Secret Prey

slipped the top back on the cap: not bad. If you looked at it closely, it wasn’t quite right. But who looked at pills that closely?
    She wrapped the pill in a napkin and put it on the car seat; the sandwich box she carried to a trash can and pushed it inside. A pay phone hung on the wall just inside the Burger King door, and she went in and dialed Helen’s number. Helen should be working, Connie should be at school. No answer. As a double check, she got the number of the auto parts place from directory assistance, called, and asked for Helen. Helen answered a second later, and Audrey clicked off as soon as she recognized her sister’s voice.
    Helen’s house was no more than ten minutes away. If she tried to do something subtle, to sneak in, she’d probably draw more attention in the neighborhood than if she barged right in. She parked on the street, waited until she could see no one on the sidewalk, then hurried up the walk, through the outer porch, and rang the doorbell. No answer. She leaned on it the next time, ringing for a solid minute. Nothing.
    Good.
    She took her keys from her purse, found the key for Helen’s house, opened the door and went inside. The house was deathly quiet. She went straight through to Helen’s bedroom, to the corner where she kept her computer. Switched it on, took the floppy disk from her pocket, went to the My Documents folder. Helen had written a note to herself two months earlier, but the computer would update the time to show the last entry. Audrey slipped the floppy in the drive, brought up the text she’d written that morning, pasted it into the earlier note. Then she cut the text of the note itself, and checked her work.
    If I die . . . the note began.
    I’m sorry about everything! I killed those people, not Audrey! But Audrey was my only support, and I had to do something if Wilson was going to move up at the bank! If Wilson had lost his job all those years ago, what would have happened to Connie and me? Without the money from Audrey, we would have been on the street! My former ‘‘husband’’ is good for NOTHING!!! But I didn’t kill Mr. Kresge! I think that must have been an accident! And Chief Davenport, if somebody shows this to you, yes, I called you. I could no longer stand the way Wilson was treating Audrey! I was afraid he would kill her! I thought you would do an investigation and his treatment of her would come out and nobody would ever know it was me that called you, and Audrey could keep helping me, because now, if they got divorced, she’d get all kinds of money! Connie—I love you. You go stay with your aunt Audrey, because she really loves you. I’m sorry for all of this!!
    And at the bottom of the note, she’d left all the fragments of sentences that she’d pushed while editing: I fearedilling heraaacidentkill treeting Wil;slonMisterKresgeWithout money I got from Audrey .
    It would, she hoped, look like a practice note; she was especially proud of all the exclamation points. Helen used them everywhere, as though they were periods.
    She closed the file, shut down the machine, put the disk in her purse, and headed for the bedroom. Helen carried a pill case with a chiming clock to remind her to take the pills; she took one at noon every day. The Prozac bottle itself she kept in the bedroom, in her bureau drawer. Audrey found the bottle, unscrewed the top, looked inside. A dozen pills. Carefully unwrapping the cyanide pill in the napkin, she let it drop on top of the pills in the bottle, and replaced the bottle, shut the drawer.
    Out of the house: she’d been inside no more than ten minutes, she thought. As she drove away, she moved in the car seat and felt the cyanide bottle in her pocket. She should ditch it somewhere, she thought. But she liked the idea of it. A bottle of death. She thought about it for a while, then stopped in a park, where a thin shell of woods surrounded a small drainage lake. She stepped just inside the tree line, picked out a good-sized oak, walked over to it and sat down. Probed the ground with her car key: Damn. Frozen.
    She looked around, spotted a culvert protruding from the edge of an embankment. She walked over to it, pushed the bottle well under the culvert. The bottle should be safe for years, she thought. Did cold weather affect cyanide? She had no idea.
    Now , she thought, standing up.
    Where are you, Davenport?

THIRTY-TWO

    TWO UNIFORMED COPS WITH A WARRANT STOPPED by the McDonald house at four o’clock, and