Chosen Prey

late.”
    “Okay.”
    “I don’t know why I’m calling you except that you’d been to see her and she was joking about being Miss Marple and now she’s gone.”
    “I’ll talk to the medical examiner and make sure there was nothing improper,” Lucas said. “We’ll make sure. Are you the contact on that, or . . . ?”
    “Her son is, really, if he’s not too wrecked. He was pretty wrecked this morning. I called him, and he ran right over. He went a little nutty.”
    “All right. Well, thank you for calling,” Lucas said.
    “Mr. Davenport . . . I don’t know, I’m not sure I should even bring this up. . . .”
    “Bring up anything you want,” Lucas said.
    “Well, I’m sure it was a stroke or something, something regular, she was an older woman . . . but—she didn’t bring her newspaper.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Every day for years, as long as I’ve worked here, she would carry her newspaper in. She told me that she would get up, she would eat raisin bran or bran flakes and a cup of yogurt, and she would make her list of things to do for that day. She wouldn’t get the newspaper until she had her list. Then, when she left for work, she’d pick up the newspaper from the front porch and carry it in. If the carrier didn’t bring it or something, she would stop at a box on the corner and buy one.”
    “Every day.”
    “Every day. When she got here, she would put the paper in her in-basket and make a cup of coffee, and then she would answer all of her e-mail and write e-mails to people she corresponded with. I would come in with my paper and we would work on her to-do list until break time, and then we would read our newspapers at the same time. But today . . . she didn’t bring her newspaper.”
    “So what do you . . . ?”
    “It’s just strange. Of all days . . . I’m sure it’s nothing, but it’s just strange. I wanted to tell somebody.”
    “Thank you. We will look into it all,” Lucas said.
     
    W HEN T HOMPSON WAS gone, he looked at Rose Marie and said, “Shit.”
    “It didn’t sound good from here.”
    “A little old lady is dead—Helen Qatar, down at St. Pat’s. It’s possible that she was taken off by the gravedigger. Goddamnit. She joked about being Miss Marple, and we think the guy may be around there somewhere, and I never told her to back off or be careful.”
    “Try not to get too deep into the guilt,” Rose Marie said.
    “I won’t. But I liked her. One of those active old birds. Smart. Still working. Goddamnit.” He ran both hands up through his hair, then locked them behind his head. “Just wish . . . I don’t know. There’s something going on that we don’t see. We’re a lot closer to him than we think, and somehow we dragged her into it.”
    On his way out of Rose Marie’s office, he stopped at the secretary’s desk and dialed the number of an investigator at the ME’s office. “Yeah, we got her in,” the guy said. “I can’t tell you much, except that there’s no sign of violence and she was older and was taking some heart drugs.”
    “Could you do everything?” Lucas asked. “There’s a chance that somebody took her off. I’ve been told that she died while she was drinking coffee, so check for poison, or weird drugs, anything like that.”
    “You say everything, we’ll do everything,” the investigator said. “I’ll tell the doc, and get him to push it a little.”
    “Thanks. Let me know.”
    “Sure. Hey, you know she’s got a son, right? He’s here now, somewhere, I think. I haven’t seen him leave. Probably doing papers.”
    “Hold him, will you?” Lucas said. “I’m gonna run over.”
    He was going out the door when he saw Anderson and Marshall talking in a doorway. He went that way instead, and when Marshall looked up, said, “You hear?”
    Marshall pushed away from the door. He was wearing a hip-length rough-leather coat lined with fleece, and with his rough face and hands, looked like a Marlboro ad. “I guess not,” he said. “It must not be good, from the way you sound.”
    “Helen Qatar’s dead. She was found dead this morning by her secretary. She’s over at the ME’s office, and her son’s there. I was just heading over.”
    “I’m coming with you,” Marshall said. He turned to Anderson and said, “Catch you later, Harmon.”
    On the way through the secret tunnel, Lucas said, “You and Anderson seem to be getting along.”
    “Yeah. Can’t tell you why. He’s just a