Phantom Prey

she said, “Lucas, I’m sorry. I just don’t remember. It could be any of them. Or none of them. Except the two guys with the receding hairlines. It wasn’t them.”
    “All right. I had the same problem—I couldn’t identify any of them as the guy who shot me. We’ve got some more digging to do.”
    His leg was hurting again, a continuing ache that occasionally flared into a streak of pain that shot down his leg to his foot. He sat at his computer, ignoring it, working the list of Lorens through the DMV, looking for pickup trucks. There were four—four out of eighteen— about average for Minnesota men, he suspected. Cut the list anyway, although he cut it to three, rather than four: one of the four just didn’t look right.
    The leg would no longer be ignored, and he finally got the cane and told Carol that he was going home, and limped down to the car.
    He was, he thought, caught in a loop.
    Frances’s disappearance led to Dick Ford’s murder. Dick Ford’s murder led to the fairy. He investigated the fairy girl and got shot at by a dark-haired stranger. And the stranger—Loren X?—goes back to Frances. Maybe?
    The house was empty when he got home, the housekeeper off somewhere with Sam, Weather still at work, Letty at school. With no need to use the car for a while, he took a full pain pill and went back to a computer, and called up Sandy’s e-mail on the NCIC files.
    One of the Lorens who owned a pickup had had a minor drug bust—personal use marijuana—in Minneapolis. Another had been arrested and convicted of theft from a Wal-Mart warehouse and had made restitution. The Wal-Mart guy didn’t sound like he’d be the type to hang around with Frances. The third guy lived in Fertile, and that was too far away.
    The doper was a possibility. 2002 Toyota pickup. Huh. He called Del.
    “You got a little time?”
    “What’s up?” Del asked.
    “I want to talk to a guy on the Austin case, but I’ve taken a couple of pain pills.”
    “You need a designated driver.”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’ve never been one,” Del said. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
    Loren whiteside o’keefe lived in a nice-enough, but not too nice, apartment complex in Woodbury, east of downtown St. Paul. They pressured an assistant manager into letting them through the locked outer doors, and took the elevator up to three. Identical blond-wood doors were spaced evenly down long blank corridors, the medium-blue carpet the indoor-outdoor stuff that looked good for a year.
    “Place will be a slum in ten years,” Del said. “Walls look like they’re made out of cardboard.”
    “Owners’ll pay it off in ten, though,” Lucas said. “Then it’s all gravy.”
    “If you don’t mind being a slumlord,” Del said.
    Lucas was limping, and Del asked, “You all right?”
    “Yeah, I’m terrific.” The pain had definitely backed off, but every once in a while, a muscle spasm took him by surprise.
    O’Keefe was in 355. They heard music, knocked, and a pudgy, big-headed, rosy-cheeked man opened the door. “Eh?”
    “Loren O’Keefe?”
    “Ya. Who’re you?”
    He had dark hair, a big head, and sloping shoulders. The man who’d shot at Lucas had square shoulders and a small head. Couldn’t see that in the driver’s-license photograph. The photo also didn’t mention that O’Keefe had a slight but distinct Irish accent. Austin had said specifically that her Loren sounded local.
    “Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.” They showed O’Keefe their IDs.
    “So what’s up?” he asked. The TV behind him was tuned to an Oprah rerun.
    With the sure sense that he was wasting everybody’s time, Lucas said, “We’re looking for a Loren who dated a girl named Frances Austin.”
    O’Keefe looked at them blankly. “I’m sorry. That’s not me.”
    “Ever hang out with any Goths?” Del asked.
    “I’ve had a couple in my classes.”
    “You’re a teacher?” Lucas asked.
    “At Augsburg,” he said. “I teach drama.”
    “Huh. You had a bust for marijuana.”
    “Yup. Two fat boys,” he said cheerfully. “Jaesus, I bought three, only had time for one. Why couldn’t I be one of the guys who’s arrested for three seeds? No, they gotta get me with two-thirds of the weekly allotment.”
    Lucas looked at Del, and tipped his head toward the corridor. “Okay. Well, I think you’re not the guy we’re looking for.”
    “What? Already? You can’t leave me hanging,” O’Keefe said. "C’mon and have a