Twelve feet. Flap-click.
“Where’n the fuck is he?” Del asked from his closet. “Greave? You see him?”
“Must be on the stairs,” Greave said. “You want me to go up?”
“No-no, stay put,” Lucas said.
Connell was listening to the conversation through her earplug, and almost missed the light-footed whop fifteen feet away. With Lucas’s “No-no,” in her ear, she didn’t even know where it came from, didn’t think about it much, looked to her right…
Koop landed in front of the open balcony door, softly, both feet at once, absorbing the shock with his knees. The first thing he saw, there in the fishbowl, was the blonde with the pistol beside her face, one hand to her head, pressed against the wall, waiting for the hallway door to open.
Koop didn’t need to think about it. He knew. And he had no way out. The rage was there, ready, and it blew out.
Koop screamed and charged the woman on the wall…
Connell saw him coming when he was ten feet away, had less than a half second to react. The scream froze her, the words in her ear scrambled her, and then Koop hit her, an open-handed blow to the side of her head. The blow knocked her down, stunned her, and then he was on top of her and there was blood in her mouth and the pistol was gone.
Lucas heard the scream and turned and saw Koop hurtle past the archway to the living room wall, and he screamed “He’s here, he’s here” into the headset and he ran toward the living room, where Koop and Connell were in a pile. Her pistol skittered across the rug and disappeared half under a couch. Koop’s back was toward him, rolling over on Connell. Lucas couldn’t use the pistol, not with Connell there; instead he raised it over his head and swung it at the back of Koop’s head. Koop felt it coming: he cranked his body half around, one eye finding Lucas, the blow already on the way. Koop had time to bunch his shoulder and flinch, and the barrel hit him on the big muscle of his shoulder and Koop somehow found his feet and was coming at Lucas.
This was no boxing match. Koop launched himself straight up, came straight in, and Lucas hit him hard with a roundhouse left, but Koop blew through it as though he’d been hit with a marshmallow and his arms wrapped around Lucas’s ribs.
Lucas and Koop staggered backward, together, wrapped up like drunken dancers, banging around inside the small kitchen, the pressure from Koop’s arms like a machine-press around Lucas’s chest, crushing him. Lucas slapped him on the side of the head with the pistol, but couldn’t get a good swing. Feeling as though his spine might break, he finally pressed the pistol to Koop’s ear and pulled the trigger, the slug going up through the ceiling.
The noise of the explosion an inch from his ear blew Koop’s head back, stunned him like the blows hadn’t. Lucas caught a breath, but a bad one: pain lanced through his chest, as though a bone were being pulled loose. Broken ribs. He caught the breath and hammered Koop once in the face, and then Koop stepped back and caught Lucas in the ribs with a short roundhouse. Lucas felt the ribs go, felt himself bounced by the blow, helplessly pulled his elbows in. He took one blow there, slapped the pistol weakly at Koop’s face, cutting him, not breaking him, and Koop was crushing him again, Lucas wiggling, trying to hit, both of them crashing back and forth across the kitchen. Lucas could hear the beating on the outer door, people shouting, strained to look that way, Koop crushing him, crushing…
Connell landed on Koop’s back. She had short square nails but big hands and powerful fingers, and she dug them into Koop’s small eyes, not more than two inches from Lucas’s face. He saw her fingers dig in, way in, pulling at Koop’s eye sockets, and thought, deep at the back of his mind, Christ, she’s blinded him… And she sunk her teeth into Koop’s neck, her face contorted with hate, like a rabid animal’s.
Koop screamed and let go of Lucas, and Lucas hit him again in the face, cutting him more, still not putting him down. Connell’s fingers went deeper in his eyes and Koop bucked, tried to throw her. Her feet came off the floor and wrapped around his waist, her middle fingers digging into his skull, Koop screaming, twisting, dancing, reeling, Lucas hitting him, closing on him.
Then Koop, with a wild, blind, backhanded spin and swing, caught Lucas on the side of the head, coming in. Lucas lost everything for a moment, like a blown switch knocking out the lights in a house. Everything went dim for a moment, and he lost his feet, rolled back against a cupboard, scrambled up, headed back toward the twisting pair of them, Koop trying to wrench the woman free.
Still she rode him, and she was screeching now, like a madwoman…
The door popped open and Sloan was there with his pistol, aiming at them, starting across, Lucas a stumbling step in front of him as Koop staggered backward, onto the balcony.
Connell felt him bump the railing just below his hips. She looked down. She was actually over. She unwrapped her legs, stood on the metal rail, saw Lucas coming…
And Lucas screamed at her: MEAGAN…
Connell, wrapped into Koop, pumped her powerful legs once, backward, and they both flipped together over the railing and out into the night.
Lucas, two steps away, dove then, actually touched Koop’s foot, lost it, smashed into the railing, felt himself caught by Sloan. He leaned over the rail and saw them go.
Connell’s eyes were open. She loosened her grip on Koop’s head during the fall, and at the end, they were in a splayed-out star shape, like sky divers.
All the way to sidewalk.
And forever.
“Jesus Christ,” Sloan said. He looked from Lucas to the railing to Lucas again. Blood was pouring from Lucas’s nose, down his shirt, and he was standing with one shoulder a foot lower than the other, crippled, hung over the balcony.
“Jesus H. Christ, Lucas…”
CHAPTER
34
Lucas sat in his vinyl chair, staring at the television. A movie was playing, something about an average American family that was actually a bunch of giant bugs trying to blow up an atomic power plant and one of the kid-bugs smoked dope. He couldn’t follow it, didn’t care.
He couldn’t think about Connell. He’d thought about her all he could, had considered all the different moves he might have made. He made himself believe, for a while, that she was ready to die. That she wanted it. That this was better than cancer.
Then he stopped believing it. She was dead. He didn’t want her to be dead. He still had things to say to her. Too late.
Now he’d stopped thinking about her. She’d come back, in a few hours, and over the next days, and the next few weeks. And he’d never forget her eyes, looking back up at him…
Ghost eyes. He’d be seeing them for a while.
But not now.
A door opened in the back of the house. Weather wasn’t due for three hours. Lucas stood, painfully, stepped toward the door.
“Lucas?” Weather’s voice, worried, inquiring. Her high heels snapped on the kitchen’s tile floor.
Lucas stepped into the hallway. “Yeah?”
“Why are you standing up?” she asked. She was angry with him.
“I thought you were operating.”
“Put it off,” she said. She regarded him gravely from six feet away, a small woman, tough. “How do you feel?”
“I hurt when I breathe… Is the TV truck still out there?”
“No. They’ve gone.” She was carrying a big box.
“Good. What’s that?”
“One of those TV dinner trays,” she said. “I’ll set it up in the den so you don’t have to move.”
“Thanks…” He nodded and hobbled back to the vinyl chair, where he sat down very carefully.
Weather looked at the television. ”What in God’s name are you watching?
“I don’t know,” he said.
The doctors in the emergency room had held him overnight, watching his blood pressure. Blunt trauma was a possibility, they’d said. He had four cracked ribs. One of the doctors, who looked like he was about seventeen, said Lucas wouldn’t be able to sneeze wit
hout pain until the middle of the summer. He sounded pleased by his prognosis.
Weather tossed her purse onto another chair, waved her arms. “I don’t know what to do,” she said finally, looking down at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m afraid to touch you. With the ribs.” She had tears in her eyes. “I need to touch you, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Come over and sit on my lap,” he said. “Just sit very carefully.”
“Lucas, I can’t. I’d push on you,” she said. She stepped closer.
“It’ll be okay, as long as I don’t move quick. It’s quick that hurts. If you sort of snuggle onto my lap…”
“If you’re sure it won’t hurt,” she said.
The snuggling hurt only a little, and made everything feel better. He closed his eyes after a while and went to sleep, with her head on his chest.
At six o’clock, they watched the news together.
Roux triumphant.
And generous, and sorrowful, all at once. She paraded the detectives who worked on the case, all except Del, who hated his face to be seen. She mentioned Lucas a half-dozen times as the mastermind of the investigation. She painted a mournful portrait of Connell struggling for women’s rights, dedicating herself to the destruction of the monster.
The mayor spoke. The head of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension took a large slice of the credit. The president of the AFSCME said she could never be replaced. Connell’s mother flew in from Bemidji, and cried.
Wonderful television, much of it anchored by Jan Reed.
“I was so scared,” Weather said. “When they called…”
“Poor Connell,” Lucas said. Reed had great eyes.
“Fuck Connell,” Weather said. “And fuck you too. I was scared for myself. I didn’t know what I’d do if you’d been killed.”
“You want me to quit the cops?”
She looked at him, smiled, and said, “No.”
Another television report showed the front of Lucas’s house. Why, he didn’t know. Another was shot from the roof of the apartment across the street from Jensen’s, looking right into Jensen’s place. The word fishbowl was used.
“Makes my blood run cold,” Weather said. She shivered.
“Hard to believe,” Lucas said. “A hot-blooded Finn.”
“Well, it does. It’s absolutely chilling.”
Lucas looked at her, thought about her ass, that day in the bathroom. The aesthetic ass that led to all of this…
Lucas urged her off his lap, stood up, creaking, hurting. He stretched carefully, like an old arthritic tomcat, one piece at a time, and suddenly his smile flicked on and he looked happy.
The change was so sudden that Weather actually stepped away from him. “What?” she asked. Maybe the pain had flipped him out. “You better sit down.”
“You’re a beautiful woman, with a good mind and a better-than-average ass,” he said.
“What?” Really perplexed.
“I gotta run into town,” he said.
“Lucas, you can’t.” Angry now.
“I’m stoned on Advil,” he said. “I’ll be all right. Besides, the docs said I’m not that badly injured, I’m just gonna have a little pain.”
“Lucas, I’ve had a broken rib,” she said. “I know what it feels like. What could be important enough…?”
“It’s important,” he said. “And it won’t take long. When I get back, you can kiss the hurt for me.”
He walked very carefully down toward the garage, feeling each and every bruise. Weather tagged behind. “Maybe I should drive you.”
“No, I’m okay, really,” he said. In the kitchen, he picked up the phone, dialed, got homicide and asked for Greave. Greave picked up.
“Man, I thought you were incommunicado,” Greave said.
“You know that kid that does chores over at the Eisenhower Docks?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah?”
“Get him. Hold him there. I’ll meet you in the lobby. And bring one of the cellulars, I’m gonna want to make a phone call.”
Greave was waiting in the lobby when Lucas arrived. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt under a light wool sports jacket, with his pistol clipped over his left front pelvic point, like Lucas. The kid was sitting in a plastic chair, looking scared. “What’s going on, sir?” he asked.
“Let’s go up on the roof,” Lucas said, leading them toward the elevator. Inside, he pushed the button for the top floor.
“What’re we doing up there?” Greave asked. “You’ve got something?”
“Well, Koop’s gone, so we oughta solve this case,” Lucas said. “Since the kid here won’t talk, I thought we’d hold him off the roof by his ankles until he gave us something we could use.”
“Sir?” The kid squeezed back against the elevator wall.
“Just kidding,” Lucas said. He grinned, painfully, but the kid still pressed against the wall of the elevator. From the top floor, they walked up the short flight of stairs to the roof, wedged the door open, and Lucas asked, “Did you bring the phone?”
“Yeah.” Greave fumbled in his pocket and pulled it out. “Tell me, goddamnit.”
Lucas walked to the airconditioner housing. The housing was new, no sign of rust on its freshly painted metal. “When did they put this in?” he asked the kid.
“When they were remodeling the building. A year ago, maybe.”
High up on the edge of it was the manufacturer’s tag with a service phone number, just like the tag he’d seen on the air conditioner across from Sara Jensen’s building. Lucas opened the portable and dialed the number.
“Lucas Davenport, deputy chief, Minneapolis Police Department,” he told the woman who answered. “I need to talk to the service manager. Yeah, it has to do with repair work on one of your installations.”
Greave and the kid watched him as he waited, then: “Yes, Davenport, D-a-v-e-n-p-o-r-t. We’re conducting a homicide investigation. We need to know if you repaired an air conditioner at the Eisenhower Docks apartment complex last month. You installed it about a year ago. Huh? Uh, well, you could call the department and ask. Then you could call me back… Okay.” Lucas looked at Greave, his ear to the phone. To Greave he said, grinning, “He’s got to call up a listing on his computer, but he doesn’t remember it.”
“What?” Greave was as perplexed as Weather. He looked at the air conditioner, then at the kid. The kid shrugged.
Lucas said into the phone, “You didn’t? Isn’t it under warranty? Un-huh. And that would cover all repairs, right? Okay. Listen, a detective named Greave will be coming over to take a statement from you later today. We’ll try to make it before five o’clock.”
Lucas rang off, folded the phone, handed it back to Greave, and looked at the kid. “When I talked to you, you said you were helping Ray with the airconditioning.”
“Yeah. It was broke.”
“But nobody came from the airconditioner company?”
“Not that I saw.” The kid swallowed.
“What’d you do to it?” Lucas asked.
“Well, I don’t know. I just handed him screwdrivers and helped him take shit apart. Sir.”
“The ducts.”
“Those big tubes,” the kid said. Ducts wasn’t solid in his vocabulary.
“You didn’t mess with the motor or anything.”
“No, sir, not me. Not anybody. Just the tubes.”
“What?” asked Greave. “What? What?”
“They froze her,” Lucas said.
Greave half-smiled. “You’re fuckin’ joking.”
“Well. Not exactly froze. They killed her with hypothermia,” Lucas said. “She was an older woman, underweight because of her thyroid condition. She took sleeping pills every night with a beer, or maybe two. Cherry knew about the pills and the booze. She apparently joked about her medicine. So he watched her window until her lights went out, waited a half hour, and turned on the airconditioning. They pumped cold air meant for the entire building in
to that one apartment. I bet it was colder in her apartment than the inside of a refrigerator.”
“Jesus,” Greave said, scratching his chin. “Would that do it?”
Lucas nodded. “Everybody says it was hot inside, because the airconditioning was broken. The pictures of the body showed her curled up on a sheet, no blanket, because it was hot when she lay down. By age and body weight, she was the kind of person most susceptible to hypothermia,” Lucas said. “The only thing that would make somebody even more susceptible is booze.”
Greave said, “Huh.”
“The thing that cinches it,” Lucas said, “is that the cheapest goddamn real estate hustlers in town never called for warranty service. The air conditioner is covered. The service guy just told me that they’ll fix anything that goes wrong for five years. He said if a screw falls out of the housing, they’d come out and put it back in.”
“I don’t see…” Greave said, still not believing.
“Think about the body shots again, the photographs,” Lucas said. “She was on her side, curled, fetal position, as if she might have been cold, and unconsciously trying to protect herself. But the drugs knocked her down and out. She couldn’t get back up. And it worked: they killed her. Not only did it work, there was no sign of what they did. No toxicology. The doors were bolted, the windows were locked, the motion sensors were armed. They killed her with cold.”
Greave looked at the kid. The kid said, “Jeez. I helped Ray disconnect all them tubes and put them back together, but I didn’t know what he was doing.”
“They ran the air conditioner after he pulled the tubes, I bet,” Lucas said.
“Yeah. They said they was testing it,” the kid said.
“Kiss my ass,” said Greave, a sudden light in his eye. “They froze the old bat. A batsicle.”
“I think so,” Lucas said.
“Can I bust them?” Greave asked. “Let me bust ‘em, huh?”
“It’s your case,” Lucas said. “But if I were you, I’d think about playing them off against each other. Offer one of them a plea. They’re all assholes, every one of them. Now that you know how they did it, one of them’ll turn on the others.”
“Froze her,” Greave said, marveling.
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