Secret Prey
seen . . . a calculated risk. If anyone saw her driving without lights, they’d remember it. A risk she’d take. She rolled into the street, drove a hundred feet, and turned on the lights. She’d gotten away with it, she thought.
On the south side of Minneapolis, she stopped in a beatup industrial area and threw the longer of the two pieces of dowel rod into a pile of trash; the other waited beside the passenger seat.
ST. ANNE’S COLLEGE—ST. ANNE’S COLLEGE FOR BLOND
Catholic Girls, as Audrey thought of it—was a leafy, redbrick girls’ college in St. Paul, a short walk from the Mississippi. Davenport lived somewhere in the neighborhood, Audrey knew. The newspaper article didn’t say exactly where: just the Highland Park neighborhood.
Maybe to be close to the nun, she thought.
Audrey had spent four unhappy years at St. Anne’s, getting finished. She’d needed the finish, with her Red River farm background. And the unhappiness hadn’t counted for much, since she couldn’t ever remember being happy. She’d plowed through her courses, a smart, reasonably pretty brunette, and had carefully weeded out the likely husband prospects from St. James’s—St. James’s College for Blond Catholic Boys.
Wilson McDonald had been the result of her four years of winnowing.
ON THE SOUTHWEST SIDE OF THE CAMPUS, THE RESIDENCE squatted in sooty obscurity. A near-cube built of red brick like most of the other buildings on campus, it housed the declining numbers of the sisterhood of nuns who ran St. Anne’s. The newspaper article, ‘‘The Pals of Lucas Davenport,’’ had mentioned that Sister Mary Joseph lived on campus, and continued to wear the traditional black habit on public occasions, including the classroom, though she sometimes went out in civilian clothing when working in area hospitals.
Audrey had never seen her in anything but traditional dress, and wasn’t sure she’d recognize her in civilian clothing. Still, she thought, she could pick her out.
Audrey parked on the street, and after sitting for a moment in the dark, looking up and down, she got out, leaving her purse but carrying her cell phone, the dowel rod held by her side. She walked to the Residence along the sidewalk, and, in the dark space between streetlights, turned into the parking lot and moved quickly to the far corner of the building. She stood there, between two tall junipers, an arm’s length from the ivy-twined walls— the bare ivy like a net of ropes and strings climbing the bricks—and listened. She could hear voices, but far away; and a snatch of classical music from somewhere. More the feel of the conversation than the actual words and notes. The parking lot itself held only a dozen cars, most of them nunlike—black and simple; along with a few civilian cars.
She remembered this moment from the other times. The moment before commitment, when she could still back away, when, if discovered, she hadn’t done anything. The moment where she could wave and say, ‘‘Oh, hello, I was a bit confused here, I’m just trying to find my way.’’
And the thrill came from piercing that moment, going through it, getting into the zone of absolute commitment.
She took the phone from her jacket pocket, and punched the numbers in the eerie green glow of the phone’s information screen.
‘‘St. Anne’s Residence.’’ A young woman’s voice. Audrey had done this very job, answering the phone as a student volunteer, two nights a week for a semester, six o’clock to midnight.
‘‘Yes, this is Janice Brady at Midway Hospital. We have a family-emergency call for a Sister Mary Joseph . . .’’
‘‘I think Sister is in chapel . . .’’
The chapel was in the Residence basement. ‘‘Could you get her please? We have an injured gentleman asking for her.’’
‘‘Uh, just a moment. Actually, it’ll be two or three minutes.’’
‘‘I’ll hold . . .’’
Then she heard more voices, close by. A man came around the corner, said something, laughed, walked into the parking lot.
Shit . This could ruin everything . . .
The man waved, walked to a car, fumbled with his keys, got in. Sat for a moment. Then started the engine, turned on the lights, and drove to the street.
And Sister Mary Joseph was there: ‘‘Hello?’’ Curiosity in her voice.
‘‘Is this Sister Mary Joseph, a psychologist at St. Anne’s College?’’
‘‘Yes, it is . . .’’
‘‘There’s been a shooting incident, and one of the
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