Certain Prey

phone, and Carmel answered on the second buzz: “Yes.”
    “You know that guy we saw on TV?” Rinker asked.
    “Yes.”
    “He was here. For sure.”
    “Shit. I wonder how he knew?”
    “Don’t know,” Rinker said. “I’ll be back tonight at ten-fifteen on Northwest.”
    “I’ll pick you up. I think we’re cool for this very moment, but we can talk when you get back.” O N THE PLANE, eyes covered with a black sleeping mask, Rinker dozed, and between small patches of sleep she thought about Carmel. She could solve quite a few problems by simply killing the other woman. But there were problems with that. Carmel wasn’t stupid, and she might already have taken out some kind of insurance: a note written in a checkbook, or left in a safe-deposit box, with what she knew about Rinker. A note that would be found only after she was dead. Another problem: this Davenport guy was as close to Rinker as he was to Carmel. How had he gotten there? Did he know even more? Was he digging around the bar in Wichita? Carmel was a source of information about Davenport, which could be important . . .
    A final reason not to kill Carmel: Rinker actually liked her. Like some kind of sister, something Rinker had never had. Rinker smiled when she thought of Carmel’s invitation to do Mexico. She’d been planning to go, by God, and if they got out of this, she would. Get a couple of thong bikinis and a nice close bikini wax, some of those drinks with little paper umbrellas and lots of pineapple, and maybe do a couple of those Mexican dudes.
    As to Davenport himself, Rinker had read the BizWiz report, and Davenport sounded like a smart guy. And mean: he was a stone killer, no doubt about it. He was like one of those Mafia guys she’d known, a guy running a big coin-op company or garbage-hauler, a businessman who kept a gun in his pocket.
    Of course, she’d killed three or four of those. Not even geniuses were bulletproof. I N M INNEAPOLIS, sitting in front of a muted television, Carmel considered the possibilities. Maybe, if she had a chance, she should kill Pamela, or whatever her name was. It would only make sense, from a criminal-defense point of view. There really was only one perfect witness against Carmel, and if Pamela were gone, then Davenport could go shit in his hat.
    She sighed, got up and wandered into the kitchen, got a glass of orange juice. She’d really hate to kill the other woman: she actually liked her. Pamela could become a friend, for God’s sake, the first real one Carmel would ever have had.
    She sipped the juice and wandered back past all of her perfect black-and-white photos, barely seeing them. If she was thinking about killing Pamela, then it was probable that the other woman was thinking about killing her . And maybe was equally reluctant to do it, for some of the same reasons.
    If things should change, Carmel thought, if it became really necessary to get rid of Pamela, she damn well better move first and fast. She wouldn’t have a second chance. She glanced at her watch. Time to go get her at the airport. R INKER TOSSED her light bag in the back seat of the Volvo, and Carmel said, “I can think of three possibilities.”
    “Which are?”
    “We do nothing. I sat down with a legal pad tonight and tried to work out the worst possible scenario. I can’t see how they could ever, ever have come up with enough against us to arrest either one of us. If they did, I don’t see how they could convict either one of us, unless you’ve left fingerprints behind or dropped your billfold or something.”
    “Nothing like that,” Rinker said. “What are the other two possibilities?”
    “Our major problem is Davenport. Forget the FBI, forget these other cops who are digging around. If we get rid of Davenport, they’ll never figure out who we are. On the other hand, getting rid of him would be more than risky, it’d be dangerous. He’s not only violent, he’s lucky. One time he was shot in the throat and would have died, except a surgeon was standing right there with a jackknife and did an emergency tracheotomy and they made it to the hospital.”
    “Are you joking?”
    “No.”
    “Ah, man, that’s the most scary thing you’ve said about him: that he’s lucky.”
    “The third possibility is that we set up and run a little play—a little pageant—that would somehow make all these killings make sense. The alternative theory: it’s one way you can beat what seems like an open-and-shut case against