Chosen Prey (8 page)

"Art who?" Lapp asked with apparent beetle-browed sincerity, and when Del started to laugh, said, "What?"

"Did you actually date Aronson?" Lucas asked.

"Hell no. I knew her way back when," Lapp said. He shook a brown cigarillo out of a cardboard box and lit it with a Zippo. He blew a stream of smoke and said, "We went to kindergarten together and the same schools up to eighth grade, and then they moved away. She came in here with a couple of other friends from the neighborhood, and that's when I saw her again. But we were doing nothing. Nothing. I'm happily married." The baseball cap guy snorted, and Lapp turned and looked up and said, "Fuck you, Dick, this is serious."

"Was she dating anybody that you knew of?" Lucas asked.

"Is this the first time you guys . . . I mean, how come you don't know this shit already? She disappeared more'n a year ago."

"We never knew about the St. Paul connection," Lucas said. "We were just checking out a random tip."

"Well, she said she was going out with an artist guy--is that the art you meant?--I think maybe over where she worked or something. I think they were . . . in bed."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because he was taking these pills. She told me this, we were laughing about it." He looked at the baseball cap. "What do you call them? That new cholesterol drug? Lapovorin? Is that it? Anyway, she said he'd told her that the pills had weird sexual side effects. They made you come backwards."

"Come backwards?" Del asked. He seemed fascinated by the concept. "How can you come backwards?"

"Beats the shit out of me," Lapp said, leaking more brown smoke from the cigarillo. "But that's what she said. He said that he had to quit the pills, because instead of coming, he went."

Nobody laughed; this could be a serious problem. "What else did she say about him?" Lucas said, leaning forward. "Names or where he lived--"

"Nothing. He was older than she was. This was like two weeks before she disappeared."

"That's all? She was dating an artist and he was older than her."

"Actually, I might have seen the guy . . . ."

Lucas and Del looked at each other, and then Lucas said, "Where?"

"I was coming out of Spalonini over in Minneapolis. I went in there for lunch? There's this diner across the street."

"The Cheese-It. She worked there part-time," Del said.

"Yeah. I saw her coming out of there with a guy and she had her arm under his. Tough-looking guy, but kind of artistlike. You know, he had a buzzcut and a three-day beard, had this long dark wool coat all the way down to his ankles. Maybe an earring, I think. They walked on up the street."

"Would you recognize him if you saw him again?" Lucas asked.

Lapp thought for a minute, then said, "Nah. I just saw him for one second, from the side, and then from the back. I remember he was a cocky-looking sonofabitch. You know who he looked like? This stuck in my head. He looked like Bruce Willis in this movie where Willis was playing a boxer? Uh, something Fiction ?"

"Pulp Fiction,"Del said.

"Yeah, that's it. He looked like Willis in that movie, kind of fucked up, big shoulders. Dark like that, but a buzzcut."

"But you couldn't pick him out?"

"If you had a lineup with Dick and George, here," Lapp said, waving at the Vikings guy and the baseball cap, "and a buzzcut who looked sorta like Bruce Willis, then I could pick him out. If you had six buzzcuts, then I couldn't."

"Goddamn good memory anyway," Del said. His voice may have carried a vibration of skepticism.

Lapp shrugged. "Just between you and me . . . maybe I did have a little thing about her. Nothing serious. Then she went away . . . . I just remembered. I remember remembering, if you know what I mean."

"How come you didn't call this in? We could've used the help," Del said.

Lapp shook his head. "I didn't think it would be important. I mean, I heard about it when you were looking for her, but it seemed like she just might've, you know, split."

"And there's his old lady," the baseball cap said, nodding at Lapp. "If he told you, he'd have to tell her."

They talked a few more minutes, and Lucas took Lapp's address and telephone number. Outside, on the sidewalk, Del said, "Lapp is right. Unless we get lucky with those lists, we ain't got shit."

"He's an artist and he's got a buzzcut and he takes Lapovorin. We can check pharmacies and make more lists."

"Buzzcuts are the fashion right now, and Minneapolis's got more artists than rats and every second guy on the street takes Lapovorin."

"But it's something. I can see him in my mind's eye now."

"Then you oughta stop down to one of them photo booths and have a picture taken before you forget," Del said. He yawned, looked up and down the street at the wind-whipped snowflakes slanting through the streetlights like shading in a cartoon. He slapped Lucas on the back and said, "See you in the morning. We'll look up some artists, or some fuckin' thing."

Chapter
5.

SHE 'D MADE SOME kind of cheese dish with garlic. Qatar liked garlic when he was eating it, but an hour later, after another rugged round of sex, he could smell it in his own sweat, and in Barstad's sweat mingled with his; he touched his stomach and found it cool and wet.

The sexual education of Ellen Barstad might not be the lark that he'd assumed it would be, Qatar thought. He was in her bathroom again, washing. His penis had gone past the tingling stage: It hurt. This was their fourth time together, if the first unsuccessful bedding was counted. He was beginning to feel the pressure.

The second time together, they had watched a pornographic movie and then tried some of the more modestly deviant practices. The third time, they had moved on. Nothing truly advanced, Qatar thought, though it was as advanced as he'd ever managed.

This time, Barstad's wrists were tied to the head of the bed with two of his old, too-wide neckties. "James," she called. She was waiting.

"Good God," he said under his breath. He knew the tone. His face seemed a little pale, a little drawn, in the bathroom mirror. He didn't have another one in him, he thought. He turned the water off and went back to the bedroom. Barstad lay flat on the bed, her legs spread slightly, her arms over her head; her eyes were half closed, her face slack. The woman seemed to have no limit.

"Could I get a drink of water before the next one?" she asked.

"My dear, I don't think there will be a next one, not today," he said. "I feel like I've been pushed through a wringer."

A wrinkle appeared on her forehead. "What's a wringer?"

"You know, for wet clothes."

"What?"

She'd never heard of a wringer, Qatar thought. Too young. He looked down along her body: It was perfect. Everything that he had always thought he'd wanted.

Except.

He was beginning to suspect that what he'd always wanted wasn't sex; that his particular streak of insanity--he called it that, was comfortable with the word--needed resistance, maybe even a little disgust. An hour earlier, he'd been looking down at the spinal groove in the back of her neck. His hands had ached for her neck. He'd almost done her then--would have, if he'd had the rope. The next time, he'd bring it.

Over the next couple of days, before they got together again, he would think about it, he would see if the killing passion returned. And maybe the thing with Aronson's body would blow over. She was long dead; there could be no clues--they hadn't found anything else . . . .

ELLEN BARSTAD WATCHED him thinking about her. Maybe she was pushing too hard--but once she got into it, she found it hard to stop. There were so many . . . her girlfriend called them "pickles." Little interesting variations, like crazy quilting: You do this and then you do that. Qatar, on the other hand, was basically like all the men she'd known: He just wanted to bang away, and then nap until he could get up again, and then bang away some more. She wanted to try this and then that and then the other thing, to see how it all felt. Was there anything wrong with that? She thought not.

Qatar was being a prig about the whole thing. Maybe, she thought, it was time to find somebody younger. Actually, if she could find somebody completely unformed, maybe a seventeen-year-old, somebody who'd actually be grateful . . . After all, this wasn't that difficult, was it? All of it was in the books.

"So you're going home?" Barstad asked.

"Yes. I'm really busy. I've been here for two hours."

"I thought we were going to do the Ping-Pong paddles again today."

He had to laugh. "Slipped my mind," he said. Then: "It's all right to slow down, Ellen. We're not on a time clock."

"I suppose," she said, disappointment in her voice. She rubbed her feet together. "You sure you don't want a little suck?"

"Ellen . . ." He really did hurt; but how often do you get this kind of offer? Sometimes, he thought, you've got to go with common sense. "Okay. But you must take it easy."

WHEN HE GOT home two hours later, thoroughly used, he turned on the television and went into the kitchen for some Froot Loops. He was eating and reading a two-week-old copy of The New Yorker when he heard the television announcer talking about drawings and murder and that the images might not be appropriate to children.

He knew what they were, even without looking or listening. He didn't want to believe it; he pushed to his feet so abruptly that milk sloshed out of the bowl onto the magazine.

In the living room, he caught the sight of one of his drawings in the fraction of a second before the cameras cut away, like the quick flash of a queen of hearts in a riffled deck of cards. The reporter was saying something, but he couldn't seem to make out the words. Then the camera cut away from the reporter, and one after another, a set of his images flashed on the screen, finally ending with a drawing of Aronson.

". . . police looking for the artist who drew these sexually charged images . . ."

He stood unbelieving, aghast. He'd never let Aronson take home any of the images. He'd shown her this one--it was sexy, but not pornographic--to impress her with his skills. He remembered throwing it aside in his office. He didn't remember seeing it again.

"She took it," he said aloud, to the television. "She stole it from me. It wasn't hers! It was mine!"

He would go to prison, he thought. Nobody would ever understand. He watched until the drawings went away, and the reporter--a slender blonde, he thought, who might be interesting--moved on to politics.

"Prison," he said. An announcement. His career in ruins. They'd lead him out of the building in chains: He could see it in his mind's eye, long rows of mocking former colleagues and their harridan wives, in a gantlet, and he'd walk down between them enduring their smirks and superior smiles. They would put him in denim shirts and jeans, with a number on his shirt, and he would be locked in a cell with some redneck who'd rape him.

He thought of suicide--really, the only way out. Jumping, he thought. The feeling of flying, and then nothing at all. But he was afraid of heights. He didn't even like to stand too close to a window.

A gun. Tighten the finger, and nothing . . . But that'd be really messy, and would destroy the side of his head. Too much. Hanging himself, that was out: He'd suffer. He could imagine the pain, clawing at the rope at the last minute, trying to pull himself up. . . . No.

Pills. Pills were a possibility if he had time to accumulate some. He could go to Randy. Randy could get as much as he needed, barbiturates. That'd be the way to go. Simply sleep, never to awake.

A tear rolled down his cheek as he thought about his mother's distress when his body was found. He dropped into the easy chair by the TV and closed his eyes, imagining it. And was suddenly touched by anger: The bitch wouldn't miss him. She'd sell all his furniture, and the wine, and the carpets. She'd cash his life insurance, pathetic as it was, and she'd keep it all. He could see it plainly, as a vision: the inventory of his belonging, the clothes going into the trash--into the trash!--the furniture carried away on trucks and even pickups.

Anger swelled in his heart, and he pushed himself out of the chair and paced back to the kitchen, sobbed. Pounded a fist into the other palm, then stuffed his knuckles into his mouth and bit until he felt the skin break. She'd take it as a victory: She'd outlasted him.

Well, fuck her. Fuck her. He shouted it at the walls: "FUCK HER."

So what to do? He sat down again, stared at the box of Froot Loops. He'd enjoyed making his drawings and he'd known right from the start that he'd be in trouble if he were found out. So he'd been secretive. He still had some of the images stored on the computer at school, but he could get rid of them.

He sighed, and calmed himself. Things weren't completely out of control. Not yet. He'd have to get busy, get cleaned up, just in case.

His mind skipped back to his mother: bitch. He couldn't believe her pleasure at his suicide. Couldn't believe it. There wasn't any doubt about it: The clarity of his vision carried the unmistakable scent of the truth. They hadn't had much to say to each other for five years, but she could show him enough loyalty to regret his passing.