Secret Prey

straggled down the hall, peeked in the door, and said, ‘‘How’s it going?’’
    Lucas shrugged: ‘‘She ain’t arguing. She says she did it. And McDonald was the guy: nothing she’s saying makes it seem any other way.’’
    ‘‘We’re getting some preliminary stuff back from the lab. Everything is consistent with what she said early on.’’
    ‘‘They had a history,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘The question now is, can she live without him?’’
    ‘‘She’s got a problem?’’
    ‘‘When I saw her, at O’Dell’s, she was virtually a hand puppet. She had no personality left that he didn’t supply.’’
    ‘‘Well . . . you know they’re pleading self-defense,’’ Lester said.
    ‘‘Yeah.’’
    ‘‘If the lab comes through, I doubt she’ll even be indicted.’’
    ‘‘If the lab comes through, she shouldn’t be,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Speaking of the lab, did we ever get that spectrographic analysis on the slug fragments?’’
    ‘‘Mmm, I heard somebody say something about it. I think it’s back, but I don’t know what they said.’’
    ‘‘All right . . .’’
    They listened for a minute: Audrey was telling of the pursuit down the stairs, of the panicky call to Helen. ‘‘You gonna bump her a little?’’ Lester asked.
    ‘‘Yeah, when she’s done. I’m starting to feel kinda bad about it, though,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘I don’t know,’’ Lester said, peering up at him. ‘‘I thought you were looking pretty cheerful.’’
    ‘‘Yeah?’’
    ‘‘Yeah. You getting laid again?’’
    ‘‘Jesus, you married guys don’t think about anything but sex.’’
    ‘‘That’s true,’’ Lester said. ‘‘Well, let me know what happens.’’
    Lucas nodded. ‘‘I will.’’
    ‘‘And say hello to Sherrill for me. You know, when you see her.’’
    SLOAN HAD GOTTEN THROUGH THE SHOOTING, AND now was working backward: Did Audrey McDonald know that her husband was suspected of committing a number of murders?
    ‘‘No . . .’’ A little fire now, but in a prissy way. ‘‘That ridiculous Davenport person is pushing this. Wilson would never kill anybody. He’d lose control and he’d beat me up, but sometimes I was asking for it. Last night . . . last night I just couldn’t help myself, I ran into the bedroom to hide and there was the shotgun and the shells on the floor and he was coming and I knew how to load it . . .’’ She started rambling down the path to the shooting again, and Sloan cut her off.
    ‘‘Did your husband own a pistol?’’
    ‘‘No. Well, yes, years ago . . .’’
    ‘‘State firearms records indicate he purchased a .380-caliber Iver Johnson semiautomatic pistol at North Woods Arms in Wayzata in 1982.’’
    ‘‘I’m sure you’re right. But he never used it. He called it his car gun because he had to work down in the colored area sometimes, way back when.’’
    ‘‘Do you know where he kept it?’’
    ‘‘No, I assumed he gave it away. Or disposed of it.’’
    ‘‘He doesn’t have it in his car now?’’
    ‘‘I don’t think so; I think I would have known . . .’’
    ‘‘Do you remember how you heard the news that Andy Ingall was lost up on Lake Superior?’’
    ‘‘Well . . . I think somebody from the bank called and told us.’’
    ‘‘Mr. McDonald was with you when you found out?’’
    ‘‘Why, yes. Somebody called him, not me.’’
    ‘‘You don’t know if he’d been in Duluth about that time.’’
    ‘‘I’m sure he wasn’t; it would have stuck in my mind.’’
    Sloan was pushing a dead end. Lucas waited a few more minutes, listening, then breezed into the room, as though he was in a hurry. Sloan looked up and said, ‘‘Chief Davenport . . . Mrs. McDonald.’’
    She seemed to shrink away from him, what was left of her. Most of her face was black with bruises and subcutaneous bleeding around the cuts; a row of tiny black stitches marched up one cheek like a line of gnats; her hair was cut away on one side of her head, and a scalp bandage was damp from wound seepage.
    ‘‘Mrs. McDonald, I’ll be brief,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘We’re virtually certain that your husband was involved in the deaths of Kresge, Arris, and Ingall. And we’re wondering how, if he killed all those people, you could not have known about it.’’
    ‘‘Why . . . why . . . he didn’t do that.’’
    And her attorney, Glass, was sputtering, ‘‘Hey, hey, hey . . . we’re not answering those kinds of