Lucas Davenport Novels 16-20

by John Sandford

  That had ended the press conference.

  Now, most of the team went out the door, into the falling snow, Barakat tagging along, a half-block behind. They were all walking, going down the street as a group, Karkinnen with them, and the cowboy cop. Happy, laughing, expansive ... Two blocks down to a French restaurant. Barakat stood outside, hands in his coat pockets, and watched them go up an interior stairs, to a private dining room.

  Nothing to do. No way to get at her.

  He walked away, heading home.

  VIRGIL SAW WEATHER up to the private dining room, then walked back down and around the corner and got two bottles of Schell’s Snowstorm beer, got the store guy to crack the caps, put them in his pockets and walked back to Le Moue, and up the stairs. Weather was working on a daiquiri when he slipped in next to her, and a woman said in a French accent, “Do you wish anything to drink?”

  Virgil said, “Water would be fine.”

  Weather: “We got a bunch of finger food coming ...”

  Somebody else said, “When Rick was doing that last cut, I flashed on this thing, I mean, we were pulling them apart. Like, if there was some psychic connection between them, what would be going through their brains when we actually finally moved them ... ?”

  Virgil took one of the Snowstorms out of his coat pocket, flipped the top off, took a hit, leaned close to Weather and said, quietly, “You heard the doc was killed?”

  She turned, said, “What?” a smile dying on her face.

  He told her about the discovery of Shaheen. “So he was kind of like an Arab-he was Lebanese, a Muslim, and he did have an accent.”

  She frowned. “What’d he look like?”

  Virgil said, “You know-dark-complected, dark hair, worn a little long, a black mustache.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I saw him. The day of the robbery. He was in an elevator with me, when I was coming down from the parking ramp. I completely forgot about it.”

  “Huh. Then you got lucky. He didn’t know that you’d seen the other guys,” Virgil said.

  “Oh my God,” she said, hand to her chest. “He was so polite. And good-looking. Like Zorro.”

  Virgil said, “Good-looking. Like Zorro.”

  “Yeah, you know. Zorro.”

  “I went down to take a look at him. He didn’t look like Zorro. He looked like Sancho Panza. He was about five-six and chubby.”

  She said, “Oh. Then he’s not the man I saw. The man I saw was more than six feet. As tall as Lucas, but thin. Like you. But dark-complected, black hair, a mustache.”

  “A doc?”

  She nodded. “He was wearing a physician’s scrubs. But maybe ... I’m misremembering. I didn’t expect to see anybody there at that time in the morning, and we were alone in the elevator. Maybe it was this Shaheen man. Maybe he seemed larger to me.”

  “And thinner? And better-looking?”

  “That doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

  Virgil stood up. “No, it doesn’t. Don’t let any of these French people take my beer. I gotta call Lucas.”

  LUCAS THOUGHT about it for a minute, then said, “Shaheen getting killed was pretty convenient, huh? An Arab-looking doc, who didn’t keep any of the good stuff around his apartment, but did keep the cheap stuff and a bunch of packaging.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Virgil said.

  Lucas told Marcy about it, and she said, “I suppose it’s possible. Not likely, though.”

  “Not likely, but Weather’s got a good eye. And that part of the hospital is about empty—it’s mostly equipment storage, mechanical systems, all that. Why would a doc be there, in scrubs, at that time in the morning?”

  “I’ll get some photos of Shaheen; she can check him out. Maybe when she sees a photograph, she’ll recognize him.”

  Lucas sat alone and thought about it. And he thought:

  If Weather could identify nobody but Joe Mack, and if Joe Mack was long gone in Kansas, and if they were going to get him for some involvement with the kidnapping and murder of Jill MacBride—and Lucas still thought they would, when the DNA came back from traces taken from the driver’s seat of MacBride’s van—then why was somebody still looking for Weather? Weather was no longer Joe Mack’s big problem.

  And the answer was, Weather had seen the doc.

  The doc needed to kill Weather. And he would continue to need to kill her.

  SHRAKE CALLED. “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I got something,” he said.

  “Did you hurt him bad?”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever you beat up,” Lucas said.

  “Hey—this was purely brain work. There’s a skinhead who used to hang out with Chapman and Haines from time to time,” Shrake said. “The guy I talked to said his name is Cappy. At least, that’s what people call him. Rides a big BMW, might have come from California. That’s all I got, but I think if I go around and hammer on people a little, I might be able to break out more. All we need is a license number, a last name ...”

  “Tell you what, I think you got him,” Lucas said. “Push it. Something else: I think the doc is still running around loose.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. Take it easy out there.”

  LUCAS SAT SOME MORE, eyes closed, tried to visualize the moment he saw the skinhead in Joe Mack’s office. Ran through the scene several times: he’d recognize Cappy if he saw him, Lucas thought, but really couldn’t describe him for a sketch. The problem with a sketch was, it was the details that counted, not the generalities.

  What had they talked about? Joe had said something about insurance? Back through the scene. Get insurance? The skinhead said his was good for thirty days. Then Joe said something about boxes? Could that be right?

  Then he remembered something else. Honey Bee Brown had gone into the office ahead of them, to shout at Joe Mack about not telling her that Haines and Chapman had been killed. The skinhead had snapped something at her that shut her up. Would that work with somebody you didn’t know?

  He took out his cell phone and notebook and called Honey Bee Brown. She answered on the third ring.

  “This is Davenport. Who is Cappy?”

  “Cappy? Who is Cappy?”

  “You’ve got this bad habit of trying to bullshit me, Harriet, and it makes me not like you,” Davenport said. “Cappy is the skinhead who told you to shut up, after we told you that Haines and Chapman were murdered. He was in Joe Mack’s office, buying Joe’s van.”

  “Cappy. Okay, I got him,” Honey Bee said. “He was a friend of Shooter’s, from California. Uh, he didn’t hang around that much, he mostly just rode.”

  “Big BMW, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s what everybody noticed. The other guys ride Harleys, but Cappy didn’t care. He rode his Bimmer.”

  “You know where he lives?”

  “No idea.” She said it so quickly and solidly that Lucas believed her.

  “How about where he works?” Lucas asked.

  “That ... I’m not sure about, but I know he always had to leave the bar early, before it closed. He worked nights. He doesn’t have any skills—I heard that from somebody. Taking crappy jobs. Never graduated from high school ... he’s only about twenty.”

  “He looked older than that, to me,” Lucas said.

  “He does look older, but Lyle once told me that if the cops came in, get Cappy out of sight. He wasn’t legal yet.”

  “You think he might kill somebody?” Lucas asked. She seemed to think about it for a long time, and he said, “Harriet?”

  She said, “Yeah. I do. He is one scary little motherfucker. He’s got eyes like a snake on Animal Planet.”

  So LUCAS SAT on the hospital couch, with troops of cops still moving through, and thought, Boxes.

  A crappy job, no skills, after midnight. Boxes.

  He thought, UPS. FedEx. Post office.

  He took out his phone and called Sandy, a part-time researcher for the BCA. She was off, at her apa
rtment, listening to what sounded like a Branford Marsalis disc, and she said she could have the relevant numbers in ten minutes.

  Lucas put his phone back in his pocket.

  What about the doc?

  20

  CAPPY LAY ON THE FLOOR in front of the television, tuned it to Channel Three, for the news, put his foot up on a couch pillow. He’d done what Barakat told him, and most of the bleeding had stopped. He hit the cocaine, once, but that seemed to make his mind focus on his toe: the pain grew worse. He stopped with the cocaine, tried to focus on the television: the cops were all over the hospital. A thrill here—he’d done this. He’d caused this chaos. People were paying attention. He was still lying, watching, there when Barakat got home.

  “How bad?” Barakat asked.

  “Not so bad, really. Mostly my little toe. But that’s wrecked. I can’t put any weight on it,” Cappy said.

  “Let me get some things,” Barakat said. He went into his bedroom, did a twist, and another, and went back to Cappy with a brown leather bag that looked like a small briefcase. He popped it open, put it on the floor next to Cappy’s foot, dragged a reading lamp over, and started unwrapping the foot. “Did you take the oxycodone?”

  “Two of them,” Cappy said. He told Barakat about running down the stairwell, and then getting shot. “I don’t think the slug could have missed my head by more than an inch. I mean, it was like my foot being hit with a sledgehammer, but I almost thought I could feel the slug go by. Right in front of my eyes. Two inches back, and I’d be dead.”

  “Uh-huh.” Barakat finished unwrapping the foot and said, “Okay. It’s messy, but not so bad. I’m going to have to ... uh ...”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to have to give you a shot before I can work on it,” Barakat said. “An anesthetic. It’ll hurt too much, otherwise.”

  “Whatever you gotta do,” Cappy said.

  “Need a little hit first,” Barakat said. He did another line of coke, came back.

  Barakat had three single-use syringes in the kit. He took one out, unwrapped it, then said, “This is going to bite a little ...” He slipped the needle in, and Cappy said, “Huh,” and Barakat said, “There’ll be three little sticks, here.” He stuck him the three times, feeding the anesthetic around the base of Cappy’s little toe.

  When he was done, he put the empty syringe on a coffee table, stood up, and said, “I’m going to have to wash your feet. I need to get some alcohol.”

  He was back in a minute with the alcohol and some paper towels, and began washing the wounded flesh. “Can you feel that?” Barakat asked.

  “Not too much,” Cappy said. “Feels lots better.”

  “It’ll hurt again later,” Barakat said. He took out a forceps that looked like a big pair of tweezers, and began probing at the wound. The wound was still oozing, and after a minute, he said, “Hmm,” and then, “You got lucky.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your small toe is mostly gone, but your fourth toe was only damaged by debris from the shoes. The bones and joints look like they’re okay. I can clean it up and bandage it. The little toe ... I have some work to do. You will have trouble with balance at first, because your little toe helps with that, but after you get used to it, you won’t even notice that it’s missing.”

  “It’s mostly missing now, you said?” He tried to do a sit-up to look, but Barakat pushed him back.

  “Lie still. Yes. I just have to clean it up, and bandage it. If you follow my prescriptions, it’ll be okay.”

  Cappy lay on the floor and closed his eyes, and Barakat went to work, cutting off wounded muscle and skin, nipping off a piece of shattered toe bone, leaving a neat but tiny stump just above the joint closest to the foot. When he was done with that, he carefully wrapped it with gauze soaked in an antiseptic gel, covered that with more gauze, wrapped the fourth toe separately, and then wrapped the corner of Cappy’s foot with medical tape.

  “I’m done. Just lie there for a while,” he said. “I’ll clean up. You don’t want to stand up in a hurry.”

  “I’ve got to stand up pretty soon, though,” Cappy said. “They’ll get a fix on me sooner or later. I need to get my ass out of here. Down to Florida, I’m thinking.”

  “Why not back to California?”

  “I’ve never seen Florida.”

  “What you think best, but it’s snowing like crazy out there,” Barakat said, slapping him on the knee. He picked up the operating debris, got a plastic garbage bag from under the sink, and dumped it inside. He’d throw it in a public trash can somewhere, he thought.

  He went to the bedroom for another hit.

  WHEN HE CAME BACK, he gave Cappy a bottle of penicillin pills and told him to take the rest of the oxycodone. “If you drive all the way to Florida, your foot will hurt bad the whole way. Better if you got out of here, one day, maybe to Kentucky or somewhere, where there won’t be all the cops looking for you, and then find a motel to stay in for a couple days. Watch TV and keep the foot up high.”

  They talked about the foot, and then about the chase at the hospital, and Cappy said, “I don’t know if I dinged either of them, but I don’t think so. I tricked them at the end, though ...”

  “Do you think they might know your name?” Barakat asked.

  “I don’t know what they know. They might know my name. The woman in the operating room ... it sounded like she said, ‘Cap,’ like my name.”

  “Hmm. If they don’t know your name, it would be best if you could stay overnight, leave in the morning, after this snow goes through. The highways will be impossible tonight. You don’t need to get in an accident now.”

  “But I need to get back and load up my stuff,” Cappy said. “I need to get my bike in the van.”

  “Do you need me to help?”

  “Naw. I’ve got a ramp, I’ll ride right up it. I don’t have anything else heavy,” Cappy said. And, “What are you going to do?”

  Barakat said, “I am going to ask the hospital to give me time to fly home to Lebanon to see Shaheen’s parents and talk to them about what a fine fellow their son was. I don’t think they can say ‘no,’ so I will be out of sight. I will stay one hour there, and then go to Paris, maybe for a month. You should see Paris someday ...”

  “Don’t think I’ll see Paris,” Cappy said.

  “When I come back, I will think some more about this Karkinnen woman, and what she has done to us. If not for her, we would be done here.”

  “Good luck on that,” Cappy said. “She reminds me of this dude out in California. He was the foreman at this company I worked for, and he used to give me shit all the time. I was going to kill him, but when I was ready to, he was always off somewhere. I couldn’t find him. When I could find him, I wasn’t ready. Just luck. Maybe this bitch is one of those.”

  “This is not a good thought,” Barakat said.

  AT NINE O’CLOCK, Cappy couldn’t stand lying on his back anymore, managed to get to his feet without help. He couldn’t walk on the front of his damaged foot, but could stump along on the heel. “Not as bad as I thought,” he said.

  Barakat was heavily stoned, flying: “You still have residual effect from the local anesthetic. It will get worse, believe what I say.”

  “That’s great,” Cappy said.

  “One thing more,” Barakat said. “We have not talked about Joe Mack. Joe Mack is the other threat. I believe that sometime he will call me again. If I find out where he is, it would perhaps be better if Joe Mack died.”

  “I think you’re right. He is a dumb guy who’ll get caught sooner or later,” Cappy said.

  “I will try to find out where he is, and will call you. Perhaps you could deal with him.”

  “If I can,” Cappy said.

  “And I will deal with Karkinnen. I will think of something.”

  THEY WERE STILL rather pleased with their friendship, and Barakat helped Cappy keep his balance as he stumped out to his van, where Barakat gave the younger man a quick Lebanese hu
g with a backslap. “I will call you. I will pack the drugs from the hospital, I will send them to you wherever you’re at. You can make the connection, and sell them. I trust you for my share.”

  Cappy was embarrassed about the hug and the trust, but smiled and said, “Keep on truckin’, dude.”

  As his van rolled into the night, Barakat turned back to his house and began to think about talking to the cops about Shaheen’s funeral, and talking to the hospital about compassionate leave.

  Cappy’s taillights winked at the corner, and he thought, That might be the end of Cappy.

  Now, he had to spend some time thinking about himself.

  But first, he could use another twist. He had to think clearly.

  21

  LATE, DARK, SNOWING. Lucas kept the speed down, watching the nav screen, and Jenkins said from the backseat, “It should be right around here.”

  “Hope the guy hasn’t left for work.”

  “He doesn’t have to be there for three hours, so ... might be out getting a drink,” Shrake said from the passenger seat.

  “Night like this?”

  “Night like this tends to make me drink,” Shrake said. “It’s snowing so goddamn hard you can’t see your own feet.”

  The car spoke up: “You have reached your destination. ”

  The house was a dark tuck-under that Lucas thought might be red in daylight, when it wasn’t snowing. He pulled into the driveway and said, “Wait,” and hopped out, with a flashlight from the storage bin under the armrest. He walked up to the house and shined it on the house number: 1530. He walked back and said, “The car’s right, this is it.” He killed the engine, and they climbed two short sets of stairs to the front door; five inches of snow on the ground, Lucas thought, and coming down at two inches an hour.

  There were lights in the front window, above the garage, but nothing on the left side of the house. Lucas rang the doorbell, and knocked, and somebody came to the front window and looked out at the porch, and a minute later, a man with a short, neat Afro looked out and asked, “What?”