Phantom Prey (29 page)

And that maternity stuff she's looking at cost at least a grand.

A light went on: the guy she'd met at the door, the underling, had delivered more than a good time: he'd brought money from Siggy. Dollars to doughnuts; and Heather was flush again.

There
was
contact.

She wants to look nice.

Bet Siggy is coming. . .

Chapter
17.

The next morning,
instead of pushing the Austin file, Lucas sat in Rose Marie Roux's office in the Public Safety building and they shouted at each other about the Republican convention. Roux was working on a matrix of all possible outcomes of the street demonstrations, from minor disturbances to full-blown call-out-the-National-Guard riots-- not to determine staffing levels, but to propose differing political postures for the governor and his pals, depending on what happened.

"If we really had a disaster, there'd be some fallout for us, too," she said, solemn as a priest. "Wouldn't just be St. Paul."

"If there's a disaster, another Seattle 'ninety nine, there'll be fallout for everybody," Lucas said. "Forty thousand demonstrators showed up in Seattle and that was for the World Trade Organization. How many people know what the WTO is? And we're gonna get the Republican Party and the most unpopular president since Richard Nixon."

"The biggest horse's ass since Richard Nixon."

"I can't stand it when you guys say that," Lucas said, his voice rising. "Somebody says, 'The black bloc is coming, the anarchists, we're gonna have a riot,' and one of you political guys says, 'The president is a horse's ass,' like that's an answer. Do you think it makes any difference to Gepetto's, if some goddamn ratshit anarchist throws a firebomb through the dining room window, if the president's a horse'
s a
ss? Don't tell me about him being a horse's ass, 'cause I don't give a shit. Tell me how you're gonna keep the firebomb from going through the window."

"A giant horse's ass, a horse's ass of biblical proportions." Rose Marie was goading him, and he knew it, and that infuriated him even more.

". . . And that's what Gepetto wants to know, too. He's full every night, he's turning tables as fast as he can push food at people. He doesn't give a shit whether the Republicans come to town. What he wants is police protection . . ."

". . . You're shouting again . . ."

". . . and when Gepetto asks, 'How're you going to protect me?,' all you guys got is, 'The president's a horse's ass.' That's a
really
great answer."

"There is no Gepetto," Rose Marie said. "The place is owned by Tommy Reed."

"I know who it's owned by. Does that make any difference? Do you--"

His cell phone went off, and he pulled it out and looked at the screen: Dakota County sheriff's department: "Yeah? Davenport."

"This is Dick Pratt down in Dakota. A guy walked in the door early this morning with Frances Austin's purse," Pratt said. "No cash, but all of her ID is there. Credit cards, driver's license. He remembered the story, drove it in. He found it in the ditch a couple miles north of the body."

"Anything good?"

"Maybe," Pratt said. "You got a guy named Frank connected to her? Heard that name?"

"Uhhh . . . yeah. Somewhere."

"Figure out where. There was a letter in her purse, handwritten
,
we think it's her handwriting, with a felt-tip pen. Water got to it, in the ditch. The paper's falling apart and a lot of the note is one big ink stain--but we can read the top part of it. Addressed to Frank, it looks like she was breaking off a relationship."

"That's good," Lucas said, standing up, focusing now. "That could be critical. We were told that she didn't have a boyfriend. You're sure it's her handwriting?"

"Pretty sure. There was another thing in there, a list, and the handwriting looks the same to me. We'll have a handwriting guy give us an opinion. But who else's would it be? That kind of a letter?"

"Goddamnit."

"And you got a Frank?" Pratt asked.

"Someplace in the notes. I'll find it. The letter's in really bad shape?"

"Yeah. Our guys got it flat, and got it dry, but it was in the water too long. Even the part we can read is smeared. 'Frank,' is pretty clear, though. It looks like she folded it and refolded it about a million times, like she hadn't sent it. Like she was thinking about it."

"I'd like to come down and take a look," Lucas said.

"If you want, I can have our guys take a high-res photo of it and e-mail it to you. You could have it in two minutes, save you a trip."

"Let's do it," Lucas said.

He rang off and Rose Marie asked, "Catch a break?"

"Maybe. I've got to get back to the office."

"Nice screaming at you," she said.

Halfway back
to his office, Lucas realized where he'd heard the name Frank. He was so startled by the realization that he pulled the car over and dug out the notebook, to check.

Yes: Martina Trenoff made him write the name down. Frank Willett was a trainer at one of Alyssa's clubs and, she'd said, one of Alyssa's lovers. Karate, she'd said. Model, bicycle racer, rock climber, surfer, one of those guys who you can't figure out how they made a living.

The rest of the way back to the office was a fantasy, a story that Lucas made up as he drove: a guy with no money, fucking both an heiress and the heiress's daughter, who was, come to think of it, also an heiress.

But the mother, in addition to being a little goofy and believing in astrology and probably tea leaves, also had a tougher, business side. In addition, she'd had a number of lovers, and might not have been interested in a long-term relationship with somebody like a bicycle racer/ model/surfer guy.

She might like fucking him, okay, but long-term, she'd want somebody with status in the community, somebody with . . . good shoes. She'd mentioned the artist, Kidd--a perfect match for her. As an artist, he'd certainly be goofy enough, and hell, he was in
museums.
That's what she'd want, not some guy who walked around thinking about his next pair of sunglasses.

The daughter, on the other hand, young, inexperienced, not all that great-looking, might be a bit more influenced by a guy with big muscles and a surfer's outlook.

And if the guy were looking for money . . .

From there, that one thing, that relationship, all kinds of other things might have fallen out.

She tells him she's going to break it off: they argue in the kitchen, there's some pushing, she reaches for a knife, he takes it away from her and sticks her. Wonder what kind of truck he'd have, whether there'd be transmission fluid in the truck bed? No doubt in Lucas's mind tha
t t
he guy would have a truck, if he was a surfer, a bike-racer, a rock
-
climber, all that.

Or, how about this: the daughter finds out that he's fucking both her and her mother: goes to Mom with the story, there's an argument that turns violent, one of them yanks out the knife in a fit of passion, or jealousy, or even self-defense and . . . zut.

"Finally," he said aloud. The whole Frank thing made everything clear: this was no big cosmic mystery, it was just some of the same old bullshit. An argument about sex and love, some hysteria, and a murder.

Why were the others killed? Because they knew about the relationship? Was Frank there the night of the chicken dance?

He thought about Austin for a moment.

Not Austin, he decided. She was tough, but unless she was totally nuts, there was no way that she could have produced all the tears that came with Frances's death--and he'd seen her face when they told her that the body had been found. Until that moment, Lucas thought, she'd had some hope that Frances might still be alive.

Not Austin.

At the BCA office, he ran halfway up the stairs, until his bad leg bit back at him, and he nearly fell. Limping into the office, he nodded at Carol, who asked, "What's happening?" and came to stand in the door while he punched up the computer.

"Got a break, maybe," he said. "Found Frances Austin's purse, got a breakup note out of it. Breaking up with a guy named Frank."

"Old-fashioned name, Frank," Carol said. "Don't see many Franks anymore. If they'd gotten married, it would have been Mr. Francis and Mrs. Frances Austin."

Lucas was listening to her prattle and he pulled up the e-mail, then frowned and looked up and asked, "What'd you say?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. I was just going on."

"You said Frances and Francis--are they spelled the same?"

"No, but I don't know which is which."

"I bet no one else does, either," Lucas said. He ran his hands through his hair, said, "Holy shit. Holy shit. Go get me Dan Jackson, on the run, and tell him to bring that big fuckin' camera. Holy shit, the Frances Austin who went to the bank could have been a
man."

He took a
moment to explain, walking around his desk, then, as Carol went to call the photographer, went back and pulled up the photo of the breakup note. As Pratt had said, the note was badly smeared, but the salutation was clear enough:

Dear Frank
,
I've put off writing this letter for a long time
[smudge]
heart I
didn't want to believe what I heard. There's no point in
[longe
r s
mudge]
hear from you again, really. I also don't want
[smudge]

From there, it was a black stain; maybe the feds could make something out of it, but felt-tips don't make much of a physical indentation on paper, her handwriting was small, and the stains were dark. Still, it was possible that a lab could recover the original.

Not that he needed it to push the investigation. What they had was, for now, good enough.

Lucas frowned: but where would the fairy fit in this scenario?

He thought about it for a moment, and then let it go. If they nailed down Willett, he thought, the fairy would come clear. She was probably another of his lovers--maybe the one who put Willett up to stealing the fifty thousand.

"Carol!"

She popped back in the office: "Dan's on his way."

"We need to get everything on paper that we can about Willett. Run everything you can think of. If we come up with previous addresses, out-of-state, we're gonna want to get their stuff . . ."

Jackson, the photographer, came in a moment later, and Carol called, "We've only got one Frank Willett locally--it's Frank, not Francis, on his driver's license."

"Where's that Willett work? We need an address," Lucas said.

"I'll get into the employment security, hang on . . ."

Jackson, stepping around Carol, asked, "Another rush job?"

"I think we've got something this time," Lucas said.

Carol called, "It's him, he works for A. Austin LLC in Minnetonka. He lives in St. Louis Park."

And she pulled up his driver's-license photo: Willett had long black hair, carefully arranged on his shoulders, an oval face, square white teeth. He looked good, and he knew it, even in a license photograph.

"Ooo," Carol said.

Lucas squinted at the picture, trying to make him as the man in the alley. Couldn't do it; the long hair was distracting. The guy in the alley seemed to have short curly hair, he thought. But if Willett had cut it . . . or maybe even if he'd been wearing a ponytail on the night of the shooting . . . it wasn't impossible, but he couldn't ID him from the photo.

Lucas had Carol call Minnetonka and ask for Willett. When the receptionist transferred the call, Carol hung up.

"I'm going out there," Lucas said.

"Want to ride along in the van?" Jackson asked.

"I'll meet you over there," Lucas said. "I don't want to get stuck if you have to wait awhile; but I 'll come and sit for an hour or two."

Minnetonka was on
the far western edge of the metro area, and from the BCA office, took a solid forty-five minutes, west on I-94 and I-394, winding around in the maze of streets at the end of it. Lucas had Jackson on the cell phone, and they cruised the spa, Waterwood, from opposite directions, then hooked up at a strip mall and Lucas transferred into the back of the van.

The GMC had been taken away from a dope dealer. It had nice captain's chairs in the back, tinted windows, a dresser with a mirror, and, if the chairs were moved, space for a narrow memory-foam mattress, which had been stripped out.

Jackson took it back to Waterwood, parked across the street, eased into the back of the van and took the other captain's chair. "Magazines in the chiffonier, diet Coke and raspberry-flavored water in the fridge," he said. "I got the rest of the subscription to Sirius, long as you don't play any country and western."

Lucas settled for a bottle of water and a classic rock channel, checked the magazines:
Blind Spot, PhotoPro, PDN,
a couple of
Shutterbugs, Men's Journal,
a
Playboy,
and an aging
Esquire
with a picture of Charlize Theron on the cover, as the world's sexiest woman.