Invisible Prey

ahead on the Widdlers. It’s not a sure thing by a long way. At the very least, I’ll talk to Leslie Widdler and ask him to roll up his pant legs. See if he has any Screw bites.”
    “When?”
    “Midday tomorrow. I’ve got people going to Eau Claire and Des Moines right now. I’ve hooked both Marilyn Coombs and Donaldson to Amity Anderson, and Anderson is a longtime friend of the Widdlers. I think they were involved in a tax fraud together, selling these fake quilts, and I think it went from there. We know the killers involve one very big man, and that they know a lot about antiques, and that they have a way to dispose of them. In other words, the Widdlers.”
    “You don’t have them directly connected to anybody? I mean, the Widdlers to Donaldson, Bucher, or Toms?”
    “Not yet,” Lucas said.
    “How about the van?” Smith asked.
    “No van.”
    “Goddamnit. There’s got to be a van,” Smith said.
    “I talked to a woman at the Widdlers’ who said they rented vans,” Lucas said. “That’s being checked.”
    “The van in the tape on Summit was too old to be a rental—unless they went to one of the Rent-a-Wreck places.”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “The van is like a loose bolt in the whole thing.”
    “Without a van, without a direct connection…I don’t think you have enough to get a warrant to search Leslie.”
    Lucas grinned at him: “I was thinking you might want to get the warrant. You probably have more suck with one of the local judges.”
    Smith said, “I’ve got some suck, but I’ve got to have something. ”
    “Maybe we will tomorrow morning,” Lucas said. “And if we don’t, I can always ask Leslie to roll up his pant leg. If he tells me to go fuck myself, then we’ll know.”
     
    L UCAS GOT the key to Bucher’s place, went out, sat in his car, stared at his cell phone, then sighed and dialed. Lucy Coombs snatched up the phone and said, “What?”
    “This is Lucas Davenport…”
     
    W HEN HE GOT to Coombs’s house, she was sitting in the kitchen with a neighbor, eyes all hollow and black, and as soon as she saw Lucas, she started to cry again: “You think she’s gone.”
    Lucas nodded: “Unless she’s with a friend. But she was so intent on getting to the bottom of this, her relationship seemed to be breaking up, this is what she wanted to do. I don’t think she would have simply dropped it. I think we have to be ready for…the worst.”
    “What do you mean ‘we,’” Coombs sobbed. “This is your fucking job . She’s not your daughter.”
    “Miz Coombs…Ah, jeez, Gabriella got me going on this,” Lucas said. “She probably was the key person who’ll bring all these killers down—and they’ve killed more people than you know.”
    “My mother and my daughter,” Coombs said, her voice drying out and going shrill.
    “More than that—maybe three elderly people, they may have attacked a teenager, there may be people who we don’t have any idea about,” Lucas said.
    “You know who they are?”
    “We’re beginning to get some ideas.”
    “What if they’ve just kidnapped her? What if they’re just keeping her for…for…” She couldn’t think of why they might be keeping her. Neither could Lucas.
    He said, “That’s always a possibility. That’s what we hope for. We hope to make some kind of a move tomorrow—and I hope you’ll keep that under your hat. Maybe we’ll find out something fairly soon. One way or another.”
    “Oh, shit,” Coombs said. She looked around the kitchen, then snatched a ceramic plate from where it was hanging on the wall, a plate with two crossed-fish, artsy-craftsy, and hurled it at the side wall, where it shattered.
    “Miz Coombs…”
    “Where is she…Where’s my baby?”
     
    O UT ON the street, he exhaled, looked back at Coombs’s house, and shook his head. In her place, he thought, he wouldn’t be screaming, or crying—and maybe that was bad. Maybe he should behave that way, but he knew he wouldn’t. He could see Weather grieving as Coombs did; he could see most normal people behaving that way.
    What Lucas would feel, instead, would be a murderous anger, an iceberg of hate. He would kill anyone who hurt Weather, Sam, or Letty. He’d be cold about it, he’d plan it, but the anger would never go away, and sooner or later, he would find them and kill them.
     
    B UCHER’S HOUSE was dark as a tomb. Lucas let himself in, flipped on lights by the door, and headed for the office. This time, he