Chosen Prey (31 page)

"Ah, man . . . Mother, I don't want to have to deal with this, but I have to say it: I think you are . . . afflicted. You've made this up. Created it. The man on the television is not me; I saw the drawings on television. You really think I could draw those things? C'mon, Mother."

But it wasn't going to work. He could see it. "I need something to drink--water," he said. "Don't go away."

He walked past her, through the living room and into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, got a glass, let the water run for a moment as the calculations flew through his mind. With the glass overflowing, he turned the water off, drank a sip, exhaled, poured the rest of the water down the drain.

Well, she knew. He had to act.

SHE WAS STILL sitting in the rocker when he walked back into the room; the actor's face was still frozen on the TV screen, watching them. Helen seemed in despair, but without a touch of fear.

"The best thing to do--" she began.

She didn't finish. He caught her one-handed by the hair and pulled her straight forward onto the carpet. She yelped once and went facedown, and he dropped on top of her, pinning her with his weight. She grunted, desperately, "James," and turned her head, her eyes rolling wildly, looking up at him, unbelieving, and he slipped one hand around her face and cupped her mouth in the palm of his hand and with his thumb and forefinger, pinched her nose. He took care: He didn't pinch tightly enough to bruise, only to stop the flow of air. She struggled, she tried to get a breath--he could feel the suction against the palm of his hand--but it was all over quickly enough. He held her until he knew she was dead, then held her a minute longer.

ALL RIGHT. THAT was done. They were four blocks from St. Pat's. She walked most days, so moving her car would not be a problem. She was always the first one to work, so finding her there would not raise any eyebrows.

He would have to change her, find something appropriate for work. He went to her bedroom, found a rack of business suits still in their plastic clean bags, found one that he knew she favored. The change itself was distasteful: She was like a withered bird, no muscle left, barely sexed. He hurried through it, but made sure that she was neat, just as she was in life.

He turned off the porch light, stepped outside, waited for a moment in the dark, scanning the strip of visible street. This was all familiar enough, and he was good at it. When he was sure, he quickly moved her to the backseat of his car.

Purse and keys. He got them.

Money. She had fifty dollars in her purse; he took forty, left ten. And she kept money under the cup in the flour canister in the kitchen. He opened the canister, lifted the cup, and found three hundred and fifty dollars in tens. The money lifted his heart, and he hurried up the stairs. She accumulated money in a variety of ways--maybe even stole some of it from the museum, he thought--and squirreled it away. He didn't know where, exactly, but he thought the bedroom. . . .

And it was in the bedroom, in the closet, under the carpet, in a hole in the floor. He would never have found it if he hadn't been on his hands and knees, checking her shoes. A corner of the carpet was pulled up, just enough that he reached over and gave it a tug. A square of it came away, too easily, and when he looked . . .

A wad of cash. He pulled it out, and his heart leapt when he saw that most of the bills were fifties and hundreds. There must be thousands. He rolled out of the closet and counted, eyes bent close to the cash, stopping to wet his index finger on his tongue, the better to count. He counted once, could not believe the total, and counted again. Eight thousand dollars?

He closed his eyes. Eight thousand. Everything he wanted, all right here. . . .

Back down the stairs. He found a flashlight in a drawer by the sink, turned off all the house lights, and headed out.

The night was cold and moonless. He drove the four blocks to the museum and parked on the street. Sat watching, letting an odd car pass by. A few minutes before nine, he got out, walked once entirely around the museum, then tried her key in the side door. It slipped in easily, and he was inside.

There were safety lights at either end of the hall, and in the deadly silence he walked down to the office, let himself in, walked carefully past the secretary's desk into his mother's private space. Okay, he thought. This would work.

He left the door unlocked and walked back out to the car, took a look around, then lifted her out and carried her across the lawn under one arm, as though he were humping a rug into the building. Inside, he put her in her chair.

Got her cup, in the light of the flash, went down the hall to the men's room, filled it with water, found a pack of instant coffee next to the microwave in the secretary's office, and stirred the coffee into the cup. When it was all ready, he sat her in the chair, put her fingers around the cup handle, then pushed her onto the floor.

She went over easily, dragging the cup with her.

He looked around. What else?

Nothing. Simple was better, and anything elaborate would take more time. And it really looked good, he thought; she was on her side, as if she'd gone to sleep. There was no trace of violence, just a little old lady who'd gone to sleep. The way she'd have wanted to go. . . .

With a last look around, he left the building, locking the door behind him. Out to the car. A nice night, he thought. Money in his pocket.

A half-million in Fidelity?

Too bad about Mom.

But she was old.

Chapter
19.

LUCAS WAS TALKING with Rose Marie Roux the next morning when her secretary poked her head in the door, looked at Lucas, and said, "A hysterical woman is on the phone, looking for you. She says it's an emergency."

"Switch it in here," Rose Marie said. The secretary backed out of her office, and a few seconds later, Rose Marie's phone burped. She took the receiver off the hook and handed it across the desk to Lucas.

"Lucas Davenport."

"Officer Davenport, this is Denise Thompson. . . ." The woman seemed to be falling apart, her voice pitched high and wobbly with stress.

"Denise . . . ?"

"Thompson, Helen Qatar's secretary. You know she died--"

"What?"He stood up, scowling, astonished. "She died? How'd she die?"

"She died at her desk. I don't know, I don't know, she just died. She was at her desk with a cup of coffee and she must have had a stroke or something."

"Did she call out or--"

"No, no, I wasn't here, it was before anybody got here this morning. I saw her door open and her light on and so I went in, and I just saw her legs on the floor and I went around to see . . . she was gone. I called 911 . . ." Now she did break down and began a breathy weeping.

Lucas let her go for a few seconds, then said, "Okay, okay, Mrs. Thompson. Police came?"

"And the ambulance, but it was too late. I could see it was too late."

"Okay."

"I don't know why I'm calling you except that you'd been to see her and she was joking about being Miss Marple and now she's gone."

"I'll talk to the medical examiner and make sure there was nothing improper," Lucas said. "We'll make sure. Are you the contact on that, or . . . ?"

"Her son is, really, if he's not too wrecked. He was pretty wrecked this morning. I called him, and he ran right over. He went a little nutty."

"All right. Well, thank you for calling," Lucas said.

"Mr. Davenport . . . I don't know, I'm not sure I should even bring this up. . . ."

"Bring up anything you want," Lucas said.

"Well, I'm sure it was a stroke or something, something regular, she was an older woman . . . but--she didn't bring her newspaper."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Every day for years, as long as I've worked here, she would carry her newspaper in. She told me that she would get up, she would eat raisin bran or bran flakes and a cup of yogurt, and she would make her list of things to do for that day. She wouldn't get the newspaper until she had her list. Then, when she left for work, she'd pick up the newspaper from the front porch and carry it in. If the carrier didn't bring it or something, she would stop at a box on the corner and buy one."

"Every day."

"Every day. When she got here, she would put the paper in her in-basket and make a cup of coffee, and then she would answer all of her e-mail and write e-mails to people she corresponded with. I would come in with my paper and we would work on her to-do list until break time, and then we would read our newspapers at the same time. But today . . . she didn't bring her newspaper."

"So what do you . . . ?"

"It's just strange. Of all days . . . I'm sure it's nothing, but it's just strange. I wanted to tell somebody."

"Thank you. We will look into it all," Lucas said.

WHEN THOMPSON WAS gone, he looked at Rose Marie and said, "Shit."

"It didn't sound good from here."

"A little old lady is dead--Helen Qatar, down at St. Pat's. It's possible that she was taken off by the gravedigger. Goddamnit. She joked about being Miss Marple, and we think the guy may be around there somewhere, and I never told her to back off or be careful."

"Try not to get too deep into the guilt," Rose Marie said.

"I won't. But I liked her. One of those active old birds. Smart. Still working. Goddamnit." He ran both hands up through his hair, then locked them behind his head. "Just wish . . . I don't know. There's something going on that we don't see. We're a lot closer to him than we think, and somehow we dragged her into it."

On his way out of Rose Marie's office, he stopped at the secretary's desk and dialed the number of an investigator at the ME's office. "Yeah, we got her in," the guy said. "I can't tell you much, except that there's no sign of violence and she was older and was taking some heart drugs."

"Could you do everything?" Lucas asked. "There's a chance that somebody took her off. I've been told that she died while she was drinking coffee, so check for poison, or weird drugs, anything like that."

"You say everything, we'll do everything," the investigator said. "I'll tell the doc, and get him to push it a little."

"Thanks. Let me know."

"Sure. Hey, you know she's got a son, right? He's here now, somewhere, I think. I haven't seen him leave. Probably doing papers."

"Hold him, will you?" Lucas said. "I'm gonna run over."

He was going out the door when he saw Anderson and Marshall talking in a doorway. He went that way instead, and when Marshall looked up, said, "You hear?"

Marshall pushed away from the door. He was wearing a hip-length rough-leather coat lined with fleece, and with his rough face and hands, looked like a Marlboro ad. "I guess not," he said. "It must not be good, from the way you sound."

"Helen Qatar's dead. She was found dead this morning by her secretary. She's over at the ME's office, and her son's there. I was just heading over."

"I'm coming with you," Marshall said. He turned to Anderson and said, "Catch you later, Harmon."

On the way through the secret tunnel, Lucas said, "You and Anderson seem to be getting along."

"Yeah. Can't tell you why. He's just a good old boy, though he looks like an old geek or something."

Lucas nodded. "Smart guy. A pretty damn good street cop, when he was on the street."

"That's what I see," Marshall said. "I'm a pretty good street cop myself, and I'll tell you what--if I make it to heaven, I wouldn't mind spendin' part of eternity sitting in a tile room with a bunch of street cops, drinkin' coffee and tellin' stories."

"Well, goddamnit, Terry, you oughta be a poet." Marshall shut his mouth and seemed embarrassed by Lucas's reaction. Lucas picked it up and said, "I know exactly what you mean, though. That would not be a bad way to spend some time. Let me tell you what happened when Del ran into this chick with these pinking shears. . . ."

They were laughing when they got to the ME's, and stopped just a minute to sober up before they pushed through the door at the end of the tunnel. Lucas stuck his head into the investigator's office and asked, "Where's the son?"

"He's down talking to the doc . . . right there, second door."

QATAR WAS A small man--not short, but willowy, and bald, with a narrow face. His baldness seemed to push his features too far down on his oval head, so that his deep-set eyes, delicate nose, full lips, and rounded chin were all pressed into the lower half of the oval. His face was pink as a lamb chop; he'd apparently been weeping. The doc was behind his desk, and a remote, smooth-faced blonde was perched on a swivel stool next to a drawing table; she was wearing a white blouse and a skirt the precise pale green color of her eyes. She had long legs, and most of their length was visible.

After Lucas knocked, the doc invited them in and said, "Mr. Qatar is having a hard time with this."

"I'm sorry," Lucas said. "I only met your mother a few days ago, but I liked her. She seemed like a really nice woman."

"She was," Marshall said. "I liked her a lot too."

"Jeeminy Christmas," Qatar said. "I knew, I knew, I knew . . ."