Secret Prey

  O’Dell sat silently for a moment. Then: ‘‘Can I call you tomorrow? First thing?’’

  ‘‘First thing,’’ Audrey said. ‘‘There’s not a lot of time left.’’

  Audrey looked old, O’Dell thought, looking after her as she scuttled away toward the elevator. They were of an age, but already Audrey was bent over, stiff.

  O’Dell worked out, both for strength and flexibility. She was a long-range planner, and had every intention of living to a nice ripe ninety.

  AFTER LETTING AUDREY OUT, O DELL WENT TO THE REFRIGERATOR, got a bottle of Dos Equis, popped the top, and sat down on the couch to think about it. Five minutes later the telephone burped from the end table, a single half-ring. She waited, but whoever it was had rung off. She took a couple of sips of the beer, leaned sideways and picked up the phone, punched in Louise Compton’s number.

  Compton picked it up on the third ring, and O’Dell said, ‘‘Audrey McDonald was just here. She said she can deliver Spartz, Rondeau, Young, and Brandt. But there are some conditions.’’

  ‘‘Like what?’’

  ‘‘Like they want a written statement: I’m president and CEO, but Wilson gets the chairman’s job. He’d just be a figurehead, but the salaries would be the same.’’

  ‘‘That sounds . . .’’

  ‘‘Illegal. It might be.’’

  ‘‘Why don’t you see if you could commit yourself with a couple of witnesses—maybe a couple of the board members—rather than putting it in writing. Then in a couple of years, when we’ve got the place under control . . .’’

  ‘‘We bump him off.’’

  ‘‘Exactly.’’

  ‘‘I like your thinking,’’ O’Dell said. The doorbell rang, and she turned, frowned. ‘‘Somebody at the door. Hang on.’’

  O’Dell hopped off the couch and hurried across the living room, looked through the peephole into the hallway, frowned, and opened the door.

  ‘‘I . . .’’ Then she saw the muzzle of the gun. ‘‘No,’’ she said.

  In the narrow space of the reception hall, the shot sounded like the end of the world, and for O’Dell, it was. The slug hit her in the eye, and knocked out the back of her skull.

  She went down on her back, and a second later another shot hit her in the forehead: but she was already dead.

  The telephone lay on the couch, and a tiny, tinny voice screamed ‘‘Susan? Susan, what was that? Susan?’’

  A real bad day for Susan O’Dell.

  THIRTEEN

  LUCAS STEPPED OUT OF THE ELEVATOR, BRUSHED PAST a couple of uniformed cops in the hallway, stopped in O’Dell’s door and looked down at the body. She was lying flat on her back, her feet toed in, her nose pointed straight up. Her face had been ruined by the two gunshots; a small bloodstain was visible in the carpet below her skull. He could smell the blood.

  ‘‘What the fuck is this?’’ Lucas asked in anger and utter disgust. ‘‘What the fuck is it?’’

  An older plainclothes cop named Swanson was sitting in a ladder-back chair, flipping through an appointment book. ‘‘Same old shit,’’ he said. Swanson had seen maybe six hundred murders in his career. ‘‘Watch your feet, nothing’s been processed.’’

  His partner, who was named Riley, said, ‘‘We got that McDonald woman coming over. She was here just before the shooting.’’

  ‘‘Audrey McDonald? How do we know that?’’ Lucas asked. He was walking around O’Dell, peering down at the body as though a clue might be written on it.

  ‘‘O’Dell was on the phone with a friend from the bank when she was killed. The friend—uh, let me see, Louise Compton—called us, called 911. But anyway, just before

  O’Dell was killed, she told this Compton that Audrey McDonald had just left. We understand you’ve been talking to her. Audrey McDonald.’’

  ‘‘Never laid eyes on her,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Talked to her husband.’’ He squatted next to O’Dell, picked out the powder burns on her face. Small- to medium-caliber pistol, fired from a few inches away, he thought. ‘‘Got a slug?’’

  Swanson pointed a pistol at an entryway wall. ‘‘Right there . . . we’ll get it. And it looks like maybe the second shot was fired when she was already down, so it might be right under her head. Wooden floors.’’

  ‘‘What about this friend? Compton?’’

  ‘‘She’s on her way—ought to be here any minute, actually.’’

  ‘‘Let’s get something over her then,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Cover her up.’’

  ‘‘I’ll get it,’’ Riley said.

  ‘‘What time we got?’’ Lucas asked.

  ‘‘Compton called 911 at eleven-oh-four,’’ Swanson said. ‘‘She say she was on the phone, heard the shots, and when O’Dell didn’t come to the phone after she screamed for a few seconds, she called. So we figure it was a minute or two after eleven o’clock.’’

  ‘‘You know, Sloan and Sherrill have already interviewed everybody involved,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Maybe you ought to get them up here.’’

  ‘‘All right I’ll give ’em a ring.’’

  ‘‘Christ, what a mess,’’ Lucas said, turning away from the body. ‘‘She opens the door and bang. That’s all.’’

  ‘‘That’s about the way we see it . . . We called you because you’re up-to-date on this bank thing—we figured if it’s a goofball knocking off the top guys . . .’’

  ‘‘Doesn’t make sense,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘She’s the wrong one to get shot.’’

  ‘‘Huh?’’

  ‘‘We thought Kresge was shot because he was pushing a merge with a bigger bank. But O’Dell was going after his job on the basis of stopping the merger.’’

  Swanson said, ‘‘Maybe the merger doesn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe they were killed for some bank reason, but nothing to do with the merger.’’

  Lucas said, ‘‘I don’t know.’’

  ‘‘Whatever happened with the firebomb business?’’ Swanson asked.

  ‘‘Nothing. Just fuckin’ nothin’,’’ Lucas said. His mind switched tracks to the firebomb. And Knox, the Caterpillar man, was probably right, he thought. A kid in the neighborhood who liked to watch fires. But not a street action.

  RILEY PULLED A RUBBER SHEET OVER O’DELL’S BODY and stood up and turned. People in the hall. Then Wilson McDonald stepped through the door, jerked to a halt when he saw the figure on the floor, and said, ‘‘My God, is that her?’’ Audrey McDonald followed reluctantly, a foot or two behind, and peeked around her husband at the covered body. She reminded Lucas of a small, brown hen.

  Swanson was just punching off his cell phone: Sloan was on the way. ‘‘Who’re you?’’ Swanson asked.

  ‘‘Wilson and Audrey McDonald . . .’’ McDonald spotted Lucas emerging from the kitchen hallway. Lucas had taken a quick tour of the apartment after talking to Swanson, but had found nothing that meant anything to him. ‘‘Officer Davenport . . . what happened?’’

  ‘‘Somebody shot O’Dell,’’ Lucas said flatly. He examined McDonald, then his wife, then said, ‘‘Where were you tonight at eleven o’clock?’’

  McDonald flushed: ‘‘Are you questioning me ?’’

  ‘‘Do you have an answer to the question?’’

  McDonald looked at his wife, then said, ‘‘I was driving home. I’d just left Jim Bone’s place.’’

  ‘‘Your wife was here, and you were at Jim Bone’s?’’

  ‘‘Yes. We were trying to put together a deal on the succession to Dan Kresge. We needed to talk to the two of them simultaneously.’’

  Lucas shifted his gaze to Audrey: ‘‘And you were driving home as well.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ She touched her throat. ‘‘I was.’’

  Her voice touched a memory cell: ‘‘How long were you here?’’ Lucas asked. ‘‘And what did you decide?’’

  ‘‘We were arranging—’’ Wilson McDonald started, but Lucas waved him down.

  ‘‘Please let your wife answer,’’ Luca
s said.

  McDonald looked down at Audrey, who said, falteringly, ‘‘Well, we were arranging . . . talking about . . . votes on the board of directors. The board appeared to be split three ways, and if we could arrange an alliance with one or the other of them . . .’’ She shrugged.

  And Lucas recognized the voice as the woman on the telephone earlier that day. He wasn’t absolutely positive, but he would have bet on it. The timbre of her voice and the pacing of the words were very close.

  ‘‘Did you see anyone in the hall when you left? Or downstairs?’’ Swanson asked, swerving off the topic.

  ‘‘There were some people downstairs, but nobody I recognized,’’ Audrey said. ‘‘There wasn’t anybody up here. The hallway is short . . .’’ She pointed back to the hall through the open apartment door. ‘‘There’re only two apartments.’’

  Lucas pulled them back to the meeting: ‘‘What did you decide? Did you get your alliance?’’

  ‘‘Well . . .’’ Audrey looked at her husband, whose lips were pressed tight in anger.

  ‘‘This has nothing to do with who killed Susan O’Dell, does it?’’ he asked. ‘‘You’re trying to screw me so your pal Bone gets the CEO’s job.’’

  ‘‘He’s not my pal,’’ Lucas snapped back.

  ‘‘No? Who handled the money for your IPO and the management buyout? And you were in his office last week talking about me. I haven’t done anything and you’ve been spreading rumors that are killing me.’’

  Lucas shook his head: ‘‘Routine . . .’’

  ‘‘Bullshit. My lawyer used to be a cop, and he says it’s nothing like routine.’’

  ‘‘So get your lawyer down here if you want,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘But I want an answer: Did you strike a deal with Susan O’Dell?’’

  Wilson McDonald looked down at his wife, who stared back, then nodded almost imperceptibly. Wilson turned back to Lucas: ‘‘Yes, we did. Between the two of us, we had the votes. She becomes president, I become chairman. I work on strategic issues, she works on day-to-day matters.’’

  ‘‘How about Bone?’’

  He shook his head: ‘‘Bone is committed to the merger. We couldn’t talk.’’

  ‘‘So, if O’Dell hadn’t been shot, you’d have had the job.’’

  ‘‘And Bone would have been out,’’ McDonald said. ‘‘Why don’t you go ask your pal about that one?’’

  Swanson stepped in: ‘‘Mr. McDonald, we’re gonna ask you to step out into the hallway while we talk to your wife. No big problem, you can take a chair if you wish, but we need a statement from her, a sort of blow-by-blow account of everything that happened.’’

  ‘‘I thought she had a right to an attorney,’’ McDonald blustered.

  ‘‘She does,’’ Swanson said, ‘‘And if she wants one, we can wait until you get somebody here. But we’re not accusing her of anything at all. We just want to hear what happened.’’

  ‘‘Then why can’t I stay?’’

  ‘‘Because you have a way of answering her questions for her. We’ve been through this before, and we’ve just gotten to the point where we ask the spouse to step outside. An attorney’s fine, if she wants one now, or she can ask for one at any time.’’

  McDonald looked at his wife for a moment, as if weighing the possibility that she would say something strange under questioning, then looked back at Swanson and nodded. ‘‘I’ll take a chair.’’ And to Audrey: ‘‘The minute they push the wrong button, you come get me, and we’ll have Harrison get up here.’’

  ‘‘Okay,’’ she said, swallowing nervously. ‘‘Don’t go far away.’’

  WHEN WILSON MCDONALD HAD GONE, LUCAS SAID, ‘‘Detective Swanson is going to talk to you for a few minutes, then Detective Sloan will want to ask a few questions—Detective Sloan has already spoken to your husband . . .’’

  ‘‘Up at Dan’s cabin—he told me about it,’’ Audrey said. She seemed more assertive when her husband wasn’t around.

  ‘‘I have to leave in a minute or two, but I’d like to talk to you privately just for a moment, you and I,’’ Lucas said. He looked at Swanson. ‘‘I just need to speak to her for a second.’’

  ‘‘Sure.’’

  Lucas escorted her into O’Dell’s kitchen, lowered his voice: ‘‘I believe I spoke to you earlier today.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ Was she really surprised? he wondered. There was an instant of surprise in her eyes. ‘‘I don’t believe so.’’

  ‘‘Mrs. McDonald, you have a rather nasty bruise on your leg, just above your ankle: Is that new?’’

  ‘‘I just . . .’’ She looked away, groped for a word. ‘‘. . . bumped myself.’’

  ‘‘No, you didn’t,’’ he said. ‘‘Your husband beat you up last night. Would you like a call from the domestic intervention people?’’

  ‘‘No, no, we only had a little argument.’’

  ‘‘If we took you downtown and had one of our policewomen take a look at you, she’d find a lot of bruises, wouldn’t she?’’

  ‘‘That’s illegal. I want to see my husband.’’

  ‘‘Okay.’’ Lucas raised his hands. ‘‘Like I said, this is just between you and me. If you don’t want to make a complaint, I’m not going to insist on it. But you should. It never gets better, it always gets worse.’’

  ‘‘Things will get better. Wilson’s been under a lot of stress. This job . . .’’

  ‘‘Just a job,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘Oh, no.’’ She was shocked. ‘‘This . . . this is everything.’’

  BEFORE HE LEFT, LUCAS TOOK SWANSON ASIDE: ‘‘TREAT her very carefully. Get as much as you can on her— personal history, everything—and tell Sloan that I want her wrung out, but not scared. Don’t push her into getting an attorney.’’

  ‘‘Are we trying for anything in particular?’’ Swanson asked. He turned half sideways to look at Audrey, who was perched on a chair in O’Dell’s home office.

  ‘‘If we can do it—very gently—it’d be nice to get a wedge between her and her husband. Don’t be obvious, but if the opportunity comes up, it’d be good to let her know that her interests and her husband’s are not necessarily the same.’’

  BACK IN HIS CAR, LUCAS PICKED UP THE CAR PHONE and called St. Anne’s College, which was located a few blocks from his house in St. Paul. He told the St. Anne’s operator that he knew it was late and nuns commonly don’t take calls from men in the middle of the night, that this was an emergency and perhaps a matter of life and death, that he was with the police department . . . and he got his nun.

  Sister Mary Joseph, a psychology professor and childhood friend he’d always known as Elle Kruger: ‘‘Lucas? Is somebody hurt?’’ A sharp, somewhat astringent voice, becoming more so as they got older.

  ‘‘Nothing like that, Elle. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have a couple of questions on a case.’’

  ‘‘Oh, good. I was afraid . . . Anyway, have you read the Iliad lately?’’

  ‘‘Uh, no, actually.’’ He looked at his watch. Had to get to Bone’s place.

  ‘‘Have you ever read it?’’

  ‘‘That’s the one . . . No, that’s the Odyssey . I guess not. Same guy, though, right?’’

  ‘‘Lucas . . .’’ She sounded exasperated. ‘‘I keep forgetting you were a jock. Listen, go down and get the Iliad , the one that’s translated by Robert Fagles, that’s the one I’m reading now, and I’ll tell you what parts to read if you don’t want to read the whole thing.’’

  ‘‘Elle . . .’’

  ‘‘The thing is, this translation is much coarser, in all the right places, than the old ones—my goodness, the Trojan War resembled one of your gang wars. That was always obscured by the language of the other translations, but this one . . . the language is brilliantly apt.’’

  ‘‘Elle, Elle—tell me later. I’m calling from my car and I’ve got a serious question.’’

  She stopped with the Iliad : ‘‘Which is?’’

  ‘??
?If a woman is routinely beaten by her husband, is it likely that she might betray him behind his back, while defending him when he was around?’’

  ‘‘Of course—wouldn’t you if you were in her shoes?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘No, you probably wouldn’t. You’d probably go after him with a baseball bat . . . But yes, a woman might do that.’’

  ‘‘I’m not talking about some kind of pro forma defense. I’m talking about really believing in the defense. But at the same time, betraying him to the police anonymously, then denying it even to the police.’’

  ‘‘This isn’t a theoretical question.’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘Then you’re dealing with a badly abused woman who needs treatment—if it’s not too late for treatment. Some people, if they’re abused badly enough, will identify with and even love their abusers, while another side of their personality is desperately trying to get out of the relationship. Just to use a kind of layman’s terminology, you could say you have a condition of . . . mmm . . . stress-induced multiple-personality disorder. The part of her personality that sincerely defends her husband may not even know that the other part of her personality is betraying him.’’

  ‘‘Shit . . . Excuse me,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘So even if I broke her out from her husband in, say, a murder case, she could be impeached as being nuts.’’

  ‘‘ ‘Nuts’ is not accepted terminology, Lucas,’’ she said.

  ‘‘But she could be impeached . . .’’

  ‘‘Worse than that. If she were required to testify in the presence of her husband, she might flip over and start defending him—lying—because he so dominates her personality.’’

  ‘‘All right.’’

  ‘‘Will I be meeting this woman?’’

  ‘‘Probably not, Elle. I’ll tell you about it next time we talk. Right now, I’m running.’’

  ‘‘Take care.’’

  ‘‘You too.’’

  BONE LIVED IN A HIGH-SECURITY BUILDING MUCH like O’Dell’s, and not more than a five-minute walk away. Lucas dumped the Porsche in a no-parking zone outside the glass front doors, and when a security guard came to the doors, flashed his ID and was admitted to the lobby.