Phantom Prey

what’s going on in this country is evil. The president is an evil man, and the people who oppose him are evil people. That’s what I think.”
    Lucas shrugged: “All right.”
    “You think I’m crazy.”
    “Well . . .” He spread his arms and gave her his most charming smile, and made her laugh.
    She leaned back and said, “I was thinking last night, that of all the issues that have come out of these killings, Frances and all the other people, we know one thing for sure, and we also know that you have developed the only worthwhile clue, and only one of them. I don’t feel that you’re pushing it in the right way.”
    Lucas said, “Tell me.”
    “The thing we know for sure, is that all the killings are linked. They have to be. Same style. One group of people is being attacked. Something is going on that got all these people killed—and it seems like it’s still going on, whatever it is. Okay?”
    Lucas nodded: “Okay. But knowing that doesn’t get us far, if we can’t break into what’s happening.”
    She held up a finger. “The second thing that happened was that Frances created a secret bank account that was apparently set up simply to get fifty thousand dollars in cash—in currency, in bills.”
    “I’m pushing that.”
    “Not hard enough,” Austin said firmly. “And that must lead somewhere. Fifty thousand isn’t that much in this day and age, but it’s not nothing, either. If she spent fifty thousand dollars in a couple of weeks, it’ll have to show up somewhere. And there are other odd things about it . . . like the secrecy. So my opinion is, that whatever’s going on—the thing that links the killings—must involve the fifty thousand. Somehow. And maybe the bank itself . . . because the bank involvement is odd, when you think about it.”
    Lucas leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
    “When Hunter was alive, we’d go out to Las Vegas every April for a military procurement convention,” she said. “It’d still be cool and wet here, but Vegas would be warm and dry and it made a nice vacation. Hunter would talk to his military people, and Francie and I would hang out. Instead of taking a lot of cash with us, Hunter would set up an account at the hotel. When Francie or I needed something, we’d charge it. Or, we’d go get some tokens, if we felt like it, and play the slots.”
    “Yeah?”
    She shook a finger at him. “If you needed to get fifty thousand in cash, from money that you had legally, but you didn’t want people to know about the cash aspect, that you were putting together this . . . pot . . . how would you do it?”
    “Might be a few ways,” Lucas ventured.
    “Maybe. But one of them, which Frances knew about, would be to send checks totaling fifty thousand dollars to two or three of the big casinos in Vegas, to set up accounts. Once they were cleared, you simply fly out and lose it. But not really. You buy tokens for the slots on the account, and then cash them in for hundred-dollar bills. Do it for a week: party, lie around the pool, pretend to play the slots, cash the tokens. You could easily do six or eight or ten thousand dollars a day, spread between the casinos, and nobody would know and nobody would care and nobody would remember. Except that the hotels would call you up three times a year with offers of a free room.”
    They thought about it for a minute, then Lucas said, “The point being, there were easier ways to get this money, even in cash, even anonymously, discreetly, than to set up a secret account.”
    “Not just that: also, Frances knew about it. She didn’t have to invent some secret bank method. So she must’ve gone through the bank for a reason. Maybe she wanted to leave tracks. Maybe . . . I don’t know. But it’s something. I thought about it all night.”
    “So what would you suggest?” Lucas asked.
    She shrugged: “I’m not the famous detective. I’ve got a funeral to work through. I’ve got . . . things. But. You have to push the money. That’s what people always said in the procurement business, when we went to Vegas. If something smelled bad, look at the money. Always look at the money. Maybe you could go back to the bank . . . push all of her friends about the money. It befuddles me: what would she use it for? What, that she couldn’t simply write a check for? That she couldn’t get me to write a check for?”
    Lucas peered at her for a moment, then asked, “That’s what you’ve got?”
    “That’s what I’ve