They found a booth, ordered beer and fries: "She scared the shit out of me, man. And I’ll tell you what, Glass was looking at that tape machine like it was solid gold," Sloan said. "Anybody who listens to that tape is gonna believe her too. Like a jury."
Lucas shook his head again: "Not if they listen to Helen at the same time. Helen is just… an innocent. She picked up on McDonald because the pattern became so clear to her over the years. She talked to them often enough that she knew when a promotion was up, and then she’d read about some guy from the bank being killed, and then it’d turn out to be a guy in McDonald’s department. Nope. She even waited longer than she should have. And why in God’s name would she offer her mother’s hair? If she knew her mother had been poisoned…"
They ran over it for another hour, building the case against Audrey. In the end, Sloan said, "You’ll have to admit, most of it could be built the other way."
"Naw: jury’d never go for it. And remember, she killed her old man."
Sloan shook his head. "Just wish there was some way to pry the sisters apart. Put one of them in Kansas while somebody’s getting killed in Minnesota."
As Lucas put the beer bottle to his mouth, the light went off in his head: "Oh, shit," he said, the bottle frozen in front of his face.
"What?"
"In the Arris killing. We never looked at that tape for women."
"Huh. Where’s the tape?"
"My place. St. Paul gave me a copy of it, and I left it at my place."
"Can I come along?"
They stuck the tape in Lucas’s VCR, and the bad picture came up on the screen. They watched Arris go by, followed by several women, and then, a minute later, another woman, walking rigidly down the hill. "There she is," Lucas said.
"That’s fuckin’ Helen," Sloan said.
"No, no, that’s fuckin’ Audrey," said Lucas. He ran the tape back. "Look at the way she walks."
"Looks like fuckin’ Helen to me."
"Remember, this is eight years ago. Audrey’d be thirty. Helen would only be in her mid-twenties… They look alike, but that woman is not twenty-six."
Sloan was on his hands and knees, peering at the screen. "Goddamn. Could be Audrey."
"Is Audrey," Lucas said.
"Selling it to a jury’ll be hard," Sloan said. "You’ll get one dumb shit on there who’ll believe nothing but his own eyes, and his eyes’ll say it’s Helen."
"I wonder if we can get this enhanced somehow," Lucas said. "Maybe the Feebs?"
"I don’t know… Tell you the truth, if there was a way to ditch the tape, I’d do it. It confuses things. But now that I keep looking at it, I think you’re right. She moves like Audrey does. She scuttles."
The phone rang as they ran through the tape one last time. Sherrill. "Did you get her?"
"Yeah, I think-but it’s gonna be a close call," Lucas said.
"You want me to come over and comfort you?"
He didn’t, especially, but he said, "Come on over."
"Nah. You don’t sound like you mean it," she said. "Tomorrow night, though."
And she was gone.
"Fuckin’ cop-women," Lucas said.
"That’s what you’re doing," Sloan agreed.
"Fuckin’ was an adjective, not a verb," Lucas said.
"Could’ve been a verb," Sloan said.
Sloan left, and Lucas sat in his study for a while, doodling, running through the case in his mind, looking for loose ends. He didn’t find many, except to note that they’d have to reinterview half the people who worked at the bank. They’d have to find witnesses who saw Audrey McDonald firing the Contender pistol; they’d have to find witnesses who would testify about promotions, and who was competitive for them…
He finally trundled off to bed, lay restlessly for a while, finally fell asleep.
In the morning, he moved sluggishly around, looked at the clock: already nine. He dressed, stopped at a fast-food place for French toast, then headed downtown. He called the county attorney’s office and got Kirk.
"Had the bail hearing yet?"
"Yeah. The judge was a wee bit skeptical about the arsenic. J. B. did a pretty nice job. We got the bail up to a million, but she was ready for it."
"She’s out?"
"Twenty minutes ago," Kirk said.
"How about the arrest warrant on her mother?" "We’re slowing down on that. J. B. brought up this stuff about the old house they used to live in, and we heard about this business with her sister, so we’re gonna have the house checked and depose the sister. I mean, we’ve got her on a million, I don’t think she’ll run."
Sherrill dropped by at midmorning, carrying a doughnut and two cups of coffee. "She’s out, I hear."
"Yeah," Lucas said in disgust. "I’ll tell you what: if she was a black guy with a record, she’d be washing dishes in Stillwater by now."
"Sloan told me about that whole rap about her sister: that’s pretty weird."
"Yeah, I don’t understand that," Lucas said. "It’s a fucked-up defense. You put Helen on the stand, the truth is gonna come out."
"You don’t think there’s any chance that Audrey’s telling the truth? That it’s Helen?"
"No, I don’t."
"The one thing that’s hard for me to get over is her appearance," Sherrill said. "She’s only five years older than me…"
"Really? I thought you were sixteen…"
"Shut up. I’m being serious. The thing is, if you take the attack on Elle, where somebody beat her up with a ball bat, who do you think would be most likely to do that? Helen, who looks pretty active, pretty good shape, still young? Or Audrey, who looks old, slumped over?"
"Whatever she looks like, she’s only thirty-eight," Lucas said. "She-"
He stopped, put a hand to his forehead. "What?" Sherrill asked. "A stroke?"
"Aw, man," Lucas said. He picked up the phone book, talking fast: "I think this might have gone through my head the night we were at St. Anne’s, the night Elle got hit, but it went away; it’s like it was a stroke…"
"What, what?"
"If Elle takes the phone call, and grabs her keys, and runs out the door and gets jumped… whoever called her must’ve been standing right there. Must’ve been calling from the bushes. Must’ve used a cell phone, not a pay phone. All the other tips we’ve had have come from pay phones, it must’ve blocked me off or something…"
Sherrill snapped her fingers: "Phone records."
"Absolutely."
The man who could get the records was away, but was expected back before lunch. In the meantime, the company would try to reach him, to hurry things up.
Lucas said to Sherrill, "If this pans out, she’s dead meat."
"What if it’s Helen’s phone?"
"That’d be a problem," Lucas said.
"So we wait?"
"We wait." Lucas looked at his watch. "Shouldn’t be more than an hour or so."
Del stopped in: "I’m being haunted by these old ladies," he said.
"Tell them if they insist on going to jail, they’ll be raped by bull dykes," Sherrill suggested.
"I think some of them are gonna need to be rehabbed," Del said. "They’re all getting different lawyers; there’s gonna be fifty-eight lawyers to deal with."
"Too bad the pinking shears thing wasn’t fatal," Lucas said nastily. "Think how much better off you’d be."
"That’s the truth," Del said sincerely. "Jesus, what a mess."
"When’re you going to Cancu?n?" Sherrill asked.
"In a week," he said. "Hope this is done by then. I’d hate to have it hanging over my head for the whole time I’m down there."
"The thing is,"Sherrill Said, after Del had gone, "what if Helen really loves Audrey-they’ve been through a lot together, and they’re sisters-and decides to help her out? What if we go talk to Helen, and she starts taking the fifth? Audrey gets on the stand, blames everything on Helen, and Helen refuses to talk…"
"I don’t think that would happen. Audrey killed their mother and…"