Phantom Prey

was keeping it all a secret, and kept it a secret even after his girlfriend was murdered . . . and that Francis/Frances coincidence might have given him the idea of pulling Frances’s money out of the bank. They must have talked about their name similarity.
    There was even a possibility that the old movie cliché, the mistaken identity, had been at work—that Willett had come to the house intending to kill Alyssa Austin, and killed Frances instead.
    Willett was just too good: half the cops that Lucas knew would simply say, “He did it.”
    Just a matter of finding the proof.
    Lucas and del sat watching Heather Toms until she packed it up and went to bed.
    “I feel like a slimeball,” Lucas said.
    “So don’t watch,” Del said. Across the street, Heather, with her back turned, popped her brassiere, took it off, then turned to the window to pull her sleeping T-shirt over her head.
    “Has it ever occurred to you that a lot of what we do for a living would be against the law, if we weren’t cops?” Lucas asked.
    “You mean like stalking people, being Peeping Toms, doing dope deals with them?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Maybe we just don’t have the guts to be crooks,” Del suggested. “Don’t have the instinct for the big score; we like life insurance and health insurance and pensions too much.” Heather kissed the baby good night and turned off the bedroom lights, and Del put the glasses down.
    “That’s not it,” Lucas said. “There’s lots of ways we’re not like crooks. For one thing, we got better hours and make more money. Still . . .”
    “Stop worrying,” Del said.
    “Okay.”
    “You ready?” Del asked.
    “Let’s do it.”
    Willett lived in a small house in St. Louis Park, an inner-ring suburb west of Minneapolis. There was an attached garage, which meant they wouldn’t be able to get at the car. But he also had an evening tai chi class at the Maplewood location; they cruised it, spotted the Land Rover in the back parking lot, with a half-dozen other cars scattered around. The class was twenty minutes under way when they took the first look.
    “You’re sure this is going to work?” Lucas asked.
    “The guy who programmed the key says it’ll work perfect,” Del said.
    “If the car alarm goes off . . .”
    “Not a chance,” Del said.
    They found the closest parking space, left the borrowed BCA Mustang, and walked on down the street, checking windows, porches, side streets. The night was cold and close, with a touch of sleet in the air; not many people outside.
    They cut across the spa’s parking lot and came up to the Land Rover. Del punched the remote key, the truck lights flashed, and Del said, “Should be open.”
    Lucas tried the back door; locked. “Punch it twice, maybe . . .”
    Del punched it again and the lights flashed twice and Lucas felt and heard the lock pop. Lucas took a flashlight out of his pocket, took a last look around, and turned it on. The back of the truck was neat as a pin, with a long plastic storage box on one side, and a couple of plastic milk crates on the other. No trace of oil, of any kind, on the carpeted floor, no painter’s plastic sheets or any painting equipment.
    Lucas leaned inside and pulled the latch of the storage box, looked inside. Camping equipment: sleeping bag in a stuff sack, stove kit, nylon pop-up bivy bag, pots and pans in a nylon bag, a bundle of socks, a big Ziploc bag stuffed with fabric, with the word “thermal” written on the outside of the bag with a Sharpie—long underwear. One of the plastic crates held a variety of rubber-soled shoes that might have been climbing shoes; the other held two pairs of hiking boots.
    Del had gone in the side door, to look through the various front-end storage bins: “Anything?”
    “Nothing that shouldn’t be here,” Del said. “He’s tidy. He’s organized. ”
    Lucas took a long look around, said, “Let’s go,” and they shut the doors quietly and walked away.
    “Got to give it to you—the key worked perfectly,” Lucas said.
    “Except for the fact that we got nothing,” Del said.
    “Except for that.”

18
    Alyssa austin sat barefoot in a big black-leather easy chair with her feet pulled up under her, her legs folded to the right, thinking about Frank Willett. Davenport knew that the four murders were linked, but didn’t know that they were linked through Alyssa.
    If Frank had killed Frances, she thought, he had essentially killed the other three as well, by destabilizing