Certain Prey

steady eleven percent per year. No changes. We looked at this charity she works with, too. Her grandfather set it up, and she and her parents are on the board, with some other relatives. But it’s mostly taking care of old folks. We can give you all the stuff if you want it, but we don’t see anything.”
    Mallard looked at Lucas, then at Benson, the assistant AIC, then said, “Goddamnit,” in a professorial way.
    “Tell us,” Lucas said.
    “The woman who did it is a pro,” Mallard said. “She’s not very tall—maybe five-three or five-four. She once lived in St. Louis, or the St. Louis area. She might have a Southern accent. She became active about twelve or thirteen years ago, and we think she’s killed twenty-seven people, including your Mrs. Allen. We think she’s got some tie with some element—maybe just a single person—in the St. Louis Mafia crowd. And that’s what we got. We would really like to get more.”
    “Twenty-seven,” Lucas said, impressed.
    “Could be more, if she’s taken the time to get rid of some of the bodies, or if it took her a while to develop her signature—the silenced pistols, close up. But we’re sure it’s at least twenty-seven. She does good research, gets the victim alone, kills them and vanishes. We think she does her research to the point where she picks out the precise spot for the murder, in advance . . .”
    “How would you know that?” Black asked.
    “Because the caliber of the pistol is always appropriate for the spot. If it’s out in the open, it’s usually nine-millimeter or a forty. If it’s enclosed with concrete, like it was here, and a few other places, it’s always a twentytwo—you don’t want to be in a concrete stairwell with nine-millimeter fragments flying around like bees. She uses standard-velocity twenty-two hollowpoints which turn the brain into oatmeal but stay inside the skull, for the most part.”
    “That’s it? That’s what you’ve got?” Black asked.
    “Not quite. We think she drives to the city where the hit takes place. We’ve torn passenger manifests apart for the airlines, all around the suspect killings, looking for anything that might be a pattern.”
    “And nothing,” Black said.
    “Oh, no. We found patterns,” Mallard said. “All kinds of patterns. We just didn’t find her pattern. We’ve looked at several hundred people, and we’ve got nothing.”
    “She always works for pay?” Sherrill asked.
    “We don’t know what she works for. Some of the hits have been internal Mafia business—but some of them, maybe half, look like straight commercial deals. We just don’t know. Twenty-seven murders, and there’s never been a conviction,” Mallard said. “There have been a couple of situations in which wives were killed, and we suspect the husband was involved, but there’s nothing to go on. Nothing. In none of the cases was it even remotely possible that the husbands were present for the killing: they were always in some well-documented other place.”
    “Can we get your files on her?”
    “That’s what I’m here for,” Mallard said. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a square cardboard envelope, and slid it across the table at Sherrill. “Duplicate CDs: everything we’ve got on every case where she’s been involved. Names, dates, techniques, suspects, photographs of everybody and all the crime scenes. The first file is an index.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Anything you get,” Mallard said. “No matter how thin it is, please call me. I want this woman.”
    • • •

    L OUISE CLARK DECIDED that she could talk to Carmel only after Hale Allen convinced her it was okay. “I’m a lawyer, Louise,” Allen said. “It’s all right to talk to Carmel—the cops are just busting our balls.”
    “If you’re sure,” Clark said anxiously. She was a thin, mousy woman with lank brown hair, a fleshy nose and nervous, bony hands. “It’s just that the police said . . .”
    Clark did not look like any sex machine Carmel had ever seen; but, she thought to herself, you never know. “He’s sure,” Carmel said abruptly. They were sitting in Denny’s and had been talking for ten minutes and the woman had started whining. Carmel didn’t like whiners. She looked at Hale Allen. “Why don’t you take a walk around the block. I want to talk to Louise alone.”
    So Hale Allen went for a walk, his hands in the pockets of his light woolen slacks, wearing a great blue-checked sport coat over a black