Silent Prey

by John Sandford

  "Lucas Davenport," Lucas said, shaking hands.

  "I gotta car," Pike said, leading the way. "How's New York?"

  "Hotter'n here," Lucas said.

  "This is nothin'," Pike said. "You ought to be here in August."

  "That's what they say in New York...."

  They left the airport at speed. Lucas, disoriented, asked, "Where's the ocean?"

  "Straight ahead, but the city's not really on the ocean. It's kind of like... Manhattan, actually," Pike said. "There's a river coming in on both sides, and they meet, and that's the harbor, and then you gotta go on out past the Fort to get into the ocean."

  "Fort Sumter?"

  "That's it," Pike said.

  "I'd like to see it sometime. I've been going to battlefields. Tell me about Reed."

  Pike whipped past a gray Maxima, took an off-ramp, then turned left at the bottom. The street was cracked, the borders overgrown with weeds and scrub. "Reed is a stupid motherfucker," he said matter-of-factly. "I get mad talking about it. His old man has lived here all his life, runs a garage and gas station, does the best body work in town, and makes a ton of money. And Red did good in high school. Did good on his tests and got into Columbia University on a scholarship. The silly fuck goes up to New York and starts putting junk up his nose, the cocaine. Hanging out in Harlem, coming back here and talking shit. Then he didn't come back anymore. The word was, he was putting it up his nose full-time."

  "Huh. How long's he been back?"

  "Few weeks," Pike said. "I feel bad for his folks."

  "Is he staying?"

  "I don't know. When he first got back, there were a couple of rumbles from Narcotics that he was hanging out with the wrong people. But I haven't heard that lately. Maybe something changed."

  Lucas hadn't thought about what Charleston might look like, but as they drove through, he decided it was just right: Old South. Clapboard houses with peeling paint, and weird trees; bushes with plants that had leaves like leather, and spikes. A few palms. A lot of dirt. Hot.

  The Reed garage was a gray concrete-block building sitting side by side with a Mobil gas station and convenience store. All but one set of the gas pumps had a car parked next to them, and uniformed attendants moved around cleaning windshields and checking oil. "You come in here, they wipe your windshield, check your oil, put air in your tires. The only place you'll find it," Pike said. "That's why Don Reed makes the money he does."

  He killed the engine in the body shop's parking lot and Lucas followed him into the shop office. The office smelled of motor oil, but was neatly kept, with plastic customer chairs facing a round table stacked with magazines. Behind a counter, a large man was hunched over a yellow-screen computer, poking at a keyboard one finger at a time. He looked up when they came in and said, "Hey, Darius."

  "Hey, Don. Is Red around?"

  Reed straightened up, his smile slipping off his face. "He done somethin'?"

  Pike shook his head and Lucas said, "No. I'm from New York. Your son witnessed a shooting. He was a passerby. I just need to talk to him for a couple of minutes."

  "You sure?" Reed asked, a hostile tone scratching through. "I got a lawyer..."

  "Look: You don't know me, so... But I'm telling you, with a witness standing here, that all I want to do is talk. There's no warrant, no anything. He's not a suspect."

  Reed regarded Lucas coolly, then finally nodded. "All right, come on. He's out back."

  Red Reed was coming out of a paint room when they found him, a plastic mask and hat covering his head. When he saw his father and the two cops, he pulled off the protective gear and waited uncertainly by the paint room door. He was tall, too thin, with prominent white teeth.

  "Police to talk to you. One from New York," his father said. "I'm gonna listen." Red Reed looked apprehensive, but nodded.

  "Can we find a place to sit?" Lucas asked.

  The elder Reed nodded: "Nobody in the waiting room...."

  Lucas took Bobby Rich's report from his pocket, unfolded it, and led Red Reed through it, confirming it bit by bit.

  "White-haired guy," Lucas said. "Thin, fat?"

  "Yeah. Skinny, like."

  "Dark? Pale? What?"

  "Tan. He was, like, tan."

  "What was the scene like, when Fred Waites was shot?"

  "Well, man, I wasn't right there. I saw the car go by and I thought I saw a gun and I headed the other way. I heard the shooting, saw the car."

  "What kind of car?"

  "I don't know, man, I wasn't paying attention to that," Reed said. He was looking at his hands. Pike moved impatiently, and Reed's father looked out the door but didn't say anything. Reed's eyes wandered to his father, then back to Lucas.

  "What time was it?" Lucas asked.

  "I didn't have a watch...."

  "I mean, afternoon, evening, night?"

  Reed nervously licked his lips, then seemed to pick one: "Evening."

  "It was three o'clock in the afternoon, Red," Lucas said. "Bright daylight."

  "Man, I was fucked up..."

  "You don't know what kind of car it was, but you could see inside that the guy was white-haired, skinny and tanned? But you didn't see anything about the other guys? Red..." Lucas glanced at Don Reed. "Red, you're lying to us. This is an important case. We think the same guys shot a cop and, before that, a lawyer."

  "I don't know nothing about that," Reed said, now avoiding everyone's eyes.

  "Okay, I don't think you do. But you're lying to me..."

  "I'm not lying," Reed said.

  Don Reed turned to face his son and in a harsh, cutting voice said, "You remember what I told you? No bullshit, no lies, no dope, no stealing, and we'll try to keep you alive. And you're lying, boy. There never was a time, from when you were a little baby, that you didn't know what kind of car was what-and you see a man and know he's got white hair and a tan, and you don't know what car he was in? Horseshit. You're lying. You stop, now."

  Lucas said, "I want to know how much John O'Dell had to do with it."

  Reed had been staring miserably at his feet, but now his head popped up.

  "You know Mr. O'Dell?"

  "Aw, shit," Lucas said. He stood up, walked once around the tiny room, whacked the spherical Lions Club gum machine with the palm of his hand, then pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "You're fuckin' working for O'Dell."

  "Man..." said Reed.

  "O'Dell a dope pusher?" Don Reed asked, voice dark, angry.

  "No," Lucas said. "He's about the fifth most important cop in New York."

  The two Reeds exchanged glances, and Pike asked, "What's going on?"

  "A goddamned game, pin the tail on the donkey," Lucas said. "And I'm the jackass."

  He said to Reed, "So now I know. I need some detail. Where'd you meet him, how'd you get pulled in on this..."

  Reed blurted it out. He'd met O'Dell at a Columbia seminar. O'Dell spoke three times, and each time, Reed talked to him after class. Harlem was different than an Irish cop could know, Reed said. The fat cop and skinny southerner argued about life on the streets; went with a few other students and the professor to a coffee shop, talked late. He saw O'Dell again, in the spring, but he was into the dope by then. Busted in a sweep of a crack house, called O'Dell. The arrest disappeared, but he was warned: never again. But there was another time. He was arrested twice more for possession, went to court. Then a third time, and this time he had a little too much crack on him. The cops were talking about charging him as a dealer, and he called O'Dell. He got simple possession, and was out again.

  Then O'Dell called. Did he know anybody, a crook, with a connection to a cop? To a detective? Well, yes...

  "Sonofabitch. It was too neat, it had to be," Lucas said.

  "What the fuck is going on?" Pike asked again.

  "I don't know, man," Lucas said. To Reed, he said, "Don't call O'Dell. You're out of this and you want to stay out. Whatever's going on here, and it's pretty rough, doesn't have anything to do wit
h you. You'd best lay low."

  "He's out," Don Reed said, looking at his son.

  Reed's head bobbed. "I don't want nothing more to do with New York."

  On the way back to the airport, Pike said, "I don't think I'd like New York."

  "It's got some low points," Lucas said. He took a card from his pocket diary, scribbled his home phone number on the back of it. "Listen, thanks for the help. If you ever need anything from New York or Minneapolis, call me."

  The flight to Atlanta was bad, but on the way to New York, the fear seemed to slip away. Lucas had reached a tolerance level: his fifth flight in three days. He'd never flown that much in his life. More or less relaxed, he found a notepad in his overnight case and doodled on it, working it out.

  Bobby Rich hadn't been assigned to work the case because he had the best qualifications-he'd been assigned simply because he knew a guy who knew Red Reed. So that Red Reed could call his friend and insist that the friend pass information to the cops about the shooting of Fred Waites.

  Except that Reed hadn't been there at all. The man with white hair and the deep tan was an O'Dell invention. Lucas grinned despite himself. In a crooked way, it was very nice: lots of layers.

  He closed his eyes, avoiding the next question: Did Lily know?

  At La Guardia he saw a copy of the Times with Bekker as a blond woman. He bought a copy, queued for a cab, got a buck-toothed driver who wanted to talk.

  "Bekker, huh?" buck-tooth said, his eyes on the rearview mirror. He could see the picture on the front of the paper as Lucas read the copy inside. "There's a goofball for ya. Dressed up like a woman."

  "Yeah."

  "This last one, man, took her right out of a parking garage. Girlfriend says Bekker was right there with them, could've took them both."

  Lucas folded the paper down and looked at the back of the driver's head. "There's another one? Today?"

  "Yeah, this morning. They found her in a parking lot with the wire gag and the cut-off eyelids and the whole works. I say, when they get him, they ought to hang him off a street sign by his nuts. Be an example."

  Lucas nodded and said, "Listen, forget about the hotel. Take me to Midtown South."

  CHAPTER

  23

  Carter, Huerta and James were huddled together over a tabloid newspaper in the coordinating office, all three of them with Styrofoam coffee cups in their hands. Lucas looked in and James said, "Kennett's down in the corner office, he wants to see you."

  "Have you seen Barbara Fell?" Lucas asked.

  "Gone home." There was a rapid-fire exchange of glances among the three cops, a vein of thin amusement. They knew he was sleeping with Fell.

  "Anything happening?"

  "About a thousand sightings on Bekker, including three good ones," Carter said. "He's driving a Volkswagen Bug...."

  "Jesus, that's terrific," Lucas said. "Who saw him? How'd you get the car?"

  "Two witnesses last night at the parking ramp. The Carson woman's girlfriend and the cashier. The girlfriend is a sure thing-she even told us he was wearing too much Poison. That's a perfume..."

  "Yeah."

  "... And the cashier remembers the blond part, and says she-he-was driving an old Volkswagen. He remembers because it looked like it was in pretty good shape and he wondered if Bekker was an artist or something. He thinks it was dark green or dark blue. We're running it through the License Bureau right now, but the Volkswagen part isn't public yet. If he goes outside now, he's gonna have to go in a car. And we're stopping every Bug in Midtown."

  "You said three people...."

  "The third's a maybe, but pretty definite. The night clerk in a bookstore down in the Village says he remembers the face very clearly, says it was Bekker. He says he was buying some weird book about torture."

  "Huh."

  "We're getting close," Carter said. "We'll have him in two or three days, at the outside."

  "I hope," Lucas said. "Any returns on that stun-gun business?"

  "Three. Nothing."

  "Phones?"

  "Nope. Goddamn rat's nest."

  "Okay..."

  Lucas started to turn away, and Carter said, "You've seen the papers?"

  "With Bekker? Yeah..."

  "No, that was this morning; the afternoon paper..." Huerta picked up the paper they'd been looking at, closed it, and handed it to Lucas. On the cover was a woman's face, eyes staring; before the headlines reached the brain, the terror of the face came through, then the words: "Kill #8-Bekker Death Pix. "

  "This legit?" Lucas asked.

  "That's Carson," Carter said grimly. "He sent notes and photos to three newspapers and two TV stations. They're using them."

  "Jesus..."

  From down the hall, he heard a woman's voice.

  Lily.

  He walked down to the corner, found the room in semidarkness, the door open. He knocked, standing back, and Kennett said, "Yeah?"

  Lucas stuck his head in. "Davenport," he said.

  "Come on in. We were just talking about you," Kennett said. He was sitting in a visitor's chair in front of a standard-issue metal desk, his feet up. His shirt collar was open, and his bright Polynesian Gauguin tie was draped across a stack of phone books at the front edge of the desk. Lily sat in another chair at the side of the desk, facing him.

  "Fuckin' photographs," Lucas said.

  "The shit is hitting the fan," Kennett said grimly. "First the New School thing and now the pictures. The mayor had the commissioner on the carpet. You could hear the screaming in Jersey."

  Lucas dragged a third chair around, bumped Kennett. "Move your ass over so I can get my feet up."

  "And me with a fuckin' bad heart," Kennett mumbled as he moved.

  "You told Fell about the transvestite thing," Lily said. She pushed the phone books out of the way, picked up the necktie.

  Lucas shrugged, sat down, put his feet up. "We talked it over and decided it was likely."

  "That came at a good time. We told everybody that Carson'll probably be the last, that we've pretty much got him pinned down," she said.

  "Should have thought of it sooner, the cross-dressing," Kennett said glumly. "The one before was a lesbian, we knew that. We should have seen that she wouldn't let a strange guy get too close, not outside a lesbian bar."

  "Hell, you did everything right..." Lily began.

  Kennett interrupted: "Everything but catch him..."

  "He's pinned."

  "We fuckin' hope," Kennett said.

  Lily had been rolling the tie in her fingers, and now she looked down at the bare-breasted Polynesian woman, shook her head and said, "This is the craziest tie."

  "Don't knocker it," said Kennett, then slapped his leg and laughed at the pun, while Lily rolled her eyes.

  "You were jerking me around, Gauguin and Christian Dior," Lucas said to Kennett. He looked at Lily. "He told me this Gauguin dude was Christian Dior's necktie partner."

  Lily laughed again, and Kennett said, "How do you know he wasn't?"

  "Looked him up," Lucas said. "He died in 1903. He was associated with the symbolists."

  "Now if you knew what a symbolist was, you'd be in fat city," Lily said.

  "It was the use of color specifically for its symbolic impact, the emotional and intellectual impact," Lucas said. "Which makes sense. Some holding cells are painted bubble-gum pink for the same reason. The color cools people out."

  Kennett, staring, said, "I never fuckin' thought of that."

  "Carter tells me you'll have Bekker in three days at the outside," Lucas said.

  "That fuckhead. That's the kind of talk that gets us in trouble," Kennett grumbled. "We'll get him soon, but I wouldn't bet on the three days. If he's got food and water, he could hole up."

  "Still..."

  "I figure no more than a week," Kennett said. "He'll break. I just hope I'm still working for the goddamn police department when it happens. I mean, people are pissed. These fuckin' pictures, man: the mess at the New School was n
othing, compared to this."

  "People think cops..." Lucas started.

  But Lily was shaking her head. "It's not the people, it's the politicians. People understand you can't always catch a guy immediately; most of them do, anyway. But the politicians think they've got to do something, so what they do is run around and scream and threaten to fire people."