Neon Prey

by John Sandford

  “We took seven hundred and forty thousand dollars in cash and gold out of the BMW, by the way,” Rae said. “Almost another half million out of the two houses, put together.”

  “The other thing was, the whole place was alarmed,” Bob said. “They had yard alarms, both front and back. The guys coming in from the back woke them up. By the time the guys from the front went in with the flashbangs, they were already up and armed.”

  “Would have taken a lot of research to see the alarms,” Lucas said.

  “Even with lots of research, we might not have seen them,” Rae said. “The things were the size of your finger, attached to trees, hooked up wirelessly. We might not have seen that hedge, either. I mean, you really can’t see it, even in the daylight, from the next yard. It looks like one thick hedge. You can’t see that it’s two, with a path between.”

  There had been hundreds of shots fired during the fight: three empty thirty-round magazines had been found scattered around the windows from where Nast had been firing the full auto, and another magazine in the gun itself, which was mostly empty when he went down. Vincent had gone through one seventeen-round magazine and had been working through another when killed.

  Lucas never found out how many rounds the cops had fired, but it was probably several times the number fired by Nast and Vincent.

  Deese, Beauchamps, and Cole had driven away during the fight, and they weren’t alone. Several neighbors on both streets had also fled, and a man across the street had seen the occupants of the back house driving away in a SUV and a white pickup. They’d never been seen again. One of the neighbors thought there was a woman with them, a blonde. The LA cops had found a fourth set of prints in the back house, small, like a woman’s, but they’d gotten no hits from the feds.

  * * *

  —

  “THERE WERE SWAT guys who were supposed to stay up on the street, by that back house, in case there were runners, but when the shooting started and people started screaming about cops going down they ran around the house and left nobody back in the street,” Rae said. “There was nobody in the street for twenty minutes. We think Beauchamps and the others just got in their vehicles and drove away. The garage door was open, but the overhead door lights had been broken out.”

  “Seems like bad discipline by the SWATs,” Bob said. “But when you got cops down, everything tends to go up in smoke. I don’t blame those guys for leaving the street. They were risking their necks trying to help.”

  * * *

  —

  ONLY ONE SWAT team member had been injured, which was nothing short of a miracle given all the gunfire. He’d taken a single round in what the press releases called his hip, but Rae said was his butt. “I’m not saying he’s a half-assed cop, but he’s a half-assed cop.”

  The wound was actually more serious than Lucas’s. The cop was hospitalized for almost six weeks, and he still hadn’t returned to duty in August.

  The LA cops and the LA County Sheriff’s Department had launched an all-out search for Beauchamps, Cole, and Deese and had found exactly none of them. “LA has their mug shots all over California and up in Vegas and Portland and Seattle, and down in New Orleans, but we never got a hint,” Rae said. “We believe that all four of them were ready to run at the drop of a hat. Both Nast and Vincent each had two fake IDs, including real California driver’s licenses with paid-up auto insurance. Wherever those three guys went, nobody’s found them. And nobody knows where to look, either.”

  “It’s possible that they’re still around,” Lucas said. “How many people in Southern California? More than twenty million. These guys have already got California driver’s licenses, and car tags, and they’re familiar with the territory.”

  “Rocha doesn’t think so,” Bob said. “She says it’s too hot down here—too many chances they’ll run into an acquaintance who’ll know who they are and who needs a favor from the cops. You could get one big favor for turning in a gang that shot a couple cops in a gunfight even if they didn’t do the shooting. To say nothing of a cannibal.”

  “Could be right,” Lucas said. “But could be wrong,”

  During the gunfight, Nast had managed to hit a house across the street with a dozen bullets. It was made of concrete blocks and none of the bullets had penetrated all the way through. Nobody got hurt, but the owner had sued LA County for reckless endangerment, and Lucas, Bob, and Rae would probably be called to testify if it ever went to trial.

  * * *

  —

  NOW LUCAS, on this hot August night, stood in his driveway, dripping sweat, fighting the nausea. He knew he’d heal sooner or later, but what bothered him most was the persistent weakness.

  He’d started playing hockey in elementary school, and back then, in the bad old days, there’d been a lot of emphasis on gutting it out and hanging tough. He’d never felt weak, even as a kid. He knew, in theory, that if he managed to survive to old age, at some point he’d probably start feeling weak.

  But when you got old, you’d adapt, and you’d have time to adapt. He hadn’t had any time. At the hospital, when he could walk again, the nurses had to help him get out of bed, to use the bathroom. They’d led him down the hall to the imaging department, pushing a pole with a saline bag on it, shuffling along in a robe like an old man. They’d flown home on a private jet, and he’d had to walk down a set of stairs to the tarmac and had held on to the handrail for dear life, afraid his legs wouldn’t hold him upright.

  Unlike any of his other injuries—he’d been shot twice before—this one had gotten to his head.

  As he stood there, catching his breath, Weather walked out and put a hand on his back and asked, “Have you thrown up?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Goddamnit, Lucas, you’re pushing too hard,” she said.

  “Gotta push. Better to break than to rust.”

  “Those aren’t the only two choices . . . Anyway, Rae’s on the phone.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS FOLLOWED her inside, picked up his cell phone, and said, “Hey, babe. Have you nailed Tremanty yet?”

  “Can’t talk about that,” Rae said. “Listen, you said to call you tonight. I’m calling. How’re things?”

  “I’m going back to LA,” Lucas said.

  “Are we coming with you?”

  “If you want,” Lucas said. “I’d like the company.”

  “Hell, yes.” He heard her turn away from the phone and call, “We’re going back.”

  “Bob’s there?”

  “Yes. We came down to watch them close the scene at Deese’s cabin. They’re running an eight-foot hurricane fence around the entire site. They spent the whole day putting up posts, pouring concrete around them. They’re turning it into a fort. Eleven graves, twelve bodies.”

  “Speaking of forts, I’ll call Russ Forte tomorrow,” Lucas said. “I don’t know exactly when . . . What’s your schedule look like?”

  They talked schedules, and since they were going back to California anyway, Lucas wanted to take a day to swing by Stanford to see Letty. She was going into her final year and trying to figure out what to do next: grad school or a job.

  “I’d say a week or ten days,” Lucas said. “I talked to Rocha a couple of days ago, and the LA cops are dead in the water. They’d love to get their hands on Beauchamps and Cole, but they believe they’re gone. They’re probably right.”

  “Where are we going to start?”

  “That Englishman at the Flower Child’s bar. You didn’t mention him to Rocha, did you?”

  “I might have forgot,” Rae said.

  “Good. We’ll start there.”

  * * *

  —

  WEATHER HAD KNOWN that Lucas was getting ready to go back to Los Angeles. She didn’t resist but was worried about his head as much as his body.

  “When you got shot in t
he throat, it didn’t affect you like this has,” she said. Years before, Lucas had been shot by a young girl with a piece of crap .22 and might have died if Weather hadn’t been there to open an airway with a jackknife.

  “That’s just the shit that happens if you’re a cop. I didn’t do anything wrong. There was no reason to think she had a gun, she was a kid,” Lucas said. They were sitting in the kitchen, munching cantaloupe chunks from a plastic cup. “This was different. I did something really, really stupid. I should never have even been behind the tree and stepping out there when I knew there was an experienced, hard-core shooter in there with a machine gun . . . That was really stupid. I thought the fight was over and I just stepped out to look at the house. I keep coming back to that. Would I have ever done that when I was younger? Have I lost the edge?”

  “You haven’t lost any kind of edge, for Christ’s sakes,” Weather said, exasperated. “You’re too young to lose your edge. Everybody does stupid stuff from time to time.”

  “Even when being stupid can kill you?”

  “I saw a story on the news that said thirty-seven thousand people died in automobile accidents last year and more than two million were injured. Most of those were caused by momentary stupidity,” Weather said. “If you’re driving a two-and-a-half-ton vehicle at 85 miles an hour and talking on your cell phone, you’re stupid. But everybody does it. Including you. When Shrake got hurt last spring and Virgil had to drive him to that hospital in Fairmont, Shrake said the scariest part of it was when Virgil was driving and talking to the Highway Patrol at the same time, said Virgil almost got them killed a couple of times. He probably saved five seconds by being stupid, and Virgil isn’t normally stupid.”

  “A Shrake exaggeration,” Lucas said.

  “Not much of one,” Weather said. “Stop brooding. You did something stupid. Get over it.”

  He knew she was right; she’d gotten over a couple of awful moments herself. But this was . . . different.

  Lucas didn’t in theory believe in revenge, but there was that long hockey life, from Mite to Squirt to Peewee to Bantam to Midget to high school to university. If somebody gave you a shot, you gave him a shot back. Harder. In this case, the guy who literally gave him a shot was beyond reach, being thoroughly dead.

  Psychologically, though, it felt like unfinished business: there were still three other guys out there. He needed to give them a shot . . . And harder.

  * * *

  —

  WEATHER HAD BEEN tough on him after he got home. When she arrived at the Huntington, she’d half expected to find him dying or dead, but when she’d come into the room and he’d tried to smile at her she’d turned around and run back out. Letty went after her and later told Lucas that Weather had collapsed in the hallway, unable to handle the instant departure of stress.

  Then she got tough.

  At home, she enforced a rigorous regimen of healing and recovery. By the middle of June, he was going on long walks; by the first of July, he was fast-walking. By the middle of July, he was running but weak. By the first of August, he was running harder. By the middle of the month, he was ready to kill, and Weather released him, to go do it.

  But he still hurt, and occasionally felt weakness hiding down deep.

  * * *

  —

  ON AUGUST 18, Lucas flew into San Francisco, rented a car, and drove to Palo Alto, where Letty had taken a summer lease on a condo from an economics professor who was in London, studying money.

  “I got a deal on it,” she told Lucas when she’d called him about it a few days before Lucas got shot. “I can get it for two thousand dollars a month. It’s got a great pool, though it’s stuffed with geeks. All I have to do is take care of the dog. I don’t even have to fuck the professor.”

  “That’s good, because then I won’t have to come out there and kill him,” Lucas said.

  “I knew you’d approve. Can you send me a check?”

  He could.

  * * *

  —

  HE PICKED HER UP at the condo. When she opened the door, she took a step back, and he asked, “What?”

  “You’re a bag of bones,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m down a few pounds,” he said.

  “A few pounds? Don’t lie. You’re down ten or fifteen pounds, and you weren’t carrying any fat to begin with. You’ve lost muscle. What do you weigh now?”

  “I haven’t looked lately, but I’m running hard. I’m fine.”

  She wasn’t convinced but went to get her shoulder bag. Lucas checked the professor’s bookshelves, which were heavy on economics. And erotic photography. He looked at a couple of the photo books, and asked, “Say, are you sure you’re okay with this guy?”

  “Positive. He hinted he might like to takes some pictures of me someday, but I told him my dad’s first two rules for a girl’s life,” Letty said.

  “I’m not entirely sure I remember those,” Lucas said.

  Letty counted them off on two fingers: “No ink; pierce anything you want, but no ink. And never take off your clothes around a camera.”

  “Now I remember,” he said. “Excellent advice, I have to say.”

  “But you never told me how much it hurt to get your labia pierced . . .”

  Lucas blanched. “Jesus Christ, Letty . . .”

  She laughed merrily and said, “Gotcha. Let’s go eat.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY ATE a late lunch at a nice California-style outdoor café, chicken sandwiches with avocado slices and fries with Indonesian pepper and some kind of healthy tea that was supposed to bring peace to your soul, or clean out your colon, or possibly do both simultaneously.

  “Two different futures,” Letty said. “An important guy at Yale says he can fix me up with a scholarship at least through a master’s degree and probably a Ph.D. if I want to take that track. And second, Slocum Haynes—you know who he is?”

  “Zillionaire. Oil and airlines and ships and . . . other stuff. Rockets.”

  “Yeah. He’s offered me an internship where I’d be one of his assistants. Pay is barely okay. I could afford a one-bedroom apartment in Oklahoma City. I’d travel a lot. He also says that in two years with him, I wouldn’t need a master’s or any other kind of degree.”

  “Sometimes good-looking young interns—”

  “Get preyed upon,” Letty said. “You gotta stop worrying about me, Dad. Haynes said I wouldn’t have to fuck him. Or anyone else at the company. Said he didn’t allow it. Actually used the f-word.”

  “I wish you’d start saying ‘f-word’ more often.”

  “Dad, if you didn’t say ‘fuck’ at least once every five minutes, your head would explode.”

  “I’m not a young woman,” Lucas said.

  “Yeah, well, neither am I, not so much.” She was twenty-one, but he knew what she meant.

  “I don’t know enough to advise you,” Lucas confessed. “It’s interesting that you’re balancing a Yale degree against a bad-paying job. That suggests to me that you think the job might be more valuable . . . in some ways.”

  “I think it would be. Haynes is a genius. And I could always go back for the degree,” Letty said.

  “How’d he hear about you?”

  “He was invited out here for a seminar,” Letty said. “I was interested, I sat in and asked a bunch of questions. He asked me out to dinner, along with a couple of faculty members. We talked, and a couple of days later he called me and made the offer.”

  “Did you ask your porno economics professor about it?”

  “Yeah. He asked me if I didn’t take the Haynes job, would I recommend him? I think he was joking, but I’m not sure. He told me that if Haynes liked me, I’d wind up rich and powerful.”

  Lucas rubbed his chin and said, “I don’t like to talk about this shit, but . . . I could have go
tten killed last May. Another inch lower, an inch to the right . . .”

  “I know that. Exactly what shit are you talking about?”

  “My will. Weather gets most of it, but if I got killed tomorrow you’d get ten million.”

  “Jeez. And I forgot to bring my gun with me.”

  “I’m not joking,” Lucas said. “What I’m trying to tell you is, whatever you do, you don’t have to start saving for your retirement. When I croak, you get somewhat rich. When Weather croaks, you get even richer. You’re basically trust fund scum. You don’t need Haynes.”

  Letty looked down at the tabletop, then said, “You’re telling me I can do what I want. I don’t have to do something I might not like because I think it would be prudent.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s a pretty heavy burden. Thinking for yourself.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY STOPPED talking about money and spent some time driving around, chatting about the Deese case, and Bob and Rae, and Virgil Flowers and Jenkins and Shrake. When he dropped her off at the condo, he was looking at six hours down to LA.

  She kissed him on the cheek, before she got out of the car, and said, “Thanks. I needed the talk.”

  “Gimme a last thought.”

  “Slocum Haynes said I could call him at home any evening after seven o’clock his time. To chat. I’ll give him a call tonight. See what more he has to say for himself and his job.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS SPENT some time thinking about Letty as he drove south through the Central Valley. When she said, “And I forgot to bring my gun with me,” she was joking, but she did have a gun. She kept it stashed in a safe-deposit box, and a cop friend of Lucas’s with the California Bureau of Investigation would take her out to a range a few times a year to burn up some 9mm. Lucas had thought she might aim for the FBI or possibly the CIA, or some other gun-toting law enforcement agency, but her interests had changed at Stanford.