Mortal Prey

Mrs. Ross. Okay?”
    “Okay, but—”
    “Don’t ask questions. And when you’re talking to Andreno, you gotta be really excited. Get him in here.”
    “You think—”
    “Don’t ask questions.”
     
    DERIK WENT OUT , while Lucas waited just inside the door. A moment later, Andreno hurried through. Lucas caught his arm. “Is the ambulance coming?”
    “Yeah. I can hear it.”
    “I want you to get out there and scoop up Treena Ross and carry her toward it. But you gotta separate her from her purse, and if she says something, turn around to me and yell, ‘Bring her purse,’ and then keep going. Okay?”
    “What are…”
    “Tell you in a couple of minutes. Just get her, and run her out to the rose garden or out to the exit. Tell the paramedics that she’s in shock. But you gotta separate her from her purse, just for a minute. And we gotta do it while people are still running around like chickens. Come on: Go.”
    Andreno nodded, and turned and ran out the door. Lucas stepped out with him, and heard the sirens, saw the cluster of faces around the crab-apple tree. Hell of a fundraiser, he thought. They ought to get a nice chunk for this one. Lots of publicity, for sure.
    Treena Ross was still on the ground. Andreno scooped her up, stepping on her purse as he did it, straightened up, and started running toward the exit a hundred yards away. Lucas heard Treena say, “My purse, my purse…”
    Andreno staggered with her weight, half turned, and called, “Somebody bring her purse.”
    Lucas picked it up and, as Andreno continued to run, opened the purse and found the cell phone inside. He turned it on, punched through the menu, found the phone number, and scribbled it in the palm of his hand. Then he turned it off, dropped it back in the purse, and ran after Andreno. He caught them halfway to the exit, heard Treena saying, “I can walk, I can walk.” Lucas dropped the purse in her arms, and Andreno, puffing, put her down and said, “You’re sure. You gotta have the paramedic check you….”
    A group of women had ventured their way from the crab apple, and Andreno called, “Could some of you take care of Treena Ross? Get her to an ambulance.”
    “My husband,” Treena called. “My husband.”
    The helping women closed around her, and Lucas and Andreno headed back to the Climatron. “What the fuck was that about? About goddamned killed me, carrying her. She’s no lightweight.”
    “C’mon.” Lucas led him at a run back to the dome, found Mallard and Sally together, both talking into phones. Lucas waved them off, and they both rang off and Mallard said, “We have more St. Louis cops coming.”
    “She’s not in there.” Then he thought again. “But let them come in and tear the place apart. What we really need, though…” He turned to Sally and said, urgently, “Can you get those choppers? Now?”
    “Fifteen minutes,” she said. “They can be turning by the time we get up to Lambert.”
    “Then let’s go.”
    “Tell me what’s happening,” Mallard said. He wasn’t moving fast enough.
    Lucas said, “I don’t have a lot of time to explain this, because we’ve got to get up in the air. But the big surprise tonight was, Rinker was here, all right, but way before we were. Tonight, maybe, or late this afternoon, more likely. Remember those phone calls coming across country, at three o’clock? They were to Treena Ross, whose marriage was going down the tubes. Treena had to be worried about that, because one ex-wife already died in a hit-and-run. She might have known too much about Ross’s operation just to walk away. He might not let her walk away, any more than he let Rinker walk away.”
    “So who…?” Mallard started. Then: “ Treena Ross killed him?”
    “That’s right,” Lucas said. “She got a gun from Rinker, and carried it in, or Rinker left it for her in a bush or something, inside the dome. Then Rinker came here a while ago, knocked out that window, and left some blood behind. When you do a DNA on the blood, it’ll be the same as on that shirt, I promise you—that’s why we found the bloody shirt at Patsy Hill’s place, with the Mexican label in it. And we found a gun inside the dome, Derik and me, and I promise you, it’ll be the same gun that killed Dichter, and it’s the gun that killed Ross. So Treena Ross has a perfect alibi—absolutely unbeatable—and Ross is dead, and we never saw it coming because we were waiting for Rinker to show up. So was Ross.