Phantom prey

“… cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand this, Mr. Willett?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about Frances? I didn’t have anything to do with Frances,” he said.

“Let’s get him off the highway,” Lucas said to one of the patrolmen. “If one of you guys can haul his butt down to Ramsey, maybe the other guy could help us pull the car apart.'

'Pull my car… wait a minute.'

'Why’d you decide to run?” Lucas asked. “Somebody tell you about us?” Willett’s eyes strayed away, then came back and he shrugged

“Well-yeah. But I don’t know who it was. Some chick. A client, I guess. She heard a rumor about the dope thing, said she’d hate to see me in trouble. Called me on my cell.”

“How many people have your cell phone number?'

'About a million,” he said. “All my clients. You know, Frances-I didn’t have anything to do with Frances, but I think I better have a lawyer. I’m gonna need one, aren’t I?”

“You got any money?” Lucas asked. “A thousand, maybe.'

'We’ll get you one,” Lucas said. The truck had nothing but clothing and outdoor gear. The highway patrolman would arrange for a tow, and Lucas thanked Weiner and said goodbye, and called Carol. “We need to get a search warrant for Willett’s place and a couple crime- scene guys to go through it.”

“Probably be a few hours,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow?'

'That’s okay; I’m going back down to talk to Austin again,” he said. Another dead half hour, going back across town. Austin came to the door, a small frown on her face. “Something more?'

'Who did you tell about us watching Frank Willett?” She posed for a moment, then said, “Gina Nassif in Human Resources. Oh, shit. What happened?'

'Somebody called Willett and he made a run for it,” Lucas said. “That should tell you something,” she said. “Maybe he didn’t want to go back to California,” Lucas said. “Anyway, I asked you-”

“I had to talk to Gina. If we have an employee handing out drugs, I could lose my shirt. I asked her to be discreet, but…”

“What?'

'She tends to gossip a little bit,” Austin said. “Ahhh… You couldn’t wait for a couple of days?” She pushed a lip out. “I’m sorry if it messed something up.” Didn’t sound sorry, Lucas thought. Late afternoon, traffic building: Lucas decided to stop at the drugstore apartment and watch Heather Toms for a while, then head home for dinner. Let Willett stew overnight, search his place first thing in the morning.

The apartment was empty when he got there: Del had been around, leaving behind a foam coffee cup, empty except for a wad of paper. Lucas turned on the boom box, dropped in a Norah Jones disk from a stack of disks on the floor, kicked back in the desk chair and picked up the glasses. Nobody visible in the apartment across the street, but he could see the light of the television flickering on the wall.

He called Weather and she said they’d have center- cut pork chops, sweet potatoes, and corn bread. He said he’d be home at six.

He sat and thought about Willett, and Alyssa Austin, and the others in the Austin case: he’d missed something that day, something about Austin, maybe, and it was right there, almost close enough to touch.

Thought about it, went to the refrigerator, found that somebody had drunk three of the six diet Cokes he’d put inside, took one, twisted off the top, then did a half- dozen toe touches, stretching his bad leg. Damn thing still hurt, but more of an ache, now, than the rippling hot pain that he’d had earlier.

As he did one of the stretches, Heather Toms stood up, just visible at the edge of one of the window frames, pointed a remote at an out- of- sight TV, clicked the TV off. A couple of minutes later, she went to the door, and her mother wheeled in.

Heather was looking pretty good, Lucas thought. She went into the bedroom and dug through her closet, tried on a couple pairs of shoes, and then walked back to the living room, disappeared, reappeared in a dark raincoat, said something to her mother, and headed for the door. Going out. Someplace where she’d wear heels.

Lucas looked at his watch: five o’clock. He had a little time.

Whistling as he went, he locked the apartment and hurried down the stairs, to the end of the block, and slipped into the Porsche. Heather appeared a moment later, up from the underground parking ramp, in her red Lexus SC 430. Not a hard car to follow, and he stayed back as she turned north on Snelling Avenue, then east on Randolph, and south on I- 35. They tracked south and then west of I- 494 to the Mall of America. She parked in a ramp at the west end of the complex, looked at her watch, then wandered down into Nordstrom.

Lucas stayed well back; a narrow- eyed saleswoman started tracking him as he cruised the women’s clothing, and finally she came over and asked, sharply, as though she were sure she couldn’t, “Can I help you find something, sir?”

He took out his ID: “I’m a police officer. I’m working. Go away and don’t look at me.”

She looked at the ID and then said, “Okay,” and walked away.

Heather was looking at her watch again-it was 5:25 on Lucas’s watch-and headed for the store exit that led into the main mall. He followed her, still way back along the north wing of the first floor. At the center exit, she stopped at a bank of telephones and looked at her watch again. Now it was 5:28.

Sonofabitch, Siggy Toms is calling her at 5:30, Lucas thought. He got on his cell and called Carol, but Carol was gone. Called the duty guy and told him to set up a phone trace, he’d have the number and the time coming. Then, he thought, a phone rang, because Heather turned and picked it up.

Her face didn’t look that happy when she was talking. Not a lover’s face, he thought, although given her other love interest, maybe Siggy was a problem, rather than a solution.

At that moment, a tall man, thin as a rail, wearing a battered white cowboy hat, a pearl- button shirt, and jeans worn nearly white with weather, stepped out of a store with a shopping bag, looked down toward Lucas, looked the other way, and wandered off.

Something about him, Lucas thought. Where had he seen the guy? What the hell was it? Was he hooked to Heather Toms somehow? But the man went on past Heather without looking at her, bow- legged and clunky in his boots…

Thirty feet away, Heather was talking, her face and body animated; an argument? After a minute or so, she hung up, smiled, as if she’d accomplished something, and walked back toward Lucas. Lucas stepped inside a junk store-a store full of useless shit-and watched her walk past, and let her go.

The man with the cowboy hat was gone. Don’t know what that was all about, the cowboy, he thought. Something though. And Siggy, he thought, as he walked down to check the phone, was coming.

At the dinner table, over the sweet potatoes and pork chops, he told Weather about it. “… calling from a pay phone in Chattanooga. That’s a long day’s drive out of Miami-I bet he’s on the way.”

“I’d hate to see the baby at risk,” she said. “If Siggy comes, do you have to take him at the apartment? With Heather there?”

“We’ll take him when we see him,” Lucas said. “He is a bad guy.'

'I’d like to be there,” Letty said. “Be a good story for the station.'

'You are not going to be there,” Weather said. Letty had a half- assed high- school internship at Channel Three, through one of Lucas’s former lovers, the mother of his other daughter. She asked him, “What do you think?”

Lucas said, “Over my dead body.'

'Jeez Louise…'

'When Siggy comes in, we won’t be fooling around,” Lucas said

“He’s been gone a year and more. He thinks he can sneak in here, and back out-he’s probably got some cash stashed here, that he couldn’t get at. But when we take him, he’s gonna know that he won’t get back out a second time. He’ll be inside for twenty or thirty, and the feds might tack more onto that. He’s not gonna be in a mood for any pissing around.”

“Boy,” Letty said. “I’d give my left nut to be there.'

'Forget it,” Lucas said, not rising to the “nut” bait. “You can let the SWAT guys take him,” Weather said to