Phantom prey

knife from her jacket sleeve into her hand. The knife had a wooden handle, dry and warm. Shockley was talking, but she wasn’t listening, wasn’t hearing the words, nodding and smiling as Shockley closed the door and fixed the chain, then turned and Fairy stepped toward her and the knife drove up and into Shockley’s belly.

And Shockley flinched away at the last second, her eyes widening, and the point of the knife hit something hard and went sideways instead of in. Shockley said a syllable of some kind, a gahh or an unhh, but Fairy couldn’t hear it; she sensed it but didn’t hear it, and then Shockley swung something, a purse? A small black hand- sized purse? Fairy leaned outside the arc of the swing and went back in with the knife, but Shockley was a big woman with good reflexes and she swung again with one of her ham- hands and hit Fairy on the forehead, staggering her.

Fairy went in again, Shockley tripping backward and going down on her butt and screaming, once, loud, and Fairy tried to grab her hair and Shockley hit at her legs and Fairy went down as Shockley tried to roll over and get up, and the knife finally went in and went in and went in, Fairy riding her back and Shockley making an audible sound now, an ung- ung- ung, and then Fairy stood up and looked down and Shockley opened her mouth and said, “But I loved her. I loved Francie.”

The words threw Fairy out of herself, and Alyssa looked down at the dying woman and the first words through her mind were, Oh, my God, she’s hurt. She looked down at herself: she was wearing a black jacket over a blue wool jersey and black pants, and the jersey was dappled in black that when she brushed at it, came off in her hand as crimson-blood, in fact.

Then Fairy was back, like a blink, and she knelt and said, “You didn’t love her, I loved her,” and she drove the knife in under Shockley’s chin, and there was more blood and Shockley’s blue eyes rolled up and she was gone.

Fairy stood up and looked around and called, “Loren?” But Loren was gone, and Fairy felt herself fading, dropped the knife, picked it up, staggered back away from the dead woman, realized that the blood on her hands was showing, but she didn’t care; she went to the door, took a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and pulled the chain and opened the door and closed it behind her and ran down the steps and out.

Across the street to the car, got in the car: “Loren? Loren, where are you?” And she continued to fade, and this time she went: Alyssa found herself sitting behind the wheel of a strange car, and she shook her head, tried to understand it, fumbled in her pocket for a key, felt the dampness of the fresh blood, could smell it, got the key in the ignition and set off.

Then Fairy surged back, and with it the killing heat, and she hammered the little car down the street and out to I- 94, blood on her hands and face, racing down the highway, looking for sanctuary.

14

The usual scrum of official cars were parked outside Shockley’s house, along with two remote TV crews. Lucas parked off a fire hydrant on a side street, tossed his ID card on the dash, and walked back in the dark, zipping his leather jacket against the cold night air. His leg hurt. Not the fire, anymore, but an ache, as if one of his thigh muscles were clenching into a fist. He ignored it.

He knew the uniform working the sidewalk, who said, “Hey, man,” and Lucas said, “Hey, Jerry.” The flash from a strobe reached out across the street at them, and Lucas blinked it away and said, “Looks like we got media.”

“Yeah. They’re asking about the other ones, too. Ford and Carter, like the presidents.”

“Shit.” There was a high- pitched whistle from across the street, the kind a movie New Yorker might use to hail a movie Yellow Cab. Lucas looked that way, and saw the Star Tribune crime reporter, Ruffe Ignace, drifting down the opposite sidewalk, looking at him, his cell phone to his ear.

Lucas turned away and asked the cop, “Is Harry Anson up there?'

'Yup. And the usual bunch.” On the way up the stairs, his cell phone rang and he took it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID: Weather. She said, “Ruffe called here one minute ago, and said he saw you going into this woman’s house, and he wants to know if the three stabbings are related to Frances Austin.”

“Ah, poop. What’d you tell him?'

'I told him I was going to bed and not to call back,” Weather said. “But he’s figured it out.'

'Yes, he has. And good luck and good night.”

Anson was leaning on a second- floor banister, overlooking the stairwell, talking to an ME’s investigator. He saw Lucas coming and said, “Help!”

“What the fuck happened?'

'Patricia Shockley, stabbed eight or ten times, bled out in place

Probably two hours ago. Found by her roommate… Leigh…” He flipped a page in his notebook.

“… Price,” Lucas said. “Price. Who is now next door.” He pointed down the hall with his pencil. Lucas climbed the last couple of steps. “Eight or ten times. So she was killed like Frances Austin. Not like the others.” Anson nodded. “Except that the body wasn’t moved. Other than that, and from looking at the Austin photos, I’d say they’re almost exactly alike. Bigger knife this time, but it looks like there was a struggle. Some blood got thrown around. Take a look.”

The apartment was being processed, and Shockley’s body, still uncovered, lay spread- eagled on the floor six feet from the door. “Ah, Jesus,” Lucas said.

“This will get in the papers and on television, and people will become extremely upset,” Anson said. He was pretending to be funny, but his voice wasn’t funny, and his eyes weren’t. “‘Why didn’t the police warn the people of the Twin Cities that a serial killer was roaming loose?’ I’m working out the answer in my little notebook.”

“The answer is, because it wouldn’t do any fuckin’ good,” Lucas said. “We got the fairy’s face out there, looking for help…”

“Not the same.'

'Ah, fuck it. What have you got?” Anson said, “We have a witness who lives here, a Bob George, who looked out his window and saw an unfamiliar woman walking away from the house about the time of the murder. He’d heard a noise, but didn’t know what it was-he thinks now that it might have been a muffled scream. He lives downstairs from here, says he only heard the sound once, and so he didn’t look to see what it was. He’s heard other sounds like it, and wasn’t even sure it was in the house.”

“Did she look like the fairy? The woman he saw leaving?'

'No. He couldn’t see much of her, but she appeared to have lighter hair. Anyway, not black, or dark brown,” Anson said. “Something between blond and medium brown, but the lights aren’t so good outside, so he’s not sure. Just an impression.”

“Body style?” Lucas asked. “Hard to tell. He was up here, the angle was bad.'

'Gotta be the fairy. She’s changing her look.” Lucas was pissed and washed with sorrow for the young woman on the floor. He took in the scene, as much as he could with the administration of murder going on around him, and then he headed down the hall to talk to Price.

Price was dressed in mourning black, as she’d been the first time he’d seen her, with the little phony Raggedy Ann rips and tatters. Tonight, though, she had dark rings under her eyes, and a trembling disbelief in her lip. An older woman, a dyed- redhead in jeans, was sitting with her when Lucas stepped past a uniformed cop into the living room.

“Ah, God,” she said, and she stood up and stepped over to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, her head on his chest, and she started weeping. The uniform cop watched with interest, and Lucas let it go for a few seconds then pried her loose and said, “Easy. You better sit down. Really, you better sit down.”

“She was just… she was just trying, trying, to get on with her life,” Price groaned.

“Did she give you any idea…'

'She was going to go to law school,” Price wailed. “She was practicing the LSATs. She was going on a diet. Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with everybody?”

“Why would the person who killed Frances, come and kill Pat?” Lucas asked. “Why? There must be something