Eyes of Prey ld-3

by John Sandford

  She lay still for a moment, calculating. Nobody coming over? No. If Davenport dropped in, like he had the day before… Fat chance. She'd have to do it on her own. She tried rolling, rocking back and forth. She was at it for a minute, two minutes, got over on her back, then another half-turn. Was the tape ripping? She couldn't see. She pulled her arm in close to her body and tried to roll again…

  Bekker left Cassie's apartment door unlocked and padded down the hall to the stairs. On the way, he wrapped his right hand in a handkerchief. Druze was three floors down and the cops knew something. Bekker didn't know how they knew, but they did, and they'd be watching.

  A camera in the corridor? Unlikely. If the cops were secretly watching Druze, they wouldn't do anything that might call attention to themselves. His mind equivocated: the woman had seen him, so he'd have to do her. But he hadn't exposed himself to any watching cops yet, and he might be about to do that. His mind worked at it, and finally told his body to go ahead. To risk it. There was no other way, if the cops were this close to Druze. He opened the door and peeked out: the third-floor corridor was empty. He pulled up his rain hood, hurried to Druze's door and, about to knock, reconsidered. If the apartment was bugged…

  He scratched on the door. Heard movement inside. Scratched again. A moment later, the door opened a crack and Druze peered out. Bekker put a finger over his lips for silence and gestured for Druze to step into the hallway. Druze, frowning, followed, looking up and down the hall. Bekker, finger back on his lips, pointed to the door of the stairwell.

  "I can't explain it all right now, but we got a problem," he whispered when they were on the stairs. "I talked to Davenport and he said they had a suspect but no evidence. I asked how they were going to catch him, and he said, 'We've got to catch him in the act.' And the way he said it, it sounded like a pun he was making to himself…"

  "Aw, shit," Druze said, worried. "What happened to your hand?"

  "She bit me. Anyway, I thought I'd come over here, early enough to catch the girl, like we'd talked about…"

  "We hadn't talked about it for sure…" Druze said.

  "Something had to be done and I couldn't risk calling you on the phone," Bekker said. "You may be bugged."

  "We don't even know it's me."

  "We do now. I went up to her apartment, stuck a gun in her face and taped her up. I was planning to wait until you were at the theater, whack her on the head-you know, do it so they couldn't separate that injury from the injuries in a fall-and then pitch her right out the window. You'd have an alibi, and nobody knows about me."

  "What happened?"

  "The first thing she said was, 'You're not with Carlo?' " The honesty was there in his voice.

  "Aw, God damn it," Druze said, running his fingers through his hair. "And you think the apartment may be bugged?"

  "I don't know. But if this woman goes out the window while you're at the theater, that's one more piece of evidence on your side… They'll know you're not involved, anyway…"

  There was something wrong with the reasoning, but Druze, shocked, couldn't figure it. And Bekker said, "Come on up to her apartment. You scare her. We need to find out what the cops know…"

  "God, I kind of like her," Druze said.

  "She doesn't like you," Bekker answered harshly. "She thinks you're the killer." • • • Bekker led the way quickly up the stairs, feeling the gun bang against his legs. All clear. In the apartment, he gestured at the bedroom and Druze walked back. Cassie was still facedown on the bed, but she had been struggling against the tape, which had been twisted between her legs and the bed.

  "Turn her over, so she can see you," Bekker said, moving to Druze's right side. Druze stooped and grabbed Cassie's near shoulder and hip, to roll her over.

  His mind was clear as ice, his body moving with the precision of an industrial robot. Bekker pulled the pistol from his pocket-his mind watched it in slow motion, guiding each small movement of the drawing gesture-with the handkerchief-wrapped hand.

  In a single move, Bekker's body put the muzzle an inch from Druze's temple.

  Druze sensed the movement, started to turn his head, his mouth opening.

  Bekker pulled the trigger.

  Dropped the gun.

  Recoiled from the blast…

  The blast, confined in the small bedroom, was terrific, stunning. Bekker jerked back as Cassie arched up, twisting frantically at the tape.

  Druze simply collapsed, the gun disappearing beneath him.

  Cassie's sweater was speckled with Druze's blood and small amorphous shreds of bone and brain tissue.

  Bekker's robot-controlled body touched Druze's. Dead. No question of it. The drugs sang in his blood and he went away. He sighed, and came back: Jesus. He'd been gone. How long? He glanced at his watch. Four-twenty. Cassie was staring at him from the bed, her hands working frantically behind her back. He hadn't been gone long, a few minutes at most. He listened. Anybody coming? Not so far. No knocks, no sound of running feet…

  He looked at Druze on the floor. He'd have to leave him like that, there might be some kind of blood pattern from the shot or something. He couldn't do the eyes, of course. He worried about that, but there was nothing to be done. If Druze was going to take the blame…

  Cassie.

  She'd stopped fighting the tape, but her back was arched, her head turning, trying to see him. He had to hurry: he still had to stop at Druze's apartment, to leave the photos. He started into the kitchen, when a door slammed down the hall, and he stopped. Listened.

  Was that a movement? Out in the hall. He strained, listening. The hall was carpeted, would muffle steps. He waited a minute, then a few more seconds.

  He couldn't wait longer. He still had to visit Druze's apartment. He patted his chest, confirming that the pictures were there. He'd cut the eyes out…

  He'd have to be careful. If the cops had bugged Druze's apartment and realized he was gone, but hadn't left the building, they might be on the way. Maybe he shouldn't try it. If he were caught in the apartment… that didn't bear thinking about.

  Bekker, the PCP pounding in his blood, went into the kitchen and got a bread knife, the sharpest he could find.

  And there again… Movement? Somebody in the hall. He froze, listened… No. He had to move.

  He didn't do it well, and he didn't do it quickly, but he did it: he cut Cassie's throat from ear to ear, and sat with her, holding her green eyes open with his fingers, as she died.

  CHAPTER 27

  Lucas spent ten minutes at the funeral home with a cheerful, round-faced mortician who wanted to talk golf.

  "Damn, Lucas, I already been out twice," he said. He had a putter and was tapping orange balls across a plush carpet toward a coffee cup lying on its side. "It was a little muddy, but what the hell. In another two weeks, it'll be every morning…"

  "I need to know about the eyes…"

  "So don't talk to me about golf," the mortician complained. He putted the last ball, and it bounced off the rim of the cup. "Nobody wants to talk golf. You know how hard it is to talk golf when you're in the funeral business?"

  "I can guess," Lucas said dryly.

  "So what exactly do you want to know?" the mortician asked, propping the putter against an easy chair.

  They were in a small apartment above the funeral home, where the night man stayed. A lot of people die at night, the mortician said, and if you're not there, they might call somebody else. To the average, unknowledgeable member of the general public, one funeral home was as good as another.

  "What about the eyes? Do you leave them in or take them out, or what?"

  "Why'd we take them out?" the cheerful mortician asked, relishing the conversation. Lucas was uncomfortable, and he could see it.

  "I don't know, I just… I don't know. So you leave them in?"

  "Sure."

  "Do you sew the eyelids shut or glue them shut or anything?"

  "No, no, once they're shut, they stay that way."

  "How about
the viewings? Is there always somebody around?"

  "Well, there's always somebody around, but not necessarily right there. We go by judgment. If we see a street person going into the viewing room, we'd go with him, of course-we don't want to get any rings stolen, or whatever. But if the guy looks straight, if he's a member of the family, then we pretty much let him go. We might check every couple of minutes, but a lot of people, when they're saying good-bye, don't like funeral-home people standing around staring at them. They feel like they're being rushed, you know, like when a salesman stands right next to you in a department store. But it's judgment. One time this whole family warned us about a particular guy, one of the grandfathers. The deceased had this gold plate, probably worth a couple hundred, and this old guy was a thief. So we hung on him. He was kneeling there praying, and he kept looking at us and then praying some more… He must've prayed for half an hour. The family members said that was the longest prayer of his life, by about twenty-nine minutes."

  "But theoretically, if somebody wanted to get in and touch a body, or look at its eyes… he could do it. If you didn't have some warning."

  The funeral home man shrugged. "No theory about it- sure he could. No problem. But what can you do to a dead man in two minutes?"

  Lucas kept a handset stashed under the seat, and Del caught him halfway back into the loop.

  "Something's happened with Druze," Del said. "He's gone. The surveillance guys swear there was no way he got out of the building, but he doesn't answer his phone and he's late for rehearsal."

  "What do you think? Check his apartment?"

  "I don't know. I thought we'd wait a while longer… We've been calling every two or three minutes, so it's not like he's on the can."

  "Keep watching. I'll come on up."

  He didn't think of her, not right away. The traffic was heavy on Minnehaha Avenue headed north and he was stuck for three blocks behind a dump truck that resisted all of his attempts to pass. Cursing, he finally got around it, and got the finger from a scowling, long-haired truck driver. He hit three red lights in a row, and then she popped up in his mind. Same building. A chill ran through him, and he picked up the handset and called through to Del.

  "I have a friend in that building. She's an actress with the same theater Druze is at," he said. "Would you call her?"

  "Sure…"

  Lucas could see the apartments along I-94, six blocks from the theater, when Del called back. "No answer."

  "Shit." Lucas glanced at his watch. She should be at the theater. "Could you call the theater, ask for her?"

  He was on Riverside, hurrying now, weaving through traffic. He jumped a light, scared a drunk and a student, saw the apartment building ahead.

  "Lucas, we called, and she hasn't shown up."

  "Ah, Jesus, listen, I gotta check on her. We've been talking about the case…"

  "I'll meet you out in front. I've talked to the manager a couple of times."

  Del was walking across Riverside when Lucas arrived. Lucas dumped the car and met him on the sidewalk.

  "Anything?"

  "No. I called the manager, she should be… There she is."

  The manager was holding the lobby door, and Del introduced Lucas. "This is not official," Lucas said. "She's a personal friend of mine, she's had some serious problems, and she hasn't shown up at work. We're worried."

  "Okay. Since you're the police."

  They rode up to the sixth floor in silence, listening to the elevator rattle against the sides of the shaft, watching the numbers click on the counter. There was nobody in the corridor outside Cassie's apartment. Lucas knocked on her door. Nothing. Knocked again.

  "Open it," he said to the manager, stepping back. She fitted her key to the lock and pushed the door open. Del shoved past Lucas. An odor filled the small front room…

  "You stay right fuckin' here, Lucas," Del shouted. He grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out of the doorway, and held the woman back with the other hand. "You stay right fuckin' here…"

  Del headed for the bedroom. Lucas pushed past the bewildered woman, right behind him.

  Cassie.

  Her face was turned away. He knew, but he thought Maybe she's… But the blood was all over the bed, and when he stumbled up to it, and saw her eyes… and the huge red gash under her chin, cutting through layers of tape… and Druze on the floor beside her, blood everywhere…

  Somebody moaned, a long, horrible, low-pitched sound, and he realized that it was coming from his own throat, and he reached out and touched her…

  "Cassie…" He screamed it, and Del pivoted, grabbed him by the jacket and pushed him away like a linebacker working a blocking sled. Del himself screamed, "No, no, no…"

  The manager, hands clenched in front of her, looked through the bedroom door and then staggered backward, still looking, her mouth hanging open. She ran to the doorway and began retching, and screaming, and retching again, and the stink of vomit overlay the smell of the butchery inside the bedroom…

  Lucas strained against his friend, and Del said, "Stay the fuck out, Lucas, stay the fuck out, we need to process, Lucas she's dead, Lucas she's dead…" He pushed Lucas into a chair and picked up the phone.

  "We got another one. We need everything you got, apartment six-forty-two. We got two of them, yeah, it's Druze…"

  He looked at Lucas, who was back on his feet, ready to go after him. But Lucas walked away from the bedroom and did something that frightened Del more than any effort to look at Cassie: he stood staring at a wall from a distance of no more than a foot, expressionless, unmoving, his eyes open.

  "Lucas?" No answer. "Davenport, for Christ's sakes…"

  "You want to go to the hospital?" Sloan asked.

  "What for?" Del had pulled him off the wall, stuffed him into the elevator, guided him to the lobby and held him there.

  "Get some dope."

  "No."

  "You're totally fucked, man. You can't be like this," Sloan said. He was driving the Porsche, while Lucas slumped beside him in the passenger seat.

  "Just get me home," Lucas said. The storm was back in his head, the storm he'd feared. Cassie's face. The things he could have done, might have done, that she might have done. Going around, thousands of options, millions of intricate possibilities, all leading to life or to death… Sybil's face popped into his head.

  "We saved the life of a woman who's gonna die in a week…" he moaned.

  "But we maybe got Bekker, the lawyers are looking at the tapes right now."

  "Fuck me," Lucas said, dropping his chin on his chest. He had to cry, but he couldn't.

  And then he said, "I went to a funeral home. If I'd come here…"

  And then he said, "Every fuckin' woman I see gets hurt. I'm a goddamned curse on their heads…"

  And then he said, "I could've saved her…"

  "I gotta make a call," Sloan said suddenly, taking the car into a convenience-store parking lot. "Just take a minute."

  Sloan called Elle Kruger, looking back over his shoulder at Lucas in the passenger seat of the Porsche. All he could see was the top of Lucas' head. The nun's phone was answered by a woman at a switchboard; Sloan explained that he was calling on a police emergency. The woman said she'd try to find Elle, and began switching. A moment later, she came back on to say that the nun was at dinner, and a friend would get her. She told Sloan to hold on.

  "Lucas?" Elle asked when she picked up the phone.

  "No, this is his friend Sloan. Lucas has a problem…"

  When Sloan returned to the car, Lucas' eyes were closed, and he was breathing slowly, as though he were sleeping. "You okay?" Sloan asked.

  "That fuckin' Loverboy. If he'd come in, he could've looked at the picture of Druze the minute I found it, and we could've busted him. But we had to go through this newspaper-ad bullshit…"

  "Let it go," Sloan said. "Nothing we can do about it now." • • • Elle was waiting at Lucas' house with another nun and a small black car.

  "Ho
w are you?" she asked.

  He shook his head, looking down at the driveway. Meeting her eyes would be impossible, too complicated.

  "I'll call my friend, get a sedative for you."

  "I've got this stuff going around in my head…" he said. And the guns: he could feel the guns in the basement. Not heavy, not like last winter, but they were back.

  "Let me call my friend." Elle took his arm, then his hand, and led him toward the door like a child, while Sloan and the other nun followed behind.

  Lucas woke the next morning exhausted.

  The sedatives had beaten him into a dreamless sleep. The storm in his head had dissipated, but he could feel it just over the horizon of consciousness. He slid tentatively out of bed, stood up, swayed, opened the bedroom door and almost fell over the couch. Sloan had pushed it up against the door and was struggling to get up.

  "Lucas…" Sloan, in a T-shirt and suit pants, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, looked tired and scared.

  "What the fuck are you doing, Sloan?"

  Sloan shrugged. "We thought it might be a good idea, in case you sleepwalked…"

  "In case I started looking for my guns?"

  "Something like that," Sloan admitted, looking up at him. "You look like shit. How do you feel?"

  "Like shit," Lucas said. "I gotta get some dead kids dug up."

  The blood seemed to drain from Sloan's face, and Lucas smiled despite himself, smiled as a widow might smile the day before her husband is buried. "Don't worry about it. I'm not nuts. Let me tell you about Bekker…"

  CHAPTER 28

  Daniel prowled around his office with his hands in his pockets. He'd pulled the shades but hadn't turned on the lights, and the office was almost dark.

  "Homicide is satisfied," he said. "You know I don't clear murder cases on the basis of politics-and there's every indication that we got him. You got him. Bekker is something else."