Shadow Prey

by John Sandford

  “You’re not handling much. You didn’t even get here until ten o’clock, for Christ’s sake. I’d been standing around for two hours.”

  “I didn’t ask you to wait for me; and I told you, I work nights.”

  “I just don’t have the right feeling from this. You guys—”

  “And if I read the newspapers right, you guys in New York have screwed more than your share of cases to the wall,” Lucas interrupted, talking over her. “If you guys aren’t deliberately blowing up some black kid, you’re taking money from some fuckin’ crack dealer. We’re not only pretty good, we’re clean . . . .”

  “I never took a fuckin’ nickel from anybody,” Lily said, her voice harsh. She was leaning over the table, her jaw tight.

  “I didn’t say you did, I said . . .”

  “Hey, fuck you, Davenport, I just want to nail this sonofabitch, and the next thing I hear is that New York cops are taking payoff money . . . .” She threw a paper napkin on the table, picked up the Danish and the carton of milk, and stood and stalked away.

  “Hey, Lily,” Lucas said. “God damn it.”

  Gary Kieffer didn’t like Lucas and made no effort to hide it. He was waiting in Daniel’s office when Lily arrived, with Lucas just behind her. He and Lucas nodded at each other.

  “Where’s Daniel?” Lily asked.

  “Off somewhere,” Kieffer said coldly. He was wearing a navy-blue business suit, a tie knotted in a full Windsor, and well-polished black wingtips.

  “I’ll go check,” Lucas grumped. He backed out of the office, looking at Lily. She dropped her purse beside the chair next to Kieffer’s and sat down.

  “You’d be the New York lady officer,” Kieffer said, looking her over.

  “Yes. Lily Rothenburg. Lieutenant.”

  “Gary Kieffer.” They shook hands, he with an exaggerated gentleness. Kieffer wore thick glasses and his large red nose was pitted with old acne scars. He crossed his hands over his stomach.

  “What’s the problem with you and Davenport?” Lily asked. “There’s a certain chill . . . .”

  Kieffer’s blue eyes were distorted by the heavy glasses and looked almost liquid, like ice cubes in a glass of gin and tonic. He was in his early fifties, his face lined by weather and stress. He was silent for a moment, then asked, “Are you friends?”

  “No. We’re not friends. I just met him a couple of days ago,” she said.

  “I don’t like to talk out of turn,” Kieffer said.

  “Look, I’ve got to work with him,” Lily prompted.

  “He’s a cowboy,” Kieffer continued. His voice dropped a notch and he looked around the office, as though checking for recording devices. “That’s my estimation. He’s gunned down six people. Killed them. I don’t believe there’s another officer in Minnesota, including SWAT guys, who has killed more than two. No FBI man has. Maybe nobody in the country has. And you know why? Because in most places, if a guy kills two people, he goes on a desk. They won’t let him out anymore. They worry about what they’ve got on their hands. But not with Davenport. He does what he pleases. Sometimes that’s killing people.”

  “Well, I understand that in his area . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what everybody says. That’s what the news people say. He’s got the media people in his pocket, the reporters. They say he does dope, he does vice, he does intelligence work on violent criminals. I say he’s a gunman, and I don’t hold with that. Except for Davenport, we don’t have the death penalty in Minnesota. He’s a gunman, plain and simple.”

  Lily thought it over. A gunman. She could see it in him. She’d have to be careful. But gunmen had their uses . . . . Kieffer was staring straight ahead, at the photos on Daniel’s wall, caught in his own thoughts of Davenport.

  Lucas came back a moment later, Daniel trailing behind him with a cup of coffee. Sloan and another cop, the second one unshaven and dressed like a parking-lot attendant, were a step behind Daniel. Everybody called the second cop Del, but nobody introduced him to Lily. She assumed he was undercover Narcotics or Intelligence.

  “So what do we got?” Daniel asked as he settled behind his desk. He looked into his humidor, then snapped it shut.

  “We’ve got a map. Let me explain the situation,” Sloan said. He moved up to Daniel’s desk and unrolled a copy of a plat map from the City Planner’s Office.

  • • •

  Billy Hood had apparently left Bemidji a year before, drifted down to the Twin Cities and moved into an apartment with two friends. The apartment was on the first-floor corner of the building, just to the right of the entrance. A careful, secretive questioning of the elderly couple who worked as building superintendents suggested that Hood’s roommates were in residence. Hood had been gone for more than a week, perhaps ten days, but his clothes were still in the apartment.

  “What are the chances of getting a search warrant?” Lucas asked.

  “If Lily will swear that she has probable cause to think Hood’s the man who killed Andretti, there’d be no problem,” Daniel said.

  “The problem is, we’ve got those two guys who live with him,” said Sloan. “We’ve got nothing against them, so we can’t kick the door and bust them. But if we go talk nice to them, what happens if they’re part of the whole deal? Maybe Hood’s calling them every night to find out what’s happening. They could have a voice code to warn him off . . . .”

  “So what are you suggesting?” Daniel asked.

  The cop named Del pointed at the map. “See this building across the street? We can get a ground-floor apartment and set up there. There’s only two ways out of Hood’s building—the other way’s on the side—and we can see both of them from the apartment across the street. We think the ideal thing would be to set up a surveillance. Then, depending on how he arrives, grab him just before he goes in, or when he comes back out.”

  “What do you mean, ‘how he arrives’?” Daniel asked, looking up from the map.

  “There’re not many cars on the street. He could pull up right to the front door, hop out and go inside. If he’s nuts, we want to be in a position where we can tackle him. You know, a couple guys walk down the street, talking, and when they get to him, wham! Take him down, put on the cuffs.”

  “We could put somebody inside . . .” Daniel suggested, but Del was already shaking his head.

  “We’ve got those goddamned roommates to worry about. Or, as far as we know, somebody else in the building. If he’s warned off somehow, we’d never know it. We could be there watching the building and he’s laying on a beach in San Juan.”

  They talked for another five minutes before Daniel nodded.

  “All right,” he conceded, standing up. “It looks like you’ve got it figured. When do you think he’ll get back?”

  “No sooner than tonight, even if he drove like crazy,” Sloan said. “He’d have to do six, seven hundred miles a day to get here tonight. New York says he’s driving an old car.”

  “That’s what we got from his motel,” Lily said.

  Lucas looked at Daniel. “If there was some way to make sure the other two guys were out of there, it might not be a bad idea to go in and take a look,” he said. “We could check for weapons and anything that might tell us where he is right now.”

  “Are we talking about an illegal entry?” Kieffer blurted suddenly. They were the first words he had spoken since the meeting began, and everybody turned to look at him.

  “No. We’re not, Gary,” Daniel said promptly. “Everything will be on the up-and-up. But instead of kicking in the door, Lieutenant Davenport, I take it, is proposing to go in without disturbing the place.”

  “That is very close, very close to an illegal search. You know that searches are supposed to be announced . . . .”

  “Hey, take it easy, everything will be okayed by a judge, all right?” Daniel said, staring Kieffer down. “And if it wasn’t, it’s still better’n getting one of my people shot.”

  Kieffer grunted in disgust. “I’ve g
ot nothing to do with this. In my judgment, it’s a bad move. And I think we ought to grab him the minute we see him. Put some guys in cars, take him. Or if he gets in that apartment, kick the door. We could put an entry team in there, take the door off, and we’re inside before they can move . . . .”

  “But what if he’s willing to die? Like Bluebird?” Lucas asked. “You can get the drop on somebody, but if he’s willing to die, and if he goes for a gun, what’re you gonna do? You’re gonna shoot him. I don’t give a shit if you kill him, but I’d like to talk to him first.”

  Kieffer shook his head. “It’s a bad plan,” he said. “He’ll slip away. I’m telling you that on the record.”

  “Lemme know when the record’s released,” Lucas said.

  Lily grinned without thinking, but killed the smile when Lucas looked at her. She was still mad.

  Daniel turned to Del. “These two guys, the roommates. What do we know about them?”

  “One of them works at a bakery. One of them’s unemployed. He spends most of his time at a health club, lifting. He supposedly does some modeling for art classes, big scandal in the building. You know, nude stuff. Anyway, that’s what we get from the super.”

  “Can you locate them, put a guy on each one of them?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do it. Lily, we’re going to need you for the warrant.” Daniel looked at Lucas. “And you better figure out how you’ll get in. We’ll want you to do the search.”

  Kieffer got up and walked to the door. “I don’t know anything about this,” he said, and left.

  Lucas stopped Del in the hallway.

  “How are we going to do this?” he asked.

  “I could get a key . . . .”

  “That’d be quicker’n a power pick. The fuckin’ pick sounds like you dropped a tray full of silverware.”

  “I’ll talk to the super . . . .”

  “You got a little weight on them?” Lucas asked.

  “A little,” Del said. “They push some toot out the back door, supplement the old man’s Social Security.”

  “Okay. As long as they’re fixed. Are you going down there now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got to stop in my office, pick up a tape recorder and a Polaroid. I’ll be right behind you.”

  The building across from Hood’s had an alleyway access. Lucas dumped the Porsche a block away and walked in. Del was waiting with the key.

  “The baker’s halfway through his shift. He gets off at four. The other guy’s at the club. He’s doing bench presses and he told Dave that he always sits in the whirlpool after a heavy workout, so he’ll be a while.” Del handed Lucas a Yale key. “The warrant’s on the way. Daniel said to stick it into one of Hood’s coat sleeves before you leave. Like in a parka or something. Someplace he won’t look right away.”

  Lily arrived five minutes later, with Sloan.

  “We’ve got a warrant,” she told Lucas. She made no move to hand it to him. “I’m coming along.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “I’m coming,” she insisted. “He’s my man and two of us can go through the place faster than one.”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Del. “No offense, man, but you kinda smell like a cop. If somebody sees you in the hallway, before you get in . . . Lily’d be a little camouflage.”

  Lucas looked from Lily to Del and back. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “Hope there’s nobody crashing in here. You know, a guest,” Lily said as they crossed the street. Hood’s building was made of old red sandstone; the wooden windows showed dry rot.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll cover you,” Lucas said. He tried to make it light, a joke, but it came out macho.

  She stared back at him. “You can be a pain in the ass, you know?”

  “That was supposed to be a joke.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Her eyes broke away.

  Lucas shook his head. He wasn’t doing anything right. He followed her up the stoop into the building. First door on the right. He knocked once. No answer. And again. No answer. He put the key in the lock, cracked the door. Lily looked down the hall, checking the other doorways for watchers.

  “Hello?” Lucas made it loud, but not too loud. Then he whistled. “Here, boy. Here, pup.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Lily said, “Nobody home.”

  “Probably a fuckin’ Rottweiler under the bed with its tongue cut out to make it mean,” Lucas said. He pushed open the door and they stepped inside.

  “That’s a heck of a door,” Lucas said as he eased it shut.

  “What?”

  “It’s an old building. They still have the original doors—solid oak or walnut or something,” Lucas said, rapping on the door with his knuckles. “By the time apartments get this old, one landlord or another has usually stripped out all the original doors and sold them. They’re probably worth as much as the apartment building.”

  They were in the living room. Two rickety occasional chairs, a recliner with a stained fabric cover, the brown metal cube of an aging color television. Two red vinyl beanbag chairs lay on the floor in front of the TV, leaking tiny white Styrofoam beads on the wooden floor. The apartment smelled of some kind of stew or soup—lentils, maybe. White beans.

  Lucas led the way through a quick check of the apartment, glancing into two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen with its peeling linoleum and thirties gas stove with a fold-down top.

  “How do we know which is Hood’s room?” Lily asked.

  “You look at the stuff on the chests,” Lucas said. “There’s always some shit.”

  “You sound like you do this quite a bit,” she said.

  “I mostly talk to a lot of burglars,” Lucas said, suppressing a grin. He headed toward a bedroom.

  “What do you want me to do?” Lily asked.

  “Look in the kitchen, around the telephone,” Lucas said. He took the miniature tape recorder out of his pocket. “Push the red button to record. Dictate any phone numbers you find written around. Any times or place names. Anyplace Hood might have been.”

  The first bedroom had one bed and a ramshackle chest. The bed was unmade, the bedclothes twisted in a pile. Lucas stooped and looked under it. There were several boxes, but a patina of dust suggested that they hadn’t been moved recently. He stood and went over to the six-drawer chest. Notes, gas-station charge slips, cash-register receipts, ballpoint pens, paper clips and pennies were scattered across the top. He checked the charge slips: Tomas Peck. Wrong guy. Lucas quickly looked through the drawers and the closet for weapons. Nothing.

  The second bedroom had two beds and no chests. All the clothing was stacked inside boxes, some plastic and made for storage, some cardboard and made for moving. Personal papers were scattered across a windowsill next to one of the beds. He picked up a letter, glanced at the address: Billy Hood. The return address was in Bemidji and the handwriting was feminine. His wife, probably. Lucas looked through the letter, but it was mostly a litany of complaints followed by a request for money for the wife and a daughter.

  He quickly went through the boxes stacked beside the bed. One was half full of underwear and socks, a second was stacked with several pairs of worn jeans and a couple of belts. A third held winter-weight shirts and sweaters, with a couple sets of thermal underwear.

  The bedroom had one closet. The door was standing open and Lucas patted down the shirts and jackets hanging inside. Nothing. He dropped to his knees and pushed the clothing out of the way and checked the bottom. A lever-action Sears .30-.30. He cranked the lever down. Unloaded. A box of shells sat on the floor beside the butt. He got up, looked around, found a torn pair of underpants.

  “What’re you doing?” Lily was in the doorway.

  “Found a gun. I’m going to jam it. What’d you get in the kitchen?” He ripped a square of material out of the underpants.

  “There were some phone numbers on papers around the phone. I got them.”

  “Look in all the drawers.”
r />   “I did. Paged through the calendar, looked through a kind of general catchall basket and drawer full of junk. Went through the phone book. There was a number written in the back with a red pen and there was a red pen right next to the book, so it might be recent . . . .” She glanced at a piece of paper in her hand. “It has a six-one-four area code. That’s the Twin Cities, right? Maybe . . .”

  “No, we’re six-one-two,” Lucas said. “I don’t know where six-one-four is. Sure it was six-one-four?”

  “Yeah . . .” She disappeared and Lucas made a tight little ball of the underpants material and pushed it down the muzzle with a ballpoint. The material was tightly packed, and after two or three inches, he couldn’t force it down any farther. Satisfied, he put the rifle back in the closet and closed the door.

  “That six-one-four code is southwestern Ohio,” Lily said from the doorway. She was looking at a phone book.

  “He could be coming back that way,” Lucas said.

  “I’ll get somebody to run down the number,” Lily said. She closed the phone book. “What else?”

  “Check the front-room closets. I gotta finish here.”

  There was a box under Hood’s bed. Lucas pulled it out. A photo album, apparently some years old, covered with dust. He glanced through it, then pushed it back under the bed. A moment later, Lily called, “Shotgun.” Lucas stepped into the living room just as she cracked open an old single-shot twelve-gauge.

  “Shit,” Lucas said. “No point in trying to jam that. He’ll be looking right through the barrel when he puts a shell in.”

  “Don’t see any shells,” Lily said. “Should we take it?”

  “Better not. If his roommates are involved, we don’t want anything missing . . . .”

  Lucas went back to the bedroom and looked through the other man’s boxes. There was nothing of interest, no letters or notes that might tie the others more intimately to Hood. He went back into the living room. “Lily?”

  “I’m in the bathroom,” she called. “Find anything else?”

  “No. How about you?” He poked his head into the bathroom and found her carefully going through the medicine cabinet.