Neon Prey

by John Sandford

  They put him on hold for two minutes, then a producer came up and asked, “You’re calling about the Clayton Deese story?”

  Lucas gave his voice a querulous tone. “Yes. I’ve been working up there, and I don’t agree with the way the FBI is handling the information. Your story about the cannibal aspects is correct, but what they’re not telling you is that some of the victims are children. He was kidnapping and eating children. Check with the FBI and they’ll be forced to tell you the truth about this.”

  “Could we get your name . . . ?”

  Lucas clicked off, yawned, went online, emailed Weather about his day, read her email about her day, turned on the TV and watched a ballgame. He was asleep by midnight and up by 7:30.

  He turned on the television before he went into the bathroom, hoping to get the news, and was shaving when an alert came up, and a woman said, “After our exclusive report last night, that cannibalism was involved in the Clayton Deese serial killer investigation, a tipster called a producer at this station and alleged that some of the victims now being uncovered were children. The FBI refuses to comment . . .”

  Lucas took the razor away from his chin, smiled at himself, and muttered through the shaving cream, “You’re so great, Davenport. You’re a fuckin’ PR genius, you know that?”

  Lucas wrote a note to Roger Smith before he went downstairs. Bob and Rae were waiting in the restaurant. They all had pancakes and sausage, and Rae said, “Smith is going to tell you to stick your note where the sun don’t shine.”

  “Maybe,” Lucas said. “Or maybe not.”

  Bob said he was intimately familiar with New Orleans, so he drove, promptly got lost, and resorted to the navigation system. They went past Audubon Park, and Lucas said, “I’ve heard of that place . . . never seen it.”

  “You should go someday,” Bob said. “Great place to bird-watch.”

  “You bird-watch?”

  “Not unless it’s buffalo wings on a platter,” Rae said.

  “But I see people bird-watching,” Bob said. “It’s a nice place. This whole area is nice.”

  “As long as you got a Porsche,” Rae said.

  Smith lived in a pale green two-story house behind a wrought-iron fence on St. Charles Avenue, a few blocks from the park, with a lush yard spotted with flower gardens and manicured trees. The street was actually a boulevard, with a grassy strip between lanes and trolley tracks down the middle of the strip. There were narrow on-street parking lanes, and Bob pulled into one, behind a Porsche Panamera, a half block down from Smith’s house. “You sure you don’t want us to come with you?”

  “Nah, I’m fine. I want to be as unintimidating as I can be, at least until I get inside,” Lucas said.

  Entry to Smith’s yard was either through the driveway gate, which had an elaborate lock, or through an old-looking wrought-iron gate that led up a stone sidewalk to the front door. The gate was closed with a simple latch, but when Lucas pushed it open he noticed a copper stud on the side latch: an electronic switch. He’d triggered an alarm inside the house.

  The front door was set up three limestone steps and into a deep recess; there were both a lighted doorbell and a bronze knocker on the door, and he leaned on the doorbell for an extra beat and then banged the knocker a few times. A moment later, a slender, dark-complected man with close-cropped curly black hair opened the door, looked at Lucas, and asked, “Jehovah’s Witness?”

  He made Lucas smile, and Lucas said, “No, I’m a U.S. Marshal. I want to visit with Mr. Smith for a moment. No warrant, no recording, just a friendly conversation. I have a note for him.”

  “He may not be up, but after you nearly knocked down the door he may be. Can I have the note?”

  Lucas passed it to him and asked, “If you can’t knock down a door with a knocker, what can you knock it down with?”

  The dark eyes flicked up at him and then back down to the note, which he read aloud: “‘Your employee ate children? Really?’”

  “I thought I should ask,” Lucas said.

  “Wait here,” the man said.

  * * *

  —

  HE WAS BACK in five minutes. “Roger will be down in a minute. He was awake, but he wanted to brush his teeth and splash some water on his face.”

  Lucas stepped inside, and the man said, “Stand there for a moment.” Lucas noticed that he had an electronic device in his hand that looked something like a television remote control. He passed it over Lucas’s suit and up and down his legs, and Lucas said, “No wire. Or gun.”

  “I see that,” the man said. He pushed a button on the device, which made a high-pitched beeping sound, and added, “And your phone isn’t recording. Come this way.”

  As Lucas followed him through the professionally decorated living room, down a hallway with a thirty-foot Persian runner underfoot, into a sprawling kitchen, he asked, “What’s your name?”

  The man thought about it for a while, then said, “Dick.”

  He put Lucas at a long breakfast table that appeared to be hewn from a single log and went to the coffee machine. “Cappuccino?”

  “A cappuccino would be great,” Lucas said. The table had a centerpiece: three ceramic chickens, molded as one piece and unglazed. They weren’t simply chickens, Lucas realized, but Art with a capital A.

  Dick brought Lucas a cappuccino in a china cup with a matching saucer and went back to the coffee machine. A moment later, Smith came through the kitchen door. He was middle height with blond hair, cut like a banker’s, over pale blue eyes and a short nose. He was stocky, not fat, with a clear pink complexion. He was wearing blue-and-white vertically striped pajamas and blue slippers. He looked, Lucas thought, as though he spent a lot of time swimming.

  “Could I see some ID?” he asked, as he took a chair across from Lucas.

  Lucas passed his ID case, with its badge, across the table, and Smith studied it, then passed it back and said, “No recording, no warrant, a friendly conversation.”

  “I can explain about that,” Lucas said. “I’ve spent most of my life as a homicide cop in Minneapolis and with the Minnesota state police. I got the marshal’s appointment through political pull. I chase guys down and put them in prison. Or kill them, if they need killing. I’m looking for Clayton Deese. I understand he worked for you from time to time and I thought you might know where he is.”

  “I do not,” Smith said. He turned to Dick. “Do you know where Deese is?”

  “I have no idea,” Dick said. He gave Smith a cappuccino in another china cup and saucer. “Haven’t seen him for what? A year or two? That was down at a club somewhere.”

  Smith turned back to Lucas. “So, are we done here?”

  “In a minute,” Lucas said. He and Smith both took a sip of their cappuccinos. “Here’s where the street cop thing comes in. I don’t really operate like a fed. I spend most of my time talking to dirtbags. Like you two.”

  Neither man flinched, or commented.

  Lucas continued: “My spider sense is telling me that you might have some idea of where he might have gone, and that’s all I’m looking for. I need something specific to work with. I won’t tell anyone where the information came from. If I can confirm it from federal files, I’ll tell anyone who asks that the files were my source, not you guys.”

  The two glanced at each other, then Smith asked, “Or what? There’s something else in here, isn’t there? The iron fist in the velvet glove.”

  “The children Deese ate,” Lucas said.

  “I seriously doubt . . .”

  “Yeah, but the media doesn’t.”

  “The media are a crowd of morons,” Dick said.

  “Who can be seriously annoying. If all the television stations were to find out that you were Deese’s boss and that he ate children, I doubt you could find a parking spot out on your street. It would be filled with TV vans with
those twenty-foot Christmas tree antennas sticking out of their roofs. Your neighbors would love that. ‘The cannibal’s employer, right here on St. Charles.’ And every time a car came down the driveway . . .”

  “I get the picture,” Smith said. “You can guarantee that wouldn’t happen anyway?”

  “I can’t guarantee anything,” Lucas said. “I can tell you two things for sure. Nobody would hear anything from me. And you know what the FBI is like, with evidence: they won’t be talking. You also have to consider the fact that not only did Deese butcher and eat his victims, but, on at least one occasion, he ate a guy’s liver. With onions, I’m guessing.”

  Again, neither man flinched, but they did exchange another glance.

  Lucas added, “By the way, Rog, one of the victims was your ex-girlfriend, Miz Wheelwright. She was one of the first bodies they pulled out of the muck. And, yeah, she was eaten.”

  For the first time, Smith seemed perturbed, his face going a shade paler. “Don’t tell me that.”

  “I’m telling you that,” Lucas said. “More grist for the media mills, since your relationship was well known around town. I can’t promise that won’t get out, either, but it won’t come from me.”

  “He really ate kids?”

  “That’s what WVUE is saying, on its morning newscasts.”

  Dick closed his eyes, tipped his head back, and said, “Oh, shit.”

  Smith said, “Give me a minute.”

  He turned away from Lucas and stared at a pastel blue wall for at least a minute: thinking.

  Then he turned back and said, “Sit right here. I’ve got to run upstairs.”

  He left the kitchen, and Lucas asked Dick, “Where’s he going?”

  Dick shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t take his morning pee.”

  Smith was back in two minutes, “I don’t know where Deese went. You think he worked for me, but that’s incorrect, in a sense. Deese was a freelancer and he worked for anyone who could pay him, as long as he didn’t cross . . . certain lines.”

  “As long as he didn’t work for your rivals,” Lucas suggested.

  “You said that, not I. As I said, I don’t know where he is, but I could speculate. He has a half brother out in Los Angeles. They are close. Very close. His brother is some kind of hard-core stickup man,” Smith said. “That’s what I’ve heard, but I’ve never met him or spoken to him. He would have some resources that Deese needs, if he’s running. I know that Deese would meet him in both in LA and in Vegas, when he went to visit. That would happen every few months. The brothers like to gamble, and I think they may have an uncle out there, too. Out in the desert, near Vegas. Deese was joking about him one time. Called him a desert rat, said he mined for turquoise.”

  “His brother’s name is Deese? Deese what? What’s his first name?”

  “No, it’s Martin Keller or Martin Lawrence. Those are the two names I’ve heard. If either of those are his real name, you should be able to find substantial files on him. I know he’s been in prison. A couple of years ago, Deese told me that if I ever had to get in touch with him in a hurry, in an emergency, when he was traveling, I could call a number. It’s a . . . switchboard, so to speak.”

  He handed Lucas a piece of notepad paper with a phone number scrawled on it in blue ink.

  “That’s an LA area code. I’ve never called it because I’ve never had to, and, to tell the truth, if I ever did call it I’d do it from a pay phone, or something. He said to call only after nine o’clock at night, LA time, and ask for Martin Lawrence. That’s all the help I can give you, because that’s all I know. From one dirtbag to another, I can tell you I’d like to find that sonofabitch Deese myself. I won’t explain that, other than to say, he never should have run.”

  “Why didn’t he have a cell phone you could call him on?” Lucas asked.

  “Think about that,” Smith said.

  “Okay. The FBI is probably wired into your testicles. And if Deese hadn’t run, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

  “No comment, though I’d appreciate it if you’d kill him,” Smith said. And: “I’d offer you another cup of coffee, but I have a business meeting downtown in an hour and I need to get dressed.”

  “One more question: do you think, or have any reason at all to believe, that Deese had a lot of money stashed?”

  Smith said, “I don’t know. I’m sure he had some, but I don’t believe he had much. The guy put more cocaine up his nose than the average country singer. That kind of habit really eats up your cash.”

  Lucas stood up, nodded, and said, “I hope I don’t have to talk to you again.”

  “I share that hope,” Smith said. He turned to Dick and said, “Show the marshal the way to the door.”

  On the way out, Dick said, “I believe Roger misspoke. Clayton once told me his brother hung out in Marina del Rey, not in the city of Los Angeles itself. Deese said the Marina is a pussy-rich environment, which is why he’d go out there, in addition to seeing his brother.”

  Lucas said, “I’ll check that.”

  Dick said, “Don’t fall down the steps,” which made Lucas smile again.

  Dick was sort of a card.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN DAVENPORT was gone, Santos made sure the door was shut, then watched him walk out to the street. A moment later, he was out of sight, and Santos climbed the stairs to Smith’s bedroom, where Smith was buckling up a pair of dress pants.

  “He’s gone,” Santos said.

  “Luke Davenport. Do some of your computer shit, look him up, see if we need to worry. I have a feeling that he’s not your average flatfoot. See if he might have money problems or any other levers we could use.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I’m talking to Dixon in”—Smith glanced at his Patek Philippe—“fifteen minutes. Larry’s coming with me; we’re meeting outside the bank. Dixon’s going to want to do something about Phil, and we might have to. Shouldn’t take long to figure it out. I’ll see you back at the office in an hour or so.”

  Santos nodded. “What about Deese?”

  “Call him. Carefully. One of two things has to happen: Deese has to have enough money and ID that he can get out of the country and stay there; or, he’s got to be killed. I’ll take either. Getting the marshals to kill him would be a huge bonus. But, just in case, call him and see how much cash he needs.”

  “Remember how he said that if the cops caught up with him, he’d shoot his way out or die?”

  “A lot of guys say that, but when it comes time to take a bullet they pussy out,” Smith said. “Make the call.”

  “I can do that. I’ll go to the office first, then call from a pay phone over in Slidell later in the afternoon. Different area code. And I think the marshal’s name was Lucas, not Luke.”

  “Whatever.”

  * * *

  —

  SANTOS DROVE to Smith’s law offices, where he had a corner cubicle at the back, overlooking a neighbor’s garden. He liked to open the windows in the spring, when he could smell the lilacs and see the new flowers pushing up and opening. A neighbor two houses down the street had a chicken coop, and he could sometimes hear the chickens complaining to one another. He’d never heard a rooster crow, and one of the women in the office said that roosters were illegal in New Orleans, but not hens.

  Way of the world.

  Santos sat behind his desk, turned on his laptop computer, with software that would ricochet across a couple of different continents before opening targeted websites. The NSA might possibly be able to track him, he thought, but Smith was too small-time to draw that kind of attention.

  When he put Davenport’s name into the machine, he got several hundred hits. He took notes on a legal pad because, unlike with a computer, the paper could be fed to a shredder.

  There was always a lot of hustle around the offi
ce—people coming and going, office doors opening and closing, talk in the hallways, phones ringing. He ignored it all until Smith stuck his head in the doorway and asked, “Well?”

  Santos leaned back.

  “Davenport’s smart and violent. Years ago, when he was a Minneapolis cop, he made some money designing role-playing games. Like Dungeons and Dragons, that kind of thing. Not a lot of money, but some, and he became known for it. Later, he apparently got run out of the police department because of charges of brutality that were covered up. So he started a computer company that focused on software for cops and based on the kind of games he used to invent. He wrote out the concepts and hired some college kids to do the coding, and he made a fortune. He’s got more money than you do, Rog. We won’t get at him that way. Then he joined the state cops, quit there after a few years, and became a marshal. He’s politically connected all the way up to Washington, and with both parties.”

  “All reasons not to mess with him, then,” Smith said.

  “Here’s another reason. It’s hard to tell exactly what happened—gotta give me a little rope here—but he was apparently investigating freelance military guys in Washington who were hired to kill a U.S. senator. They tried to get Davenport off their backs by going after his wife. They faked an auto accident, almost killed her.”

  “If it’d been us, we wouldn’t have missed . . .”

  “But here’s the point,” Santos said. “The military guys? They’re dead. Well, one’s missing and one’s in prison, but the others are all dead.”

  “Huh. All right. If we have to get any further involved in this, we stay away from him.”

  “A good idea, I think,” Santos said. “I’m worried about him getting to Deese. Deese knows—”

  “Way too much.”

  Later that afternoon, Santos drove over to Slidell and called Deese to tell him about the marshal. Deese asked, “What’s it to you? Don’t tell me that Rog is worried about my personal safety.”