Secret Prey

looked around. ‘‘Are we about done here?’’
    ‘‘Another hour, if we really think that glass cutter is here somewhere,’’ Del said.
    ‘‘Keep looking,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’m gonna take off.’’
    ‘‘I better come along,’’ Sherrill said. ‘‘You’re pretty cut up.’’
    ‘‘All right,’’ Lucas said. To Dell, ‘‘You and Sloan figure it out from here.’’
    ‘‘You going home?’’ Del asked.
    Lucas could feel the blood seeping through the tissue. ‘‘No. I’m gonna go talk to that fucking sister of hers.’’
    HELEN AND CONNIE BELL WERE WATCHING TELEVISION when Lucas and Sherrill arrived. Helen opened the door, smiled at Lucas, nodded at Sherrill, then frowned and said, ‘‘Good God, what happened to you? Are you hurt?’’
    ‘‘Um . . . your sister scratched me. Sort of blew up.’’
    ‘‘Why? Well . . . come in. Why were you talking to Audrey?’’
    Connie Bell turned backward on an easy chair to listen to the conversation: Lucas, Sherrill, and Helen were standing in the entryway, and Lucas said, ‘‘I’ve got some fairly bad news, I think. Uh, maybe you’d rather get it in a more formal way . . .’’
    ‘‘No-no-no, tell me.’’
    Lucas nodded. ‘‘We think it’s possible that, uh, your sister may have committed some of the murders you listed in your letter to me.’’
    Helen took a step back, one hand going to her throat. ‘‘Audrey? Oh, no.’’
    ‘‘Could we, uh, could we sit down, I just have a couple of things,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘The couch.’’
    They stepped into the front room, and Lucas and Sherrill sat on the couch while Helen leaned against the chair where Connie was sitting. Lucas said, ‘‘If you want Connie to go do homework or something . . .’’
    ‘‘No way,’’ Connie said. To her mother: ‘‘I’m old enough to stay.’’
    Her mother looked at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘‘You can stay.’’
    Lucas looked at Sherrill, and then asked, ‘‘When you were younger, was there ever anything . . . Did you think anything was odd about the way your father died? Or your mother?’’
    Helen looked at them in stunned silence, then said, ‘‘My father was an evil man. We don’t talk about him.’’
    ‘‘We know about, uh . . . we know about Audrey,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘What about Audrey?’’ Connie asked.
    Lucas looked at Helen, who blinked rapidly, shook her head, then turned to Connie and said, ‘‘My father molested us when we were children. Audrey mostly, but I got some of it too. He never made me do anything with him, like he did with Audrey, but it was coming. He’d . . . handle me. But Audrey was four years older and that protected me.’’
    ‘‘Jeez,’’ Connie said.
    ‘‘Do you remember the night your father died?’’ Lucas asked.
    Again, Helen seemed stunned. Then she nodded, slowly. ‘‘I didn’t know what was going on until the sheriff came— Mom wouldn’t let me get out of bed. But I knew my father was sick, that’s what they said up the stairs to me, Mom and Audrey.’’
    ‘‘Was he sick for a while, or was it a sudden attack?’’ Lucas asked.
    ‘‘He was sick for a long time, I think, more than a week . . . I don’t know, exactly, I was only ten . . . but for a long time. Then the night that he died . . . God, it was cold, it was already snowing up there, that’s one thing I remember about it. The wind used to whistle through that old farmhouse. It was a bad place. And I heard him having a terrible argument with Audrey, before I went to bed. We slept in the same bedroom, Audrey and I . . . Then, I don’t think anybody went to bed. I heard him groaning, and in the bathroom, that’s the last thing I remember about him— being in the bathroom. Then he was quiet, and then I think I went to sleep, and the next thing I knew, people were banging around and cars were coming, and he was dead.’’
    ‘‘Had Audrey ever come up to bed?’’
    Helen looked down at her daughter, then at Lucas. ‘‘I don’t think so. I don’t think she ever came upstairs that night. She was downstairs, I think, taking care of him . . .’’
    ‘‘Huh. Okay. What about your mother?’’
    ‘‘Mother was . . . ruined . . . by my father. It was like there was no person left. I used to think, this is what a slave would be like, after they beat all the resistance out of him. ‘Do this,’ ‘Yes, master,’ ‘Do that,’ ‘Yes, master.’ She was like a rag.’’
    ‘‘And