Neon Prey

by John Sandford

  “Name one who isn’t an asshole. Just one,” Shrake said, referring to the agents at the FBI. The back room smelled of beer, deli sandwiches, and a hint of cigar, though none of them smoked.

  Lucas: “There’s this chick I met in Washington . . .”

  “I mean one that I know,” Shrake said, pointing the top of a beer bottle at Lucas. “Maybe there’s one, somewhere, but here . . .”

  “I gotta think about it,” Lucas said. He had a corned beef sandwich sitting on a paper plate on the table, picked it up, and took another bite. The genuine French mustard—moutarde—bit right back.

  Shrake: “See?”

  Shrake and his partner, Jenkins, both large men with battered faces, wore gray sport coats over short-sleeved open-necked golf shirts—pastel green and baby blue, respectively.

  “Lotta assholes in the BCA and St. Paul and Minneapolis cops . . .” Lucas said, around a mouthful of corned beef.

  “Yeah, but we’re not all assholes, like in the FBI,” Jenkins said. He threw a white chip into the pile in the middle of the table. “I’m in for a buck.”

  “I’m telling you . . .”

  Virgil Flowers, a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent visiting from southern Minnesota, said, “How about Terry McCullough? He never seemed that bad.”

  They talked about Special Agent Terry McCullough for a couple of minutes and, by a vote of three to two, found him to be an asshole.

  “Then I got nothing,” Flowers said. He was wearing a canvas shirt and jeans. He’d found out earlier that week that in six or seven months he would become the father of twins, God willing and the creek don’t rise. He threw a white chip and a red one into the pot and said, “See your buck and raise you a half.”

  Jenkins said, “Fuck you and your raise, you sandbagging piece of shit.”

  Lucas: “Just because all the feds got college degrees . . .”

  “We all got college degrees,” Shrake said.

  “A real college, not a four-day putting school,” Lucas said.

  Jenkins said, “Oh.”

  “Feds are like classical musicians,” said Sloan, a former Minneapolis homicide cop who owned the bar where they were playing cards, and who sometimes played guitar in a J. J. Cale tribute band. He was a narrow man who dressed mostly in shades of brown and wore hats with brims. “They can read music like crazy, but you want them to play a C major seventh chord, they got no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “I got no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” Lucas said.

  “Take my word for it, it’s exactly the same thing,” Sloan said. And, “Buck and a half to me? I’m gone.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS’S PHONE buzzed in his pant pocket and he slid his chair back and looked at the screen: Rae Givens.

  “I gotta take it,” he told the others.

  He stepped away from the table, put a finger in his off ear, and said, “Rae. What’s up, sweetheart?”

  “You been reading about the bodies coming out of the woods in Louisiana?”

  “Yeah, in the newspapers,” he said. “Four dead, right?”

  “Five, as of an hour ago, could be more. Probably more.”

  “Are you and Bob involved?”

  “Yeah. We spotted the graves, but we’re on the fringe of it for the moment,” she said. “We got FBI like a rat’s got fleas. We need you to use some of your political shine to get involved and take us along for the ride. Me and Bob.”

  “Any reason why I should?” Lucas asked.

  “He’s major, Lucas. A bad dude, the kind you like. I don’t think the FBI is gonna find him,” Rae said. “They’re way too zone defense and we need a man-to-man. We need somebody chasing him down, not circulating bulletins around the places he might be.”

  “Five dead makes it more interesting . . .”

  “How about this? He ate them,” Rae said. “We think he barbecued them on his home grill. We found a woman’s body—a girl, really—with the muscle taken out of her lower back. And we found some unburnt fat in the grill with human DNA.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a fuckin’ cannibal, man,” Rae said. “Don’t go telling anybody, it hasn’t leaked out yet.”

  “Huh. Any idea where he’s gone?”

  “No. But get your slow white ass down here before the musical chairs stop. We need a chair if we’re gonna do this,” Rae said.

  “Bob’s in?”

  “He’s standing right here next to me and he’s already been emailing back and forth with Washington. He wanted me to call because, you know, I’m better-looking, and he knows that’s important to you.”

  “Let me make some calls tomorrow morning,” Lucas said. “Who’s the agent in charge at the scene?”

  “A guy named Tremanty. I gotta tell you, he’s cute.”

  “Spell it.”

  “C-U-T-E.” She laughed, said, “I slay myself,” and then spelled out the name: “T-r-e-m-a-n-t-y.”

  Lucas told her he’d get back before noon the next day. When she’d rung off, Lucas went back to the table, and Flowers asked, “What was all that about?”

  “That killer guy down in Louisiana? You know, where they’re digging up the bodies? Turns out he ate some of the victims,” Lucas said, ignoring Rae’s warning about leaks.

  Shrake: “Say what?”

  “Barbecued them.”

  Jenkins: “Do they know what kind of rub he used?”

  “Not yet, apparently,” Lucas said.

  Flowers: “They want you to buy in?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  Flowers: “From what I read, he sounds like he’s on the dark side of deranged. Don’t get shot.”

  Sloan asked, “Are we gonna sit here and bullshit or are we gonna play cards?”

  Jenkins: “Asked the man who’s losing his shirt.”

  “We all lose our shirts when that fuckin’ Flowers is in the game,” Shrake said.

  Flowers: “I have been lucky, I guess. I can’t apologize.”

  The other four all said “Right . . .” at the same time, and Jenkins added, “Deal, dickweed.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS DAVENPORT was a tall man, broad-shouldered, with dark hair speckled with gray, blue eyes, and a smile that could turn mean. He was fifty-two and a dedicated clothes horse, which was why he was wearing a suit to play poker in the back of a bar.

  When the game broke up at midnight, he and Flowers chatted for a while in the parking lot about Flowers’s upcoming fatherhood. “I gotta tell you, I’m about as excited as I ever get, but my mother is totally out of control,” Flowers said. “I think my folks had given up on having grandchildren. Now I think my mom wants to move in with us.”

  “No, no, no, no . . .”

  “Nah, that ain’t gonna happen,” Flowers said.

  “There was some talk that you might leave the BCA and run for sheriff down there,” Lucas said, leaning his butt against the back corner panel of his Porsche 911.

  “That’s not something I have to decide right away—the current guy’s got almost four more years, but he’s sorta recruiting me to run when he retires,” Virgil said. “There’d be some advantages—I’d be home all the time . . .”

  “I got two words for you,” Lucas said. “‘Health insurance.’ Your state insurance is terrific, and with twins, you’ll need it. When my kids were small, they were down at the clinic once a week. Elementary school is a germ farm: the kids get everything known to mankind. Look before you leap . . .”

  They went on for a while, and Lucas finally patted Flowers on the back and said, “The best advice I got is, Virgie, is stop worrying and enjoy it. Kids are wonderful, even when they’re not.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  �
�

  WHEN HE GOT HOME, Lucas’s wife, Weather, was asleep. Lucas tried tiptoeing around the bedroom, but she woke up and asked, “Talk to Virgil?”

  “Yeah. He’s all over the place about the kids,” Lucas said. “We gotta get them up here this summer. More than once. Maybe you can calm him down. He asked me the difference between Huggies and Pampers and wanted me to recommend one, for Christ’s sakes.”

  “How about next week?”

  “Ah, Rae called. She might have a job I want to look at,” Lucas said.

  “Louisiana?” Weather asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Talk in the morning,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS HAD an office in Minneapolis, but didn’t work out of Minneapolis. He worked out of Washington, D.C., and reported to a bureaucrat named Russell Forte. The relationship was purely notional.

  Because of the political arrangement that had brought Lucas to the U.S. Marshals Service—he was a deputy U.S. Marshal—he was free to pick his own cases. There was a caveat: if a Washington politician called for help, he was bound at least to listen. The arrangement initially created some dissension within the Minneapolis office, but that had mostly gone away. The U.S. Marshal for the Minnesota District, Hal Oder, had been warned to keep his hands off Lucas, and he did, though he didn’t like it.

  If that were to change, Lucas would quit; and he’d proven valuable to a number of powerful politicians of both parties, so his protection was unlikely to go away. Not that he completely trusted any of them—even the best politicians were, in his mind, sneaky, unreliable motherfuckers. While he did occasional errands for them and sometimes took cases for the Minnesota District, his main occupation was chasing down hard-core killers.

  Not just any killers. Because of the way the federal law enforcement bureaucracy divided up tasks, he was mostly limited to killers who’d already had some contact with the federal court system. He didn’t have the backup resources of the FBI, but that was okay. Chasing down fugitives was more a matter of street work than technical processes, and that was what he was best at.

  He was happy, as much as he’d ever been inside a law enforcement unit. Being a vigilante would be even better, but, of course, that was both expensive and illegal.

  He and Weather talked at dawn, before her first surgery—she was a plastic surgeon, and for reasons that seemed crazy to Lucas, most surgeries were begun when normal people were still asleep. A bit later, when he woke up the second time, he called Russell Forte in Washington.

  “I’ve gotten some rumblings that the Davenport machine may be cranking up,” Forte said. “I looked into it, and while the FBI might not necessarily actively seek your help down there in New Orleans, they probably wouldn’t drive you away with nunchucks.”

  “Bob and Rae?”

  “Absolutely. Bob sent me a note yesterday saying that you might call and beg to get in on it, poor bastard,” Forte said. “Listen, this guy, this Deese, this cannibal—man, it would be nice if a marshal were to nail him. The PR would be, like, galactic.”

  “So I can pack my bag?”

  “Yes. The FBI guy in charge of the site is named Sandro Tremanty, and my friends among the FBI say that he is competent, which means he’s probably on his way up. Try to treat him as an equal.”

  “That’s not realistic, but I’ll try.”

  “Then we’re set. Sally’s cutting your travel orders now. Usual terms. Did you ever get your LEO traveling armed certification?”

  “Yeah, I’m all set.”

  “Keep me up on what happens. And try to keep better track of your expenses. Sally said that last batch of your forms looked like it was compiled by chickens.”

  * * *

  —

  THREE DAYS after Rae’s late-night call, Lucas kissed his wife and two at-home kids and flew out of MSP and into MSY—Minneapolis–St. Paul International to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International—his Walther PPQ tucked away in his carry-on pack. Bob met him in baggage claim wearing a black T-shirt, tan cargo shorts, and cross-training shoes. Bob was a wide man, with a neck that extended out past his ears.

  “Nice to see you, man. Bring your gun?” he asked, as they shook hands.

  “Right in my pack. I’d take it out and show you, but somebody would shoot me,” he said, looking around the crowded baggage claim area.

  They got Lucas’s bag and went out the door, which was like stepping into a bowl of Slap Ya Mama hot sauce: fiery and wet. Bob was driving a Tahoe and was parked in a police-only zone: “I showed them my badge and told them I was undercover, investigating aggravated interstate mopery, and they said okay,” Bob explained. “We gotta get out of here before they look up ‘mopery’ in the dictionary.”

  “Like a cop would have a dictionary,” Lucas said. “Where’s Rae?”

  “She’s still up at the site,” Bob said. “I’ll tell you, Lucas, I’ve seen some disgusting shit in this job, but this one takes the cake. These bodies are straight out of a horror show. And that fuckin’ Deese was eating these people. Most people, he eats what Tremanty says is the tenderloin, or would be the tenderloin on a deer, but this one guy, it looks like he ate his liver.”

  “Jesus.”

  “And then he buries them in this boggy ground. When they bring them up . . . ah, you’ll see. The FBI brought in cadaver hounds, and we’re going over his property inch by inch, but it’s six acres of jungle and it’s nasty out there. We think we’ve got another grave spotted and we’re not even halfway through yet.”

  “News media?”

  “Parked all over, all day. WVUE outta New Orleans is running a promo saying they’ve got big breaking news on it, and I suspect they’ve heard about the barbecue thing. They’re holding it close, they wanted to interview Tremanty at 6:05 this evening, but he told them to suck on it . . . So . . . you bring anything but suits?”

  “Oh, yeah. Talked to Rae. I got my backwoods gear. Even brought a pair of gum boots.”

  “You’ll need them. We’ve killed three canebrake rattlers and a cottonmouth. We had a Fish and Game guy there who didn’t like it, he wanted to catch and release over by the river, but most of the guys shoot first and talk to Fish and Game later. Somebody bought a box of CCI snake shot, and we’re all loading it at the top of the stack.”

  “I basically don’t do snakes,” Lucas said.

  “I noticed that about you when we were down in Texas,” Bob said.

  * * *

  —

  ON THE WAY NORTH, they talked about their previous work together in Washington, D.C., and Texas, and about the Minnesota senator who was shot to death, after their Washington investigation had ended, and exactly who might have done it.

  Bob gave Lucas an inch-thick stack of paper on Deese and the man believed to be his main employer, Roger (“Rog”) Smith. Smith was a graduate of the University of Alabama’s law school in Tuscaloosa who’d turned to loan-sharking as a natural outgrowth of his law practice, along with his principal ownership of a major bail bond business. Lucas tucked the paper away in his pack. “I can’t read in a car, I’d puke on your front seat. Just talk to me.”

  “Smith loans some chump twelve hundred dollars at twenty percent so the chump can call up Smith’s bail bond business and give the money back on a ten-thousand-dollar bond, which requires him to hire Smith’s firm to defend him.”

  “Got the whole thing sewn up,” Lucas said. “What happens if the client is convicted?”

  “Well, for one thing, the judge would probably have to give back his share of the twelve hundred dollars in bond money.”

  “You’re a hopeless cynic,” Lucas said.

  “I’m a hapless Louisianan,” Bob said.

  * * *

  —

  THEY ARRIVED at Deese’s place at two o’clock in the afternoon. A line of TV vans was parked out on th
e highway, but the track to Deese’s house had been closed, with a Louisiana state police car parked across it. The cop recognized Bob and waved them through.

  “I understand this Tremanty is cute,” Lucas said.

  “Rae is mooning over him.” He glanced sideways at Lucas. “She told him that he looks like your son. And you know? He does.”

  “I’m not old enough to be an FBI agent’s father,” Lucas said.

  “Sure you are, if you started early, maybe on one of those out-of-town college hockey trips.” They had to pull to the roadside fifty yards short of the house because of the accumulation of parked cars. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Sandro.”

  “Not Sandy?”

  “No. It’s Sandro. Or Tremanty. Rae calls him Ess-Tee,” Bob said.

  “He’s not a total asshole?”

  “I hesitate to say it, but he’s okay.”

  “That helps. Let me get my boots.”

  They got out of the truck, and Lucas popped the back door, unzipped his Tumi suitcase, folded his suit coat into it, got the gum boots out, traded his shoes for the seventeen-inchers, and tucked his pant legs neatly inside. They walked down to the house, past another cop checking IDs, and went in. Several tables with folding legs had been set up in the living room, stacked with computers and paper. The house was cool, an air conditioner rumbling on the second floor, but humid enough to make the air feel liquid.

  Tremanty was standing behind a computer operator. The FBI agent was as tall as Lucas, with the same dark hair and blue eyes, but slender. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Lucas and Bob, came around the table, and said, “How ya doing, Dad?”

  “I’m okay,” Lucas said, as they shook hands. “As your father, I’d like to tell you how to run this investigation.”

  “Fuck that,” Tremanty said.

  Lucas turned to Bob. “A fed said ‘fuck.’”

  “Not for the first time. It’s shocking, I know.”

  Rae came in from the back. “Lucas Davenport, suites hotels and business-class travel. You sweetie.”