‘Well . . . I think somebody from the bank called and told us.’’

‘‘Mr. McDonald was with you when you found out?’’

‘‘Why, yes. Somebody called him, not me.’’

‘‘You don’t know if he’d been in Duluth about that time.’’

‘‘I’m sure he wasn’t; it would have stuck in my mind.’’

Sloan was pushing a dead end. Lucas waited a few more minutes, listening, then breezed into the room, as though he was in a hurry. Sloan looked up and said, ‘‘Chief Davenport . . . Mrs. McDonald.’’

She seemed to shrink away from him, what was left of her. Most of her face was black with bruises and subcutaneous bleeding around the cuts; a row of tiny black stitches marched up one cheek like a line of gnats; her hair was cut away on one side of her head, and a scalp bandage was damp from wound seepage.

‘‘Mrs. McDonald, I’ll be brief,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘We’re virtually certain that your husband was involved in the deaths of Kresge, Arris, and Ingall. And we’re wondering how, if he killed all those people, you could not have known about it.’’

‘‘Why . . . why . . . he didn’t do that.’’

And her attorney, Glass, was sputtering, ‘‘Hey, hey, hey . . . we’re not answering those kinds of questions.’’ ‘‘You should,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘If Mrs. McDonald doesn’t cooperate, well, Mr. Glass . . . you know how it looks. I mean, if a person has ambitions to resume her life in society.’’

‘‘What?’’ Audrey McDonald looked dazed, swinging her face from Glass to Lucas. ‘‘Resume my life?’’

‘‘That’s a lot of horse pucky, Lucas,’’ Glass said. To Audrey McDonald: ‘‘Ignore him.’’

‘‘At your own risk,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘You know how people talk.’’

‘‘People,’’ she said.

Lucas added, ‘‘We will be executing a search warrant at the McDonald home this morning, looking for more evidence
But we already have substantial support for the idea that Wilson McDonald killed all three of them. And we will want to understand what your role was in the killings . . . if you had one.’’

‘‘You can’t . . .’’

‘‘Mrs. McDonald,’’ Lucas said, suddenly going soft. ‘‘I mentioned this the other night. I recognize your voice.’’

‘‘What?’’ As though she hadn’t heard him correctly. And Glass peered at her, a frown on his face.

‘‘You’ve called me,’’ he said. ‘‘You knew your husband was killing people.’’

‘‘That’s utterly—’’ She groped for a word other than ‘‘ridiculous,’’ but couldn’t find one. ‘‘—ridiculous.’’

‘‘What are you doing, Lucas?’’ Glass asked.

And Audrey seemed so genuinely nonplussed that Lucas, puzzled—why would she deny it now? Having helped stop him could only be to her credit, now, and he wasn’t around to strike back—backed away, and tried again. ‘‘Mrs. McDonald, how often did you visit the Kresge cabin?’’

‘‘Why, why . . .’’ She struggled to think. ‘‘It’s so hard to
think
with these things they are putting into me.’’

‘‘You don’t have to answer these questions,’’ Glass said. ‘‘And I would recommend that you don’t.’’

‘‘You suggest that she not tell me how often she went to Kresge’s? Why wouldn’t she tell me that?’’ Lucas asked.

‘‘Because you might try to make your pig’s ear into a silk purse, and there’s no reason to help you do that,’’ Glass said.

‘‘Maybe six times,’’ she said.

‘‘Mrs. McDonald, you don’t have to answer,’’ Glass said. ‘‘In fact, I’m telling you: Keep quiet. Lucas—Chief Davenport—if you have any more questions about Mr. McDonald, ask me first. I may advise Mrs. McDonald to answer them. But she won’t answer any more questions about herself.’’ Glass looked at the stenographer. ‘‘Could you read that back to me?’’

‘‘Sure, just a minute.’’

‘‘No need to,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘We got it, and I’m outa
here. We’ll be checking the McDonald house. And we may be back with more questions.’’ He looked straight into Audrey McDonald’s eyes, held them for a second, then turned and walked out.

GLASS CAUGHT LUCAS IN THE HALLWAY. ‘‘WHAT THE
hell was that all about?’’

Lucas shrugged. ‘‘Bumping her along a little.’’

‘‘Well, Jesus . . .’’ Glass scratched his head. ‘‘You don’t think she had anything to do with these things, do you? The killings? That old lady?’’

‘‘What do
you
think, counselor?’’

‘‘Don’t
counselor
me, butthead. This is J. B. fuckin’ Glass you’re talking to. What I want to know is, do I have to start thinking about a defense? Or were you just blowing smoke?’’

‘‘Mostly smoke,’’ Lucas admitted.

‘‘All right,’’ Glass said. ‘‘How you been?’’

‘‘Not too bad . . . You heard about Weather?’’

‘‘Yeah, the bomb. Jesus. What do you think, a crazy?’’ Glass asked.

‘‘We don’t know. We’ve got no theory.’’

‘‘Shoot. Well, keep your ass down,’’ Glass said, and slapped Lucas on the arm before he started back to Mc-Donald’s room.

‘‘Hey, J. B.—how old do you think your client is, anyway?’’

Glass spread his hands. ‘‘I never asked. Fifty . . . two?’’

‘‘She’s thirty-eight,’’ Lucas said.

Glass looked at McDonald’s room, then said with a hushed voice, ‘‘No way.’’

‘‘She’s got some hard miles on her, J. B. And she might not be quite what she looks like.’’

TWENTY

LUCAS WAS SITTING IN MCDONALD’S STUDY, FLIPPING
through a batch of American Express statements that went back, apparently, forever. Both Wilson and Audrey Mc-Donald were Platinum Card holders, upgraded six years earlier from the Gold. The most interesting statement involved charges on McDonald’s card in the days before Andy Ingall sailed off on Lake Superior and vanished.

‘‘The day before Ingall disappears, McDonald spends four hundred bucks at Marshall Field in Chicago. That night, and the night before, he’s at the Palmer House,’’ Lucas said to Franklin. ‘‘That means if he rigged the boat, he had to have done it at least a couple of days beforehand, or, if he came home that day, he had to go right up to Superior and rig the boat the night before. That seems tricky.’’

Franklin, enormous in a plaid shirt and jeans, had been going through the check stubs and investment papers. ‘‘I ain’t finding anything here. It’s all too general. They were pretty well off, though. He’s got a trust account at Polaris with about three-point-four million divided between stocks and bonds, heavy on the bonds. Plus an account at Vanguard worth another three million, all in the stock market. And if I’m reading it right, he’s got another nine hundred
thousand in stock at Merrill Lynch. Cash in bank accounts, about twenty-four thousand, plus a money market account with a hundred and seventy thousand . . . that’s apparently a tax account.’’ He put the papers down, and looked at Lucas. ‘‘I don’t know. With that much—that’s gotta be more’n seven million—you think he’d be killing to get even richer?’’

‘‘I asked the same thing,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘The answer is, he was chasing power, not money. He was a bully in high school, he beat his wife, he killed people to eliminate competition for the promotions. He got off on power trips. He’d be running the lives of a couple thousand people if he took over the bank.’’

Franklin sighed: ‘‘I’d like to get a
nice
killer sometime.’’

A uniformed cop stuck his head in the door: ‘‘You know how you told us to find that Jag?’’

Lucas nodded without looking up. According to a file they found in the house, and confirmed by the Department of Motor Vehicles, Wilson McDonald owned a 1969 XKE, which was not in their three-car garage.

‘‘We talked to McDonald’s old man,’’ the uniformed cop said. His name was Lane, and he wanted to be a detective. ‘‘The car was in a downtown parking garage, already covered up for the winter. And guess what?’’

Lucas looked up now. ‘‘What?’’

Lane stepped fully into the room, held up a transparent plastic baggie. Inside, a small automatic pistol. ‘‘Ta-da.’’

‘‘I don’t believe it,’’ Lucas said. He took the bag, held it up, and peered at the gun. The caliber, .380, was stamped on the slide. ‘‘That’s the one . . . You touch it?’’

‘‘No, of course not. The safety’s on, and we just bagged it. Figured, who knows—if he didn’t shoot it much, maybe it’s got some of the same shells from the Arris or O’Dell deals.’’

‘‘Get it downtown,’’ Lucas said, handing it back.

‘‘Do I get a medal?’’ Lane asked.

‘‘Yeah. You’ll get a size eleven medal right in the ass if you don’t get it downtown.’’

Lane left, and a few minutes later, Franklin, who’d fallen into an odd reverie sitting in an overstuffed chair with the bank statements in his hands, staring at an English hunting print on the wall above McDonald’s desk, suddenly said, ‘‘I know what it is.’’

‘‘I’m glad somebody does,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘You know what’s wrong with this place?’’

Lucas looked around. ‘‘Looks pretty nice.’’ ‘‘There are no fuckin’ books,’’ Franklin said. He got up, walked around the study, checking the shelves full of ceramic figurines. ‘‘They even got a couple of bookends, with no books between them—they got these fuckin’ Keebler elves, or whatever they are.’’

‘‘Hummels,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘But they do have a computer.’’ He nodded at the Hewlett Packard crouched on the desk.

‘‘Ain’t a book,’’ Franklin said. ‘‘I’m going to look around.’’

Lucas finished the American Express statements, extracted the statement that showed McDonald in Chicago, and stacked the rest on the desk. Slow going. He’d just gotten up when Franklin came back: ‘‘I could find five books in this whole fuckin’ house. A dictionary, a cookbook, a bartender’s guide, and travel books on California and Florida.’’

‘‘Maybe they took turns reading the dictionary,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘You don’t think it’s weird?’’

‘‘The pinking shears thing with Del—that was weird,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘No books? That’s not weird, that’s just a little unusual.’’

‘‘I think it’s weird,’’ Franklin insisted. ‘‘People with seven million, they oughta have books.’’ He frowned, and said, ‘‘Hey, you know what else?’’

He left the room, and Lucas trailed after him. ‘‘There’s no CD player. I don’t think they’ve got any CDs. They got no goddamn record player, Lucas.’’

‘‘Yeah, well . . .’’

Franklin turned and said, ‘‘These people are very strange.’’ He looked around the room again, spotted a studio portrait of Wilson and Audrey McDonald smiling down from another knickknack shelf. The photo was so heavily retouched that the two of them looked like puppets. ‘‘Look at her eyes,’’ Franklin said. Lucas looked. ‘‘They follow you. Man, they are
very
strange.’’

AUDREY MCDONALD LAY IN HER HOSPITAL BED AND
thought about Davenport. He seemed to know something. To know
her
. The others had shaken their heads when they saw her, had essentially apologized for their maleness in view of what another male had done to her. The hospital had provided female attendants to care for her, as if a male doctor or male nurse might somehow further the damage done.

Not Davenport. He was ready to crucify her. She would have to move on this.

She dozed for a while, in a little pain, and woke up, calculating.

The lawyer said she’d be here overnight, and then would be wheeled into court for a preliminary hearing on an open charge of murder. She would be allowed to enter a plea— not guilty—and bail would be set. If she was willing, he’d said, she could use her house as security. The assistant county attorney handling the case had already indicated that the state would have no objection, so the deal was as good as done, and she could go straight home from the courthouse.

‘‘Murder?’’ She’d croaked. ‘‘They’re charging . . . ?’’

‘‘Don’t worry: they’re already backing off,’’ Glass had said. ‘‘When the police finish investigating, they’ll almost certainly find that it was self-defense. Right now, it’s ninety-ten for no charges at all.’’

So Audrey had agreed to use the house as security, and had given him a limited power of attorney so that he could get all the paperwork. She’d be out tomorrow afternoon.

And that would be the time to handle the Davenport problem.

She’d thought she was doing that when she pitched the Molotov cocktail through Weather Karkinnen’s window. From what she could tell by questioning Wilson, and careful questions to others at the bank, Davenport had been the only reason that Wilson had been looked at so closely. Audrey had attacked Karkinnen in an effort to turn Lucas around—the same tactic had worked in the past, with the McKinney situation and the Bairds. And from what she could tell of the investigation’s pace, and from stories in the newspapers, the attack
had
diverted him for a time. Investigators had vanished from the bank, there’d been two days of silence from the police . . . and then suddenly, they were back, and all over Wilson.

Wilson.

She sighed, and let a little tear start at the corner of her eye. She already missed Wilson. She’d known, in her heart of hearts, that someday she’d have to kill him, the love of her life. He would inevitably get in her way, or even become a danger to her. And he finally had. If the police had put pressure on him, he would’ve pointed them at her, because he was basically a coward. He had no grit. Wilson . . .

She wrenched her mind back to Davenport. The problem with the Karkinnen diversion was that the police investigation hadn’t led anywhere. The newspapers said the police were simply mystified. They’d run down every single clue and they’d found nothing at all. After a while, there was nothing left to do, so they went back to Wilson and had apparently stumbled over something that pointed at the Arris killing. If they’d been preoccupied with Karkinnen a little bit longer, they might never have found whatever it was.

Now they were looking at her. Or at least, Davenport was. She didn’t quite understand why. She’d given him an answer to his question—her own dead husband.

She’d actually given him an earlier answer, the answer
to who killed Kresge, but he either hadn’t gotten the message or had ignored it.

The Kresge murder weapon had the fingerprints of Kresge’s caretaker all over it. He’d been the one who put it away the last time Audrey saw it. A few of the lingering partygoers had been sitting around with Kresge, talking and cleaning the guns. When they were done with each one, they’d pass it to the caretaker, who’d put it away.

Kresge had told her, on the shooting range, that she shot the Contender better than he did. That he’d never shot it at all, after the first few times. So the caretaker’s prints should still be on it. But the papers hadn’t had a whisper about the gun, and Wilson said nobody had even bothered to interview the caretaker. Something was screwed up, she thought. Typical. Very few people could act with her intellectual rigor . . .

Audrey was crazy and smart and she knew how to do research: she’d taken an undergraduate degree in English from St. Anne’s, and then, while she was pushing Wilson through law school, she’d taken a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota in library science. She was still working in the library when computers moved in, and she’d more or less kept up with them over the years, and when the bank went on-line. When Davenport became a problem, she’d looked him up in the
Star-Tribune
library node on the Internet.

And there she’d found a treasure trove.

The
Star-Tribune
had done a lengthy feature on Davenport after he’d cleared the kidnapping of a psychologist and her two daughters by a madman named John Mail. ‘‘ Davenport and His Pals’’ had pictured Davenport with Weather Karkinnen, with Sister Mary Joseph—whom he’d known since their childhood together—and with a variety of cops, lawyers, TV and newspaper reporters, doctors, jocks, and street people, all friends of his.

The two obvious targets for a diversionary attack were the nun and the surgeon—Davenport’s oldest friend and his
lover. She decided on Karkinnen because Karkinnen was simpler.

Audrey knew Sister Mary Joseph from her college days: the nun had been her instructor in basic psychology, and Audrey remembered her as an intense young woman with a face terribly scarred by adolescent acne. But the nun, who was still at St. Anne’s, lived in a communal dormitory-style setting in which intruders would be instantly noticed. And attack would be risky.

Karkinnen, on the other hand, was out in the open. Audrey had been puzzled that the year-old article implied that Karkinnen was Davenport’s live-in lover, while Audrey’s search turned up different addresses, but she assumed there was something that she didn’t know. She considered the possibility that they’d broken up, but then found an engagement announcement only a few months old . . .

So she’d gone for Karkinnen. She’d thrown the bomb through the window, concerned not a whit for the possibility that she might kill the woman, but very concerned at the possibility of being caught. The final attack—out of the car, across the lawn, throw, back in the car, ten seconds— minimized the possibility, but it had still taken nerve.

She’d need the nerve again: but nerve had never been a problem for her. Audrey McDonald had nerve, all right.

She thought again about the possibility of going after Davenport himself. There were two problems with that: First, he was large and tough-looking, and carried a gun. He would be difficult to get at quickly without exposing herself. She couldn’t get close enough for poison, couldn’t risk a gun attack; if she missed, she’d be dead. And he was a cop, so might be a little more wary than the average citizen. Further, she didn’t have time to research him as she had Arris and Ingall. And the second big problem was that killing him might lead the cops investigating
his
killing to take a harder look at his current investigations, including
her
.