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.
A diversion would lead them away from her… So it would have to be the nun.
Her legs twitched down the bed, a kind of running motion, as she began working out a possible plan. She’d have to do it the minute she got out. She’d have to emphasize her injuries, complain of cracked ribs, something that wouldn’t show on X rays, but would keep her from doing anything heavy. She’d have to hobble and whimper and limp and make people feel sorry for her, and the instant she was alone, she had to go for the nun.
She’d have no trouble with this. She’d been undercover for more than twenty-five years now. She might not ever come out.
Franklin had been in a longtime 401K plan. The stocks had gone through the roof during the summer, so, like any Good American, he’d borrowed against the fund to buy a new black Ford extended-cab pickup truck, which he and Lucas walked around, Lucas shaking his head. Finally Franklin said, "So what next? Just wrap it up? We’re done?"