Phantom prey

Alyssa. She’s fine.” Austin’s chin trembled and she used another tissue on her nose and said, “I really don’t believe in heaven, I’m afraid. She’s been released from this incarnation into the next; I hope she found a good spirit guide. Maybe her father, if he hasn’t yet been reborn. She was a good girl; she took care of people. I think her karma, her energy, will take her higher yet.” She snuffled some more.

Weather said, “Well.” This time, Austin produced a small smile and said, “I know what all you good Christians think, and I just don’t think that way. I think her spirit may still have been out there, waiting for satisfaction. I never conceived of the possibility of Helen… I just can’t grasp it. Lucas is sure?”

“He got a detailed statement, and he tells me that it’s all supported independently by laboratory evidence. They’re sure.”

“I was so sure those other three… there was negative energy about them, a black karma, I was sure they were involved.” Austin had changed, and Weather sat back, disturbed by the look on her face.

“I have a friend, my friend Loren, who has, well, he’s in a space that intersects with another plane, and he tells me that boats take our souls to the next life; and some boats are glorious, and some boats are dark and dank, like slave ships, going down the Mississippi. They load right there on the St. Paul waterfront, at night… Oh, shit.”

She began weeping, rocking back and forth in her easy chair, and Weather stood up and sat on the arm of the chair and wrapped her arm around her and hugged her, and they both cried together for a bit, then they heard Lucas coming back, and Lucas stopped and looked at them and finally said, “Guys-this was a good thing that happened tonight.”

“I know,” Austin said. “But I’m sorry about Helen and Ricky, too. Oh, God.”

“Should I call your parents?” Lucas asked. “No, no, I’m fine. I’m better, really. It’s over. It’s all over. I’m going to go upstairs, take a couple of pills, and I think I’m actually going to get a good night’s sleep for a change. God, I’m so tired. I’m so tired it feels like my heart is caving in.”

Back in the car, Lucas asked, “Well?” Weather looked out the passenger- side window and didn’t say anything for a bit, then, “I’m like you. I get a bad feeling. She thought the other three had black karma that indicated that they were tied to the murder of Frances. And she had a friend who thought the same way. If that’s true, and if they were looking for revenge…”

“Revenge works as a motive. It’s not as common as it is on TV shows, but it happens,” Lucas said.

“She said this friend-she said his name was Loren-said there were riverboats of souls going down the Mississippi, and some of these were glorious riverboats, and some were like slave ships. The bad souls, obviously. She thought Frances might still be here, but on a different plane. Not on a boat yet.”

Lucas interrupted: “Her friend was named Loren?'

'Yeah, that’s what she said. A male Loren. She said, ‘he.’'

'Her friend Loren is dead,” Lucas said. He explained in a few words, and Weather said, “She said he was in a different space. One that intersects with the plane of death. He’s the one that sees these riverboats.”

“I think Alyssa has a problem,” Lucas said. A moment later: “She has a problem, and damned if I could prove it.”

25

All of Alyssa’s nights were bad, even when there was only one of her. When there were two, and a ghost in the mirror, they were beyond nightmares. She struggled with the blankets, first too hot, then too cold. She fought the pillows: first they were too hard, then too soft, then too hot, and flipped over, blessedly cool, but only for a few moments. And she woke every few minutes to stare at the clock, where the hands moved at a snail’s pace, grinding out the minutes, with hours that never ended.

The conversation went on endlessly, raging arguments-Loren, pushing to kill Davenport, to get rid of him. “He knows, he knows, he knows… Do you think Weather was gushing at you out of sympathy? Bullshit. She was doing it for him. And if she tells him that I believed that the other three were the killers, that Loren did this and that Loren did that, he’ll remember that name. He will remember that I am dead and he will conclude that you are a psychotic. Once he convinces himself that you’re guilty, he is the kind of man who will manufacture the evidence he needs to arrest you. He is crazier than any of us, he will do anything to win the game. He has to be eliminated. He’s too dangerous to let go.”

Alyssa resisted: “No. No, he’s a friend of mine, he wouldn’t do that to me. He’s got no evidence.”

“He will manufacture the evidence if he’s convinced you killed the three.”

“No, no, no…” Fairy took Loren’s side: “If we do it right, if we kill him, who’s to know? A lot of people must want him dead. He must have enemies all over the Cities, all over the state. Killers. Drug dealers. Gang members. If we did it cleanly enough, who’d know? With a gun, not with a knife. In the dark. One shot in the heart, and run.”

“I won’t do it,” Alyssa said. “I will,” Fairy answered. “She will,” Loren said. “I know she will. She likes killing. She likes the taste of blood, for God’s sake. She puts it in her mouth, sucks it off her fingers.'

'It’s self- defense,” Fairy said. “As simple as that.”

Alyssa woke once, in the middle of the night, shivering, and found that she’d thrown off the covers. Her mind was clear as glass-the clarity of insomnia, when she knew that immediate sleep was out of the question. She got up, turned on the light, got her tarot cards, shuffled them, laid out a Celtic cross, tried to focus: What would happen if ?

The cards failed her-the answers all seemed obscure or trivial or irrelevant. She yawned, and thought about going back to bed, but knew better: the insomnia was trying to trick her. She had to be yet sleepier, to get any sleep. Had to seek exhaustion.

Downstairs, she had some milk. Thought about watching television, gave it up as a bad idea: she wasn’t interested in television, she was interested in what she had to do. Loren, reflected out of a window overlooking the lake, said, “You have no choice, Alyssa. I don’t think you’d do well in the women’s prison. You’re not cut out for being locked in a cell, for that blue- collar misery, washing floors and working in a laundry. Year after year after year, until you turn into a hag. We have to kill him.”

“Go away,” she said. “You got me into this, you asshole, now go away and let me think.”

Back upstairs, she stopped at the door to Hunter’s bedroom, then pushed the door open and stepped inside. She could still smell him. He used an old- fashioned aftershave-Bay Rum, like that-and it clung to the room, as long as he’d been gone.

She noticed, in the dark, the small amber lights on the stereo: had they always been on? Maybe. She’d never been in the room for more than a few minutes at a time, after his death. On impulse, she picked up the remote control, clicked Play. After a few clicking sounds, Paul Simon came up: “Still crazy, after all these years…”

With the music playing softly in the background, she sat on Hunter’s bed, not knowing exactly what she was up to. Closed her eyes, and let the karmic energy flow over her, through her, tell her what to do. The song ended, and she opened her eyes, and opened the bottom drawer on the bedstand.

The gun was there-a.38, with hollow- point bullets. When concealed carry became legal in Minnesota, Hunter had been one of the first to qualify for a permit. Then he carried for a while-the.38, a Beretta 9mm, a.45, and then it all just got too heavy, and he started leaving the guns at home.

He took the.38 with him, though, when he and his biker buddies rode out to Sturgis-they actually cheated, and shipped the bikes to Bismarck in the back of a couple of Chevy vans, driven by wives sworn to secrecy, and rode into Sturgis from there, greasy jeans and leather chaps and dirty boots and four- day beards, aging Brandos right out of the executive suite. The.38, he told her, was a necessity should there be trouble: “Nobody knows that I’ve got it,” he said with a grin, over breakfast. “Nobody knows where it came from. If I gotta use it, I can ditch it and be clear.”

She’d said, “For Christ sakes, Hunter, you’re a mechanical engineer, you don’t shoot people. Leave the gun at