Koop was angry: he could feel the heat in his bowels. Fucker has my key. Fucker…
Koop followed Flory up the walk; Koop was whistling softly, an unconscious, disguising tactic, but he was pissed. Has my key… Koop was wearing a baseball cap, jeans, a golf shirt, and large white athletic shoes, like a guy just back from a Twins game. He kept the hat bill tipped down. The steel re-rod was in his right pocket, sticking out a full foot but hidden by his naturally swinging arm.
Goddamned asshole, got my key… Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, he whistled, Zip-a-dee-ay, and he was getting angrier by the second. My key…
Through the glass outer door, he could see Flory fumbling in the dark at the inner lock. Key must be in his hand. Koop pulled open the outer door, and Flory, turning the key on the inner door, glanced back and said, “Hi.”
Koop nodded and said, “Hey,” kept the bill of his hat down. Flory turned back to the door and pulled on it, and as he did, Koop, the cocaine right there, slipped the re-rod out of his pocket.
Flory might have felt something, sensed the suddenness of the movement: he stopped with the key, his head coming up, but too late.
Motherfucker has my key/key/key…
Koop slashed him with the re-rod, smashed him behind the ear. The re-rod hit, pak!, metal on meat, the sound of a butcher’s cleaver cutting through a rib roast.
Flory’s mouth opened and a single syllable came out: “Unk.” His head bounced off the glass door and he fell, dragging his hands down the glass.
Koop, moving fast now, nothing casual now, bent, glancing ferretlike outside, then stripped Flory of his wallet: a robbery. He stashed the wallet in his pocket, pulled Flory’s key from the lock, opened the Sucrets tin, and quickly pressed one side and then the other into the glazier’s putty. The putty was just firm, and took perfect impressions. He shut the tin, wiped the key on his pants leg, and pushed it back into the lock.
Done.
He turned, still half crouching, reached for the outer door-and saw the legs.
A woman stumbled on the other side of the door, trying to backpedal, already turning.
She wore tennis shoes and a jogging suit. He’d never seen her coming. He exploded through the door, batting the glass out of his way with one hand, the other pulling the re-rod from his pocket.
“No.” She shouted it. Her face was frozen, mouth open. In the dim light, she could see the body on the floor behind him, and she was stumbling back, trying to make her legs move, to run, shocked…
Koop hit her like a leopard, already swinging the re-rod.
“No,” she screamed again, eyes widening, teeth flashing in fear. She put up her arm and the re-rod crashed through it, breaking it, missing her head. “No,” she screamed again, turning, and Koop, above her and coming down, hit her on the back of the neck just where it joined her skull, a blow that would have decapitated her if he’d been swinging a sword.
Blood spattered the sidewalk and she went down to the stoop, and Koop hit her again, this time across the top of her undefended skull, a full, merciless swing, ending with a crunch, like a heavy man stepping on gravel.
Her head flattened, and Koop, maddened by the interference, by the trouble, by the crisis, kicked her body off the step behind the arborvitae.
“Motherfucker,” he said. “Motherfucker.” He hadn’t intended this. He had to move.
Less than a minute had passed since he’d hit Flory. No one else was on the walk. He looked across the street, for motion in the windows of Sara Jensen’s apartment building, for a face looking down at him. Nothing that he could see.
He started away at a fast walk, sticking the re-rod in his pocket. Jesus, what was this: there was blood on his jacket. He wiped at it with a hand, smeared it. If a cop came…
The anger boiled up: the goddamned bitch, coming up like that.
He swallowed it, fighting it, kept moving. Gotta keep moving
… He glanced back, crossed the street, almost scurrying, now with the smell of warm human blood in his nose, in his mouth. Didn’t mind that, but not here, not now…
Maybe, he thought, he should walk out. He was tempted to walk out and return later for the company truck: if somebody saw him hit the woman and followed him to the truck, they’d see the badge on the side and that’d be it. On the other hand, the cops would probably be taking the license numbers of cars in the neighborhood, looking for witnesses.
No. He would take it.
He popped the driver’s-side door, caught a glimpse of himself in the dark glass, face twisted under the ball cap, dark scratches across it.
He fired up the truck and wiped his face at the same time: more blood on his gloves. Christ, it was all over him. He could taste it, it was in his mouth…
He eased out of the parking space. Watched in the rearview mirror for somebody running, somebody pointing. He saw nothing but empty street.
Nothing.
The stress tightened him. He could feel the muscles pumping, his body filling out. Taste the blood… And suddenly, there was a flush of pleasure with a rash of pain, like being hand-stroked while ants crawled across you…
More good than bad. Much more.
CHAPTER
6
Weather wasn’t home. Lucas suppressed a thump of worry: she should have been home an hour earlier. He picked up the phone, but there was nothing on voice mail, and he hung up.
He walked back to the bedroom, pulling off his tie. The bedroom smelled almost subliminally of her Chanel No. 5; and on top of that, very faintly of wood polish. She’d bought a new bedroom set, simple wooden furniture with an elegant line, slightly Craftsman-Mission. He grumbled. His old stuff was good enough, he’d had it for years. She didn’t want to hear it.
“You’ve got a twenty-year-old queen-sized bed that looks like it’s been pounded to death by strange women-I won’t ask-and you don’t have a headboard, so the bed just sits there like a launching pad. Don’t you read in bed? Don’t you know about headboard lights? Wouldn’t you like some nice pillows?”
Maybe, if somebody else bought them.
And his old dresser, she said, looked like it had come from the Salvation Army.
He didn’t tell her, but she was precisely correct.
She said nothing at all about his chair. His chair was older than the bed, bought at a rummage sale after a St. Thomas professor had died and left it behind. It was massive, comfortable, and the leather was fake. She did throw out a mostly unused second chair with a stain on one arm-Lucas couldn’t remember what it was, but it got there during a Vikings-Packers game-and replaced it with a comfortable love seat.
“If we’re going to watch television in our old age, we should sit next to each other,” she said. “The first goddamn thing men do when they get a television is put two E-Z Boys in front of it and a table between them for beer cans and pizzas. I swear to God I won’t allow it.”
“Yeah, yeah, just don’t fuck with my chair,” Lucas had said. He’d said it lightly, but he was worried.
She understood that. “The chair’s safe. Ugly, but safe.”
“Ugly? That’s genuine glove… material.”
“Really? They make gloves out of garbage bags?”
Weather Karkinnen was a surgeon. She was a small woman in her late thirties, her blondish hair beginning to show streaks of white. She had dark-blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a wide mouth. She looked vaguely Russian, Lucas thought. She had broad shoulders for her size, and wiry muscles; she played a vicious game of squash and could sail anything. He liked to watch her move, he liked to watch her in repose, when she was working over a problem. He even liked to watch her when she slept, because she did it so thoroughly, like a kitten.
When Lucas thought of her, which he might do at any moment, the same image always popped up in his mind’s eye: Weather turning to look at him over her shoulder, smiling, a simple pearl dangling just over her shoulder.
They would be married, he’d thought. She’d said, “Don’t ask yet.”
&nbs
p; “Why? Would you say no?”
She’d poked him in the navel with her forefinger. “No. I’d say yes. But don’t ask yet. Wait a while.”
“Until when?”
“You’ll know.”
So he hadn’t asked; and somewhere, deep inside, he was afraid, he was relieved. Did he want out? He’d never experienced this closeness. It was different. It could be… frightening.
Lucas was down to his underpants when the phone rang in the kitchen. He picked up the silent bedroom extension and said, “Yeah?”
“Chief Davenport?” Connell. She sounded tight.
“Meagan, you can start calling me Lucas,” he said.
“Okay. I just wanted to say, uh, don’t throw away your files. On the case.” There was an odd thumping sound behind her. He’d heard it before, but he couldn’t place it.
“What?”
“I said, don’t throw away your files.”
“Meagan, what’re you talking about?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?”
“Meagan…?” But she was gone.
Lucas looked at the telephone, frowned, shook his head, and hung it up. He dug through the new dresser, got running shorts, picked up a sleeveless sweatshirt that he’d thrown on top of a hamper, pulled it on, and stopped with one arm through a sleeve. The thumping sound he’d heard behind Connell-keyboards. Wherever she was, there were three or four people keyboarding a few feet away. Could be her office, though it was late.
Could be a newspaper.
Could be a television station.
His line of thought was broken by the sound of the garage door going up. Weather. A small rock rolled off his chest. He pulled the sweatshirt over his head, picked up his socks and running shoes, and walked barefoot back through the house.
“Hey.” She’d stopped in the kitchen, was taking a Sprite out of the refrigerator. He kissed her on the cheek. “Do anything good?”
“I watched Harrison and MacRinney do a free flap on a kid with Bell’s palsy,” she said, popping the top on the can.
“Interesting?” She put her purse on the kitchen counter and turned her face up to him: her face was a little lopsided, as though she’d had a ring career before turning to medicine. He loved the face; he could remember reacting the first time he’d talked with her, in a horror of a burned-out murder scene in northern Wisconsin: she wasn’t very pretty, he’d thought, but she was very attractive. And a little while later, she’d cut his throat with a jackknife…
Now she nodded. “Couldn’t see some of the critical stuff-mostly clearing away a lot of fat, which is pretty picky. They had a double operating microscope, so I could watch Harrison work part of the time. He put five square knots around the edge of an artery that wasn’t a heck of a lot bigger than a broom straw.”
“Could you do that?”
“Maybe,” she said, her voice serious. He’d learned about surgeons and their competitive instincts. He knew how to push her buttons. “Eventually, but… You’re pushing my buttons.”
“Maybe.”
She stopped, stood back and looked at him, picking something up from his voice. “Did something happen?”
He shrugged. “I had a fairly interesting case for about fifteen minutes this afternoon. It’s gone now, but… I don’t know.”
“Interesting?” She worried.
“Yeah, there’s a woman from the BCA who thinks we’ve got a serial killer around. She’s a little crazy, but she might be right.”
Now she was worried. She stepped back toward him. “I don’t want you to get hurt again, messing with some maniac.”
“It’s over, I think. We’re off the case.”
“Off?”
Lucas explained, including the strange call from Connell. Weather listened intently, finishing the Sprite. “You think she’s up to something,” she said when he finished.
“It sounded like it. I hope she doesn’t get burned. C’mon. Let’s run.”
“Can we go down to Grand and get ice cream afterwards?”
“We’ll have to do four miles.”
“God, you’re hard.”
After dark, after the run and the ice cream, Weather began reviewing notes for the next morning’s operation. Lucas was amazed by how often she operated. His knowledge of surgery came from television, where every operation was a crisis, undertaken only with great study and some peril. With Weather, it was routine. She operated almost every day, and some days, two or three times. “You’ve got to do it a lot, if you’re going to do it at all,” she said. She’d be in bed by ten and up by five-thirty.
Lucas did business for a while, then prowled the house, finally went down to the basement for a small off-duty gun, clipped it under his waistband and pulled his golf shirt over it. “I’m going out for a while,” he said.
Weather looked up from the bed. “I thought the case was over.”
“Ehh. I’m looking for a guy.”
“So take it easy,” she said. She had a yellow pencil clenched between her teeth, and spoke around it; she looked cute, but he picked up the tiny spark of fear in her eyes.
He grinned and said, “No sweat. I’ll tell you straight out when there might be a problem.”
“Sure.”
Lucas’s house was on the east bank of the Mississippi, in a quiet neighborhood of tall dying elms and a few oaks, with the new maples and ginkgoes and ash trees replacing the disappearing elms. At night, the streets were alive with middle-class joggers working off the office flab, and couples strolling hand in hand along the dimly lit walkways. When Lucas stopped in the street to shift gears, he heard a woman laugh somewhere not too far away; he almost went back inside to Weather.
Instead, he headed to the Marshall-Lake Bridge, crossed the Mississippi, and a mile farther on was deep into the Lake Street strip. He cruised the cocktail lounges, porno stores, junk shops, rental-furniture places, check-cashing joints, and low-end fast-food franchises that ran through a brutally ugly landscape of cheap lighted signs. Children wandered around at all times of day and night, mixing with the suburban coke-seekers, dealers, drunks, raggedy-hip insurance salesmen, and a few lost souls from St. Paul, desperately seeking the shortcut home. A pair of cops pulled up alongside the Porsche at a stoplight and looked him over, thinking Dope dealer. He rolled down his window and the driver grinned and said something, and the passenger-side cop rolled down his window and said, “Davenport?”
“Yeah.”
“Great car, man.”
The driver called across his partner, “Hey, dude, you got a little rock? I could use a taste, mon.”
Franklin Avenue was as rugged as Lake Street, but darker. Lucas pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, turned on a reading light, checked the address he had for Junky Doog, and went looking for it. Half the buildings were missing their numbers. When he found the right place, there was a light in the window and a half-dozen people sitting on the porch outside.
Lucas parked, climbed out, and the talk on the porch stopped. He walked halfway up the broken front sidewalk and stopped. “There a guy named Junky Doog who lives here?”
A heavyset Indian woman heaved herself out of a lawn chair. “Not now. All my family live here now.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, I don’t, Mr. Police.” She was polite. “We’ve been here almost four months and never heard the name.”
Lucas nodded. “Okay.” He believed her.
Lucas started crawling bars, talking to bartenders and customers. He’d lost time on the street, and the players had changed. Here and there, somebody picked him out, said his name, held up a hand: the faces and names came back, but the information was sparse.
He started back home, saw the Blue Bull on a side street, and decided to make a last stop.
A half-dozen cars were parked at odd attitudes around the bar’s tiny parking lot, as though they’d been abandoned to avoid a bombing run. The Blue Bull’s windows were tinted, so that patrons could see who was coming in from the lot
without being seen themselves. Lucas left the Porsche at a fire hydrant on the street, sniffed the night air-creosote and tar-and went inside.
The Blue Bull could sell cheap drinks, the owner said, because he avoided high overhead. He avoided it by never fixing anything. The pool table had grooves that would roll a ball though a thirty-degree arc into a corner pocket. The overhead fans hadn’t moved since the sixties. The jukebox had broken halfway through a Guy Lombardo record, and hadn’t moved since.
Nor did the decor change: red-flocked whorehouse wallpaper with a patina of beer and tobacco smoke. The obese bartender, however, was new. Lucas dropped on a stool and the bartender wiped his way over. “Yeah?”
“Carl Stupella still work here?” Lucas asked.
The bartender coughed before answering, turning his head away, not bothering to cover his mouth. Spit flew down the bar. “Carl’s dead,” he said, recovering.
“Dead?”
“Yeah. Choked on a bratwurst at a Twins game.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
The bartender shrugged, started a smile, thought better of it, and shrugged again. Coughed. “His time was up,” he said piously, running his rag in a circle. “You a friend of his?”
“Jesus Christ, no. I’m looking for another guy. Carl knew him.”
“Carl was an asshole,” the bartender said philosophically. He leaned one elbow on the bar. “You a cop?”
“Yup.”
The bartender looked around. There were seven other people in the bar, five sitting alone, looking at nothing at all, the other two with their heads hunched together so they could whisper. “Who’re you looking for?”
“Randolph Leski? He used to hang out here.”
The bartender’s eye shifted down the bar, then back to Lucas. He leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Does this shit bring in money?”
“Sometimes. You get on the list…”
“Randy’s about eight stools down,” he muttered. “On the other side of the next two guys.”
Night Prey ld-6 Page 8
