Phantom prey

“Does this involve the Austin thing?” Shrake asked.

“Christ, I hope so,” Lucas said. “If it’s not that, I’ve got no idea what it would be.”

Jenkins to Shrake: “Maybe we ought to see if Antsy has another brother. Or a special Lithuanian pal.”

Lucas shook his head: “Any pal of Antsy would have been better at it. This guy was a total fuckin’ amateur. I don’t think he’d ever shot a gun before. He held it low, with his wrist cocked, like that picture of Elvis Presley in the cowboy suit. He had no idea where the bullets were going.”

Jenkins slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, I gotta say, I’m glad he didn’t kill you. God knows who we would’ve got in your job. Probably some bureaucratic motherfucker.”

Back in his office, Lucas stared at his computer screen for a while. His leg was itching, a painful itch, like poison ivy, so he took half a pain pill, took a peek at the bandage, didn’t see any leakage.

And thought about the fifty thousand, It’s not enough for anything. Not enough for anything that would be important to her, financially. Even if she bought fifty thousand in dope, wholesale, she wouldn’t make enough back to justify any risk-the profit, even from a dope deal, would have been a drop in the bucket compared to what she already had.

And after what Austin had said, the prospect of a dope deal seemed thin, although it was one explanation that would put Frances close to somebody who might kill her.

The key thing was, she took it in cash. That meant that she didn’t want it traced- couldn’t be any other reason to take that much out at once. Of course, she could have planned to loan it to someone who didn’t want the IRS to know about it, who didn’t want a paper trail; or, even more unlikely, she might have planned to pass it along to some extremist political group, and she didn’t want the ties to show up.

But it all seemed like bullshit. The explanation, when it came, would probably be simpler than any of that, Lucas thought. Shit, maybe she bought a Ferrari from somebody who didn’t take checks.

Then why the secrecy about the withdrawals…? He took out his notebook, noted “Mark McGuire, Denise Robinson,” looked them up in the license bureau’s database, and then the phone companies’.

Robinson answered the phone. Lucas identified himself and said, “I’d like to run out to see you. About Frances Austin. You and Mr. McGuire.”

“Mark won’t be here for half an hour or so…'

'Neither will I,” Lucas said. He got his jacket and the cane and said to Carol, “I’m gonna run out.'

'Where’re you going?'

'Out to Maplewood. This couple Denise Robinson and Mark McGuire, friends of Frances Austin,” he said. “Maybe you ought to take Del with you.'

'Nah. I’m okay; this is just a check,” Lucas said. “What you really ought to do is go home and go to bed,” she said

“You don’t look that good.” On the way to Maplewood, Sandy rang on his cell phone: “I’ve got eighteen Lorens for you.'

'God bless you.'

'It’s an old- fashioned name: there are more of them in their fifties and sixties than in their twenties and thirties. Anyway, I pulled the.jpgs out of the DMV folder and I’m sending them right… now… to your office e- mail.”

“Okay. Run them through the NCIC, will you? Get back to me.'

'I’ll put the returns in your e- mail. But I’m going out tonight, so this’ll be the last thing I can do today.'

'Got a date?'

'Yes, I do,” she said.

Robinson and McGuire might be characterized as “Not-Goths,” Lucas thought when he saw them. They lived in a nondescript robin’ s egg- blue, fifty- year- old split- level house in a nondescript baby- boomer neighborhood that once probably had about a million kids running around in the streets, and now was full of old people.

Denise Robinson was just as Alyssa Austin had described her: tall, gawky, short sandy hair, big glasses, about thirty. She met him at the door, invited him in, said, “Pay no attention to the living room; it’s the way we live now.”

The house smelled of coffee and pizza, and the living room was an office, stuffed full of computer equipment, file cabinets, two desks, and a cat- torn couch pushed against the farthest wall, with a red striped cat perched on the back. McGuire was sitting at a computer, head bent toward the monitor screen, curly dark hair, shorter than Robinson, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, maybe a year or two older than she was. A pair of dirty white Nikes sat in the foot well.

Still, when he turned to Lucas, Lucas thought, Huh. Dress him up a bit, and he could have been the shooter. McGuire reluctantly signed off what he was doing and turned toward Lucas without getting up.

Robinson said, “So what’s going on?” Lucas stepped over and scratched the cat between the ears, and it sniffed his hand and produced a perfunctory purr. Lucas said, “I’ve been compiling all the information I can find on Frances Austin, and I understand you three were close.”

Robinson opened her mouth to answer but McGuire got there first: “We were friends. We don’t know what happened to her.”

“Do you think she’s dead?” Lucas asked. This time McGuire looked at Robinson, who said, “We think so

Not because we know anything, but just because… people usually are, when they’re gone this long. We talked to her the day before she disappeared, and there wasn’t any sign that she was going anywhere, that she had anything planned.”

“Probably kidnapped-her old lady has all the money in the world,” McGuire said.

“Were the three of you in business together?” A line of wrinkles appeared in McGuire’s forehead: “Where’d you hear that?'

'Just from… friends.'

'We talked about it,” Robinson said. Looking for a little shock: “Did she give you fifty thousand dollars?” Robinson: “No way.” McGuire, almost angry: “She didn’t give us a fuckin’ nickel.” Lucas went in again. “She didn’t give you fifty thousand dollars in cash, mostly fifties and hundreds?'

'No. She didn’t,” McGuire snapped. “What the hell is this?'

'Trying to find out what happened to the money,” Lucas said

“We heard you were trying to build a website. A website takes money. This”-he gestured around the living room, at the computers and servers and cable lines-“takes a lot of money.”

“Takes thirty thousand, and we busted our butts getting it,” McGuire said. “If we went national, we’d be looking for more money to set up an office and buy more equipment, and we talked to her about it, but she disappeared before we did anything. And we weren’t asking for fifty thousand. Fifty thousand wasn’t enough-we were looking for a quarter million, and even then, I’d have to keep working.”

Not enough money, Lucas thought. He asked, “Where do you work?”

McGuire worked at Inter- Load Systems, a company that tracked mixed heavy freight and matched it with space available on over- the road trucks. The company was a new start- up, and McGuire worked on the mathematical models that worked out delivery routes and times.

“Sounds complicated.'

'It is,” McGuire said. He was surly, and he looked tired; more than tired. Exhausted. Lucas asked where he was the night of the shooting. “Working here,” McGuire said. “Any witnesses?'

'Well-Denise. I mean, it was the middle of the night, where’d you expect me to be?'

'Out clubbing, maybe,” Lucas said. McGuire snorted. “I don’t have time to take a leak. The last time I went to a club, the Beastie Boys were big.” Lucas peered at him for a moment, then asked, “So what does this new website do? The one you were working on with Frances?'

'Tries to get people to make free advertisements. Then we test them for online reception, and try to sell them to the companies that they advertise,” McGuire said.

“What?” Robinson stepped up. “Suppose you’re, like, Coca- Cola, and you keep putting out those crappy old Coke ads that no kid would ever watch, because they’re so lame. So we solicit ads from guys with video cameras- high-quality stuff, not your home video-and when they come in, we test them, and then we pitch them to Coke.