Secret Prey

gotten the message or had ignored it.
    The Kresge murder weapon had the fingerprints of Kresge’s caretaker all over it. He’d been the one who put it away the last time Audrey saw it. A few of the lingering partygoers had been sitting around with Kresge, talking and cleaning the guns. When they were done with each one, they’d pass it to the caretaker, who’d put it away.
    Kresge had told her, on the shooting range, that she shot the Contender better than he did. That he’d never shot it at all, after the first few times. So the caretaker’s prints should still be on it. But the papers hadn’t had a whisper about the gun, and Wilson said nobody had even bothered to interview the caretaker. Something was screwed up, she thought. Typical. Very few people could act with her intellectual rigor . . .
    Audrey was crazy and smart and she knew how to do research: she’d taken an undergraduate degree in English from St. Anne’s, and then, while she was pushing Wilson through law school, she’d taken a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota in library science. She was still working in the library when computers moved in, and she’d more or less kept up with them over the years, and when the bank went on-line. When Davenport became a problem, she’d looked him up in the Star-Tribune library node on the Internet.
    And there she’d found a treasure trove.
    The Star-Tribune had done a lengthy feature on Davenport after he’d cleared the kidnapping of a psychologist and her two daughters by a madman named John Mail. ‘‘ Davenport and His Pals’’ had pictured Davenport with Weather Karkinnen, with Sister Mary Joseph—whom he’d known since their childhood together—and with a variety of cops, lawyers, TV and newspaper reporters, doctors, jocks, and street people, all friends of his.
    The two obvious targets for a diversionary attack were the nun and the surgeon—Davenport’s oldest friend and his lover. She decided on Karkinnen because Karkinnen was simpler.
    Audrey knew Sister Mary Joseph from her college days: the nun had been her instructor in basic psychology, and Audrey remembered her as an intense young woman with a face terribly scarred by adolescent acne. But the nun, who was still at St. Anne’s, lived in a communal dormitory-style setting in which intruders would be instantly noticed. And attack would be risky.
    Karkinnen, on the other hand, was out in the open. Audrey had been puzzled that the year-old article implied that Karkinnen was Davenport’s live-in lover, while Audrey’s search turned up different addresses, but she assumed there was something that she didn’t know. She considered the possibility that they’d broken up, but then found an engagement announcement only a few months old . . .
    So she’d gone for Karkinnen. She’d thrown the bomb through the window, concerned not a whit for the possibility that she might kill the woman, but very concerned at the possibility of being caught. The final attack—out of the car, across the lawn, throw, back in the car, ten seconds— minimized the possibility, but it had still taken nerve.
    She’d need the nerve again: but nerve had never been a problem for her. Audrey McDonald had nerve, all right.
    She thought again about the possibility of going after Davenport himself. There were two problems with that: First, he was large and tough-looking, and carried a gun. He would be difficult to get at quickly without exposing herself. She couldn’t get close enough for poison, couldn’t risk a gun attack; if she missed, she’d be dead. And he was a cop, so might be a little more wary than the average citizen. Further, she didn’t have time to research him as she had Arris and Ingall. And the second big problem was that killing him might lead the cops investigating his killing to take a harder look at his current investigations, including her .
    A diversion would lead them away from her . . . So it would have to be the nun.
    Her legs twitched down the bed, a kind of running motion, as she began working out a possible plan. She’d have to do it the minute she got out. She’d have to emphasize her injuries, complain of cracked ribs, something that wouldn’t show on X rays, but would keep her from doing anything heavy. She’d have to hobble and whimper and limp and make people feel sorry for her, and the instant she was alone, she had to go for the nun.
    She’d have no trouble with this. She’d been undercover for more than