Secret Prey

have you come over here, but I’m just so blue, I’m just lying here thinking about Wilson.’’ She began to weep, a bubbling, pathetic wail. ‘‘Help me.’’
    ‘‘Oh God, hang on, Audrey, I’ll be right there.’’
    ‘‘And H-Helen . . . b-b-bring a few of those Prozacs. Maybe they would help. I’ve got to try some thing.’’
    ‘‘I’ll be right there. Hang on.’’
    She hung up, satisfied. Cleared her face, gathered her clothes for the wash. She might not ever need the Prozac, she might not ever need Helen coming up the drive with her lights on, to muddy any witness statements—but who knew what the future might hold? Better to work all the possibilities now, than to regret it later.
    She thought about the nun, lying on the sidewalk.
    Wonder if she’s dead?
    She never thought about the other woman at all; the other woman was irrelevant.

TWENTY-TWO

    SHERRILL HAD BROUGHT WITH HER A VOTIVE CANDLE scented faintly with vanilla, and a crystal candleholder, and their second night together took on the feel of college days, making love in the yellow flickering candlelight. And Sherrill said, as they lay comfortably warm under a sheet, ‘‘Do you think you could go for somebody like Candy La-Chaise?’’ Sherrill had put four .357 slugs through Candy LaChaise’s chest during an abortive holdup at a credit union.
    ‘‘I don’t think so,’’ Lucas said. He was lying on his back, hands behind his head. ‘‘I think she’d smell pretty bad by now.’’
    Sherrill made a quick move toward his groin and he flinched and said, ‘‘Don’t do that, I almost killed you with my karate reflexes.’’
    And she said, ‘‘Yeah, right. Answer the question.’’
    He didn’t have to think about it: ‘‘Nope. She was pretty, but she was missing a couple of links. You know those kinds of people—basically, they’re a little stupid. Maybe they don’t get bad grades in school, or maybe they even get good grades, but somewhere, down at the bottom, they’re fuckin’ morons. They don’t connect with the world.’’
    ‘‘You remember Johnny Portland?’’
    ‘‘Yeah. Asshole.’’
    She got up on one elbow, looking down at him. ‘‘I went out with him a couple of times.’’
    Lucas turned his head to look at her: ‘‘Jesus. Did he know you were a cop?’’
    ‘‘I wasn’t. This was like my sophomore year in college, I met him at this Springsteen concert. He liked younger girls, I was like twenty; he picked me up at my mom’s house in a Rolls-Royce.’’
    ‘‘That will turn a girl’s head,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘He never touched me. I wasn’t gonna sleep with him anyway, he was too old for me, but he never made a move. I thought maybe, you know, he couldn’t.’’
    ‘‘There were some stories around that he sorta liked wrestling with guys . . .’’
    ‘‘That occurred to me too—you know, not like I was Miss Queen of the May and everybody’s drooling over me, but he was showing me off to the guys, like, ‘Look what I got.’ But he never seemed much interested in really getting me. Just showing.’’
    ‘‘Yeah . . . Listen, don’t tell anyone else you went out with John Portland. He was an asshole.’’
    ‘‘I think he might’ve been missing a couple links too,’’ she said. ‘‘And all these other missing-linkers would come around, acting like they were Robert De Niro or something, like wise guys, but they were really like bartenders and tire salesmen.’’
    ‘‘De Niro’s old man was a famous artist and De Niro grew up with the intellectual artsy crowd on the East Coast,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Somebody told me that.’’
    ‘‘Really? He seems pretty real to me. Like he grew up on the streets, and I thought—’’
    The phone rang, and Lucas rolled out of bed.
    ‘‘Every goddamned time,’’ she said, eyes following him. ‘‘You could skip it.’’
    ‘‘Not when they call at this time of night,’’ he said. ‘‘Back in a sec.’’ Lucas picked up the phone in the den: ‘‘Yeah?’’
    SHE HEARD HIM POUNDING DOWN THE HALL; IT might have been funny if she hadn’t heard him virtually screaming at the telephone. Lucas thundered into the bedroom, found Sherrill pulling up her underpants, snapping on her bra.
    ‘‘My pants . . .’’ He seemed confused.
    ‘‘On the floor, by the foot of the bed.’’
    ‘‘My friend Elle . . .’’
    ‘‘I heard. She’s hurt and you’ve gotta go,’’ she said. She rocked back on the bed to