The Lucas Davenport Collection, Books 11-15

by John Sandford

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nothing serious.”

  They stopped under the tree and she stepped close to him and looked up and said, “This place we’re going—wasn’t there a murder there? It just struck me.”

  “Yeah, the bartender,” Roy said. “Dick. He . . . I don’t know.”

  “Did you know him?” Fairy asked.

  “Yeah. He was a nice guy. I don’t know what happened.”

  “I saw the story in the Pioneer Press,” she said. “They said he had some connection with this girl who disappeared. What was her name?”

  “Frances. Austin. I knew her, too,” Roy said. “It gives me the creeps. I’ve never even seen a dead guy, and now I used to know two people who were murdered.”

  “The girl . . . they don’t know she’s dead.”

  “Well, they think she is,” Roy said. “I mean, if you read the papers, I guess her house was full of blood, and they know it was hers, so . . . I assume she’s dead.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “I’d see her around. She was like us, you know, gothic. I’d say hello. We went over to her apartment one time, a bunch of us, got some pizza and played some games.”

  “God. So you really knew her.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He shrugged.

  She made her move, moving another inch closer to him. “How do you think she died? The girl? Any idea?”

  “What?”

  “Frances Austin. Have you heard anything? Rumors, or . . . Somebody’s got to know. These people are still out there. With two Goths dead . . . I mean, you probably know the killers yourself.”

  The ambient light came from the condos, a bar, a couple of streetlights, the cars on the bridge; not much, but enough to see his eyes widen. He stepped back from her. “You know, they say Dick . . .”

  “Dick . . . ?”

  “Dick was talking to a fairy Goth before he was killed.”

  “A fairy Goth?”

  “You know . . .” He smiled, defensive, glanced back toward the bar. “Like you.”

  “Me.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “But you know . . . was it you?”

  She let her shoulders slump and she looked up at him, her smile gone and she said, “You’re asking me . . .”

  “You know, just because you seem interested in the murders . . .”

  “Is she dead? Or alive?”

  “For God’s sakes, how would I know?” There was a note of irritation in his voice now, and maybe fear. He was thinking about her, about how close she was, about how the darkness was almost palpable. Running, screaming, wouldn’t be manly, would it? And if she was innocent, he was blowing a shot at the highest-quality pussy ever to step out with him. . . . He looked down at her, saw something in her eyes; and she saw him seeing it.

  She sighed and said, “Uh-oh,” and slipped her hand into her coat and felt the dry wooden handle on the knife.

  “What?” he asked. He was looking around again, but they were alone. “Maybe we should go . . .”

  The knife slipped in so easily. Soft and easy, like it’d slip into the breast meat of a roasted chicken, just out of the oven. She looked up at his eyes, now wider, feeling it, not sure what it was.

  She had the handle in one hand, the other hand supporting the first, and she ripped him and he went “Ah!” and tried to run, his legs going all wobbly. He banged into a bench and went over it, and down. She stepped up next to him, knelt, and wiped the knife on his shirt. Sat and watched. He never looked at her, his eyelids simply batted for a while and then stopped.

  He was gone.

  She stood up, put the knife back into the jacket. Looked around at the lights; and Loren whispered from somewhere nearby, Time to go; but don’t run.

  Back in the car, Loren’s eyes were in the rearview mirror. He asked, “Did you enjoy it?”

  “A little,” she said. Then, “No, not really.” And, a moment later, “I wish he’d told us where she is. How she is.”

  “Hovering,” Loren said. “We can bring her back, if we can find her. I can sense her, but we need more information. It would help if we knew where she was on the material plane, so we could lay our hands on her.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “We still have another possibility, another suspect,” Loren said.

  “One more,” she said. “But maybe we could wait a day or two or three. This one hurt me. The first one, Ford, didn’t hurt me. This one did.”

  “Okay.”

  Down through the city in the Batmobile. After a while, she said, “I lied. It did feel good. I can’t deny it. But it felt good and hurt me at the same time. I had more control, this time, though. I can wait until I get home to fuck you. Last time, I couldn’t.”

  His eyes in the mirror: “I know. You’re growing.”

  “But I need to find out about Frances,” Fairy said. “I need to find everybody involved—I need to end this.”

  7

  Inside november, Lucas talked with the two Goth couples about Roy and the woman. Both of the male Goths were tall and thin, dressed in black from head to toe: Greg and Dave. Dave seemed to be wearing a skirt, but it may have been a jacket tied around his waist. Both of the women were short and chunky: Sharon and Wanda, who was called Wolfie; both with black fingernail polish and scarlet lipstick.

  “They were being flirty,” Sharon said. “Cute with each other. She was holding his hand. There was something going on.”

  “He doesn’t have another friend?” Lucas asked.

  “Roy? No. Not recently.”

  “An odd couple,” Greg said, pensively.

  “Why odd?” Lucas asked.

  “Well, she’s pretty hot,” Greg said. He snapped a sideways glance at his girlfriend and then said, “Roy . . . I’ve never heard a woman call him hot.”

  “He doesn’t ring a lot of bells,” Wolfie agreed.

  “Tell me about the woman.”

  The fairy woman was short, lithe, dark-haired, pale-complected, probably in her early twenties. Well-dressed, in the Goth style. Leather jacket, with what Sharon said was a “really nice top. Her skirt was cheapish, though. It looked cheap. Too short.”

  “Nice shoes,” said Wolfie.

  “Older than early twenties,” Sharon said. “Too self-possessed. Knows what she wants, and making friends isn’t one of them.”

  Dave grinned and said, “She had an early-twenties ass.”

  “Where does Roy get off running around with a chick like that?” Greg asked. He seemed offended. “I mean, she is somewhat out of his league, don’t you think?”

  The Goths all nodded at one another.

  “Too good,” Dave said. “Why’s somebody that good hanging with Roy?”

  “He’s actually a good guy,” Jean said.

  “Yeah, but good like Charlie Brown . . .”

  They were still talking when Shockley and Price, the Goths whom Lucas had interviewed earlier, came through the door with a long-haired man in a field jacket and blue jeans bloused over combat boots. Lucas asked one of the Goths, “See the fairy over there? Does she look like the one with Roy?”

  “Leigh? Oh . . . she’s over in that direction, but it wasn’t Leigh. I mean . . .” He raised his voice. “Hey! Leigh!”

  Price turned their way, spotted Lucas, came over: “Find her?”

  “Just missed her,” Lucas said.

  “She was here with Roy,” one of the Goths in the booth said.

  Price shook her head: “I don’t know him.”

  “The guy who started the chicken dance.”

  Price smiled: “Okay.” To Lucas: “I know who he is now. But I don’t know him.”

  “Chicken dance?” Jean asked.

  “At the Halloween party. He started people doing the chicken dance. That’s not something that Goths do every day.”

  On the way out with Jean, Price hooked him by the elbow and pulled him aside, and asked, “So what do you do when you’re not copping? ”
>
  He felt a little ridiculous when he said it, but he said it anyway: “Taking care of my wife and kids.”

  “Don’t cops have rocky marriages?”

  “Some do.” He smiled. “I could introduce you to some, if you want. I got this guy Virgil . . .”

  “Virgil Flowers?” Her face lit up. “You know Virgil? I knew he was a cop.”

  Lucas smiled, stepped back. “He works for me.”

  “Well, shoot. If you see him, tell him that Leigh says hi.”

  “He’s been married so often that he’s got a ‘Just hitched’ sign in his closet,” Lucas said.

  “I don’t want to marry him,” she said. “He’s just a really . . . interesting guy.”

  Lucas nodded, said, as though jilted, “Well. Maybe see you around,” and headed out the door.

  “What was that all about?” Jean asked, as she trailed behind.

  “Just this guy,” Lucas said. “That fuckin’ Flowers.”

  Lucas left Jean at her apartment. She said she’d stay up until Roy got back.

  “I’ll be up late. When he comes in, call my cell,” Lucas said, as he scribbled the number on the back of one of his business cards. “So. Call me.”

  “You think Roy’s all right?”

  “I wish they hadn’t disappeared like that,” Lucas said. “It was so quick, it was like they were running. I wish she hadn’t been too good for Roy. That worries me.”

  “That kind of judgment . . .”

  “. . . Is almost always right,” Lucas said. “Not fair, but right.”

  Weather was still awake when he got home, sitting in the kitchen, public radio playing around her as she sorted through a box of junk mail. As a physician, she got fifty pieces a week, and there was no way to turn it off. When Lucas came in, she looked up and asked, “Do any good?”

  Before he could answer, the phone rang, and they both turned to look at it: late for a phone call, and that was hardly ever good. Lucas picked it up and said, “Hello?”

  Harold Anson, the Minneapolis homicide cop, said, “We got another one. I’m headed over there—down on the riverfront, two blocks from the last one.”

  “If you tell me it’s a guy named Roy Carter, I’m gonna shoot myself.”

  There was five seconds’ silence, then Anson said, “Step away from the gun, big guy.”

  “Motherfucker,” Lucas said. “Motherfucker. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Weather asked, “What?”

  “Motherfucker . . .”

  He took the truck, heading up the river and across to Minneapolis on I-94, into the loop, then back across the river; Tom Petty was singing about Mary Jane’s last dance as he crossed over.

  He kept thinking about the time he’d lost when he started looking for Carter. Time getting a sandwich, time getting around a minor traffic accident. Getting to November a minute too late . . .

  The previous summer, a bridge on Interstate 35 had fallen into the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. It hadn’t gotten creaky and shaky and slowly slumped into the water—it had simply snapped, toward the end of a weekday rush hour, going down in an instant. Thirteen people died.

  A new bridge was going up in a hurry. Crews worked late into the night, and Lucas could see the flickering white flares of their welders. And up ahead, the flashing lights of the cop cars on the riverfront, and Petty started on “Something in the Air.”

  Anson was wearing a knee-length trench coat and a fedora, which sat back on his head, the brim snapped down over his scalp. He was talking to a cop, stopped when he saw Lucas. “You want to look?”

  “Sure.”

  Roy Carter was lying on his side, mouth and eyes open, his hair flattened, his shirtfront soaked with drying blood. He’d been tall, and almost gaunt, with reddish hair that looked blue in the streetlights, and freckles that looked black, the skin taut around his skull and cheekbones. The bottom arm, his right, was thrown out on the sidewalk; the top arm clutched at his gut and, like his shirt, was covered with blood.

  “Same deal,” Anson said. “Stuck him, ripped him. It’s like a harakiri, almost, except that the rip is up.”

  “Goddamnit, I was looking for him tonight. I missed him by thirty seconds,” Lucas said, turning away from the body. “He was with a Goth. They call her a fairy, just like the one who was talking with Dick Ford.”

  “Ford? What fairy?”

  Lucas explained it, taking it step-by-step. When he finished, Anson said, “So the fairy did it.”

  “We need to talk to her,” Lucas said. “We need to find her. Really bad.”

  “I’ll need the names of everybody who knows her,” Anson said.

  “I’ll e-mail them to you tonight, before I go to bed,” Lucas said. “You’ve got some witnesses . . . and somebody told me that the fairy girl had called Carter. I don’t know whether it was at work, or at home, or on a cell, or what.”

  “But there ought to be a number we can get at.”

  “Should be,” Lucas said. “And a photo kit from the people who’ve seen her. Get it out to the media. Put some pressure on her.”

  There was nothing for Lucas to do at the crime scene, except stand around with his hands in his pockets and bullshit with the uniforms. As the crime-scene people and the ME’s investigators worked over the body, Anson took a call, walking along the river with a finger in one ear, the phone to the other. He rang off and told Lucas that Carter had come from Little America, and that his parents were being notified. “Bad day out in the countryside. His parents both work for the post office,” he said. “If this happened to one of my kids, I’d jump off a bridge.”

  “After you killed the guy who did it,” Lucas said, looking back at the body.

  Anson nodded: “We don’t talk about that.”

  Lucas went home; confirmed the murder to Weather, who was shocked: “We didn’t set this off, did we?”

  “Nah. I’ve been working on the case for half a day,” Lucas said. “This guy’s been a target for longer than that.”

  “Then how did you miss them at the nightclub? It sounds like they were trying to avoid you—and that’d mean . . .”

  “. . . that they’d have to know who I was. Or, maybe, she just wanted to get him out of there, away from people who could look at her. Nobody really talked to her—she kept him moving. My guess is, she moved him away from the people in the front room, then went into the back room, the dance floor, and he had more friends back there, so she moved him out of there, too. We just . . . passed each other.”

  She shook her head. “Too neat. There’s something going on that we don’t know about.”

  “Gonna have to think about it,” Lucas said.

  “Have to think by yourself,” she said. “I’m doing a palate tomorrow and it’s a bad one. I need to be out of here by five, so I’m going to bed.”

  “See you tomorrow then.” He kissed her goodnight, and moved to the den, where he read again through the paper generated by the Minneapolis guys and his own BCA. Lucas had worked for both, and had his prejudices: the BCA guys worked a couple of murders a year, maybe, and they were often hard ones.

  But Minneapolis—a lead Minneapolis investigator might catch as many killings in a couple of years as a BCA agent saw in a career. They were a bunch of flatfeet, but their paper was very good, full of the kind of intuitive detail that caught a guy’s eye after ten years on the street and another ten doing violent crime.

  At eleven o’clock, Lucas stopped. His brain was getting clogged up. He thought about calling Del. No chance he’d be asleep; the guy was like a bat. His old lady was another matter. He worked through the equities for a minute, then dialed.

  Del picked up on the second ring: “What’d ya want?”

  "I don’t want to interrupt anything,” Lucas said. 87

  “I wish you were.”

  “Where’s your old lady?”

  “In bed,” Del said. “She’s been feeling kinda rocky. What’s up?”

  “Meet you at
the apartment?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  The alley behind the drugstore was dark and cold, and something—a raccoon?—was banging around inside the dumpster. Lucas fumbled for the key to the back door, got inside, turned on the stairway light and went up. The apartment was quiet and cold. He pushed the thermostat higher, in the light coming through the front window, and tuned the boom box to a golden oldies station, playing low; picked up the glasses and looked across the street at Heather Toms’s apartment.

  Toms was in, watching TV in the middle of the three rooms he could see. She was drinking something from a can, a beer or a Pepsi, he thought. Probably a Pepsi, because of the baby. He couldn’t quite pick out the logo in the flickering light of the television.

  Del showed up a couple of minutes later, trudging up the stairs. Lucas heard the key in the lock, and Del stepped inside, bringing along the odor of hot coffee. He handed Lucas a paper cup and Lucas said thanks, and took a sip. The coffee had never seen Seattle, or even heard of it. But it was okay. Free cop coffee.

  Del tipped his head at the boom box: “Clarence Carter—‘Slip Away.’ ” The golden oldie slipped through the room and they sipped along for a moment and then Del took the glasses from Lucas’s hand and looked across the street and said, “She’s got her shirt on.”

  “Yup. Took it off last time, though.”

  “She still looking healthy?”

  “Starting to bulk up with the new baby,” Lucas said.

  “Nipples still point up?”

  “So far.”

  “Wonder if she knows whether it’s a boy or a girl?”

  “You could call and ask . . .”

  Del was wearing jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and a cracked-leather Goodwill jacket with a fake-sheepskin collar. “Who’s dead?” he asked.

  “Guy named Roy Carter,” Lucas said. “Also a guy named Dick Ford and a girl named Frances Austin.”

  “Know about Ford and Austin.” Del handed the glasses back to Lucas. “I didn’t hear about Carter.”

  “He was just a couple of hours ago,” Lucas said. He took two minutes to tell the story, then asked, “What do you think?”

  “Well, there’s a lot of choices. You think the fairy did it?”