Lucas Davenport Novels 16-20

by John Sandford

  They went out the door and down the stairs in a rush, hit the outside door, and thirty feet down the alley and around the corner of the drugstore and down the width of the store and around the next corner and the SWAT guys were boiling out of the vans and into the apartment.

  As they came around the corner, running into the street, Lucas saw a guy run out of a bagel shop across the street, seventy or eighty yards away from them, looking up at the apartment, a cell phone to his ear.

  Shrake yelled, “Hey!” and the guy turned and looked at them and took off running, away, up Snelling, and Del said, “I’ll get him,” and took off after him.

  Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins ran across the street and up the sidewalk and heard the flash-bangs go off in the apartment, then the long, ripping stutter of a machine gun, and Jenkins yelled, “Holy shit,” and the machine gun wouldn’t stop and Lucas thought about drywall and plywood walls in apartment buildings, and hoped the shooting was being done by the cops, but it didn’t sound like it, it sounded too uncontrolled and crazy.

  Then Lucas picked up individual shots, and a man ran out the front door, looked at the vans, yanked up a small, short weapon, and fired a burst at the vans and then turned and ran away, up the street, where Del could still be seen chugging after the first runner, and Shrake said, “I got him,” and lifted his M16 and Lucas shouted, “No, no . . .” and behind the runner, a car pulled out of the parking garage and stopped across the sidewalk and Shrake yelled, “Shit!”

  A chair came through the end window on the apartment, and then a blanket dropped over the edge and Siggy looked out at them, saw them, turned the same weapon the second runner had, and fired a burst at them and they all went sideways behind parked cars and the bullets patted and whanked like bees.

  Siggy dropped the gun out the window and threw himself over the edge, hung one second and dropped, ten or twelve feet into a flower bed, and Shrake stood up and the second runner, now eighty or a hundred yards off, opened up again and they all went flat again and then Siggy was running away with the gun, around the car still sitting in the driveway, behind it.

  The driver came flying out the driver’s-side door and sprawled on the ground and Siggy was in the car, fired another burst through the open driver’s door, reached up and grabbed the steering wheel and pushed on the gas pedal with his other hand, and as the car started into the street, Shrake walked out into the street and said, “Fuck this,” and dumped half a magazine into the front of the car.

  The car straightened out and drifted across the street and ran into a parked car in front of the bagel shop, and sat there.

  Lucas was running after the second runner, screaming, “Del, Del,” and Del, at the top of a low hill, finally heard him, saw the second runner across the street coming toward him, ducked behind a car, and fired half a magazine at him, and the runner unloaded his weapon, whatever it was, the bullets pounding and zinging under the car that Del was hiding behind. Then he was out of ammo and he dropped the gun and started running again, and Del shot him, one long leading shot, and knocked him off his feet.

  Lucas saw the second runner go down, then there were two more flash-bangs and the machine gun stuttered once, again, then a heavier, harsher sound erupted, and the higher-pitched shooting stopped.

  All of a sudden, it was absolutely quiet in the street.

  Lucas ran across and looked in the car Siggy had tried to take. Siggy was dead, his face a hash of blood and meat where Shrake’s .223 slugs had torn into him. Jenkins was talking to the car’s driver, a young guy in a blue suit, now wearing a pair of broken glasses and a stunned look.

  Up the street, Del was approaching the man on the ground.

  The SWAT commander ran out of the apartment and said, “We okay?”

  “Got a loose runner, maybe two, got two down,” Lucas said. “What happened?”

  “Guy on the front room couch with a fuckin’ M7 and we came through the door and man, he opened up and didn’t quit; we shot him.”

  “Any of our guys . . . ?”

  “We’re all okay, got some cuts and splinters and shit.”

  “Heather and the baby . . . ?”

  “They’re okay.”

  Del’s bullet went through the second runner’s triceps, his armpit, and into his chest, where it made a hash out of his heart and lungs. They called ambulances, but he was gone before Del even crossed the street.

  They never saw the first runner again. The way they later worked it out, he’d run three blocks, spotted a passing cab, jumped in, and took the cab to Minneapolis. The driver said he dropped the passenger conveniently close to a light-rail station, which went to the airport, among other places.

  They got Heather dressed and took her out in cuffs, and downtown to be processed, but she was already screaming, “I didn’t know he was coming, I didn’t know . . .”

  She wanted a lawyer; and had his card in her purse.

  Jenkins asked, “Where’d they get those fuckin’ machine guns?”

  Lucas shook his head: “They were coming in from Miami.”

  “But we got him,” Shrake said.

  Then everybody in the world came down on top of them: TV and newspapers and even a public radio guy with a tape recorder and a boring voice, a dozen cop cars, the cops to check the neighborhood for any collateral injuries or damage, crime-scene people. The street and the various shooting scenes were cordoned off, and crime-scene guys landed in force, the ME’s investigators, Jackson with his Nikon D3 and every lens in the world, the St. Paul police photographer with an inferior Canon camera, a variety of deputy chiefs, homicide investigators, and a partridge in a pear tree.

  It all took forever, it seemed; and Lucas was there, the whole time, and they all talked about it over and over, what everybody had seen and done, and Lucas had this sense that he hadn’t done much, but he was there, and it all felt pretty large.

  By six o’clock, the activity was petering out, and most of the cop cars were gone, and the crime-scene people were turning off work lights, and the TV guys were peeling away.

  Lucas called Weather and told her; and made sure that Del was okay, and that Shrake was okay, and they were, but now they were getting shaky with the realization that they’d actually killed people. Nobody knew exactly who’d killed the machine-gun guy in the apartment, because a number of cops had fired at him.

  Lucas said, “Who’d have thought.”

  “Submachine guns,” Del said. “Goddamn, if they’d been heavier, if they’d been assault rifles, we’d of had some dead guys.”

  “Saw the goddamn slugs powdering the street around you,” Lucas said.

  “Scared the shit out of me, it was like hail, but they weren’t getting through the tires,” Del said. “I don’t know what they were shooting, but the tires went flat and the slugs weren’t getting through.”

  “Thank God for steel-belted radials, eh?” Lucas said.

  “I could hear them hitting those bricks around that bagel shop.”

  “That was a hell of a shot you made across that street.”

  “Luck, was what it was. Forty yards—I’d be lucky to hit a garbage can at that range.”

  “You all right?”

  “A hell of a lot better than the alternative,” Del said. “I didn’t know he’d dropped that fuckin’ gun until you told me.”

  “You see that guy come out of the store with that pie in the box?” Lucas asked. “He comes out and sees a dead guy laying there . . .”

  “Hope it wasn’t a cherry pie; he might be getting flashbacks about now.”

  In his mind’s eye, Lucas saw Siggy’s head, and the thick coagulating pool of blood underneath it. Imagined a fly buzzing around, though he hadn’t seen any flies.

  Fuckin’ Siggy.

  "See you back at the office?” Del asked.

  “Yeah. We all oughta get something on paper tonight. This was a long way from perfect.”

  “See you there,” Del said. “I’m gonna stop at home first. Cheryl’s been barf
ing again.”

  “See you there.”

  27

  Fairy had the gall and the will and even—maybe—the sense of humor that would make it possible to kill Davenport and get away with it. Alyssa herself was too fragile, and could feel the stress pecking at her even as Fairy, with her Valley-girl voice, called Davenport’s home and spoke to Weather.

  “Is Lucas Davenport there?”

  “No, he’s not—who is this, please?” Weather was using her surgeon’s voice, with the crisp edge of command.

  “Um, I’m an old friend of Frances Austin’s. Do you know when Officer Davenport will be home?”

  “Actually, I don’t. There’s been a big problem, a shooting, in St. Paul, and he’s working it. You might be able to get him at his office.”

  At his office. The BCA. Where was that? Fairy was standing at a phone kiosk without phone books, or even a place to put them. Had to be some way—how did people get to the BCA, if they had an appointment?

  Five minutes later, Alyssa, now in her office at the Highland Park spa, brought up the BCA website and got not only a map, but a photograph. The photograph gave her an idea, and she brought up Google Earth, homed in on east St. Paul, and two minutes later sent a satellite view of the BCA building and parking lots to her printer.

  And it all came in handy: the BCA was located out of the city center, near a popular lake and park. She cruised the parking lot, spotted Davenport’s Porsche. How many cops had Porsches? Very convenient.

  She parked across the street, in an empty lot behind some kind of clinic, and let Fairy take over.

  “Simple enough,” Fairy said, meeting Loren’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “If he’s by himself when he comes out, I’ll kill him here. If he’s not, we follow him home, and we kill him at his garage. How far do you have to drive before you’re lost in traffic? Not far, I think.”

  “But you’re going as Alyssa,” Loren said. “If Weather sees you . . . I’d be happier if we had time to get another wig. Have you go dark.”

  She shrugged. “If I bought a dark wig, and somebody ran it down . . . This is okay, because”—she tapped her forehead—“Alyssa’s right here, and she’s a big chicken. If there’s any reason not to do it, she’ll tell us.”

  “And you’ll let her back.”

  “Of course,” Fairy said. “Alyssa and I are very close now.”

  Then she got a taste of cop work: she sat, and sat, and sat, and Lucas didn’t come out. Three dozen people came and went, but the Porsche sat there, untouched. She got the gun out from the storage console at her elbow, turned the cylinder, looked once and then again to make sure each of the chambers was loaded, put it back in the console.

  Sat some more, and after a while, became aware of her bladder and started looking at bushes by the back door of the clinic. If a cop saw her, and she was right across the street from about a million cops . . .

  Alyssa didn’t want to, but Fairy goaded her into it: “Two minutes, we’ll feel a lot better.”

  “If anybody sees . . .”

  “It’s pitch-dark out there. We’re wearing black. Who’s going to see?”

  The argument took a while. Fairy won, and she slipped out of the car with a handful of Kleenex, into the bushes, and back to the car a few minutes later, feeling much better.

  “See. That’s life, Alyssa,” Fairy said. “Peeing is a natural function.”

  “Shut up.”

  THEN HE CAME. She recognized him immediately—a big guy, athletic, relaxed stride; with another guy, talking. Couldn’t take him here— couldn’t take him even if he’d been alone, she realized, because she’d misjudged the distance to the car. The two guys weren’t especially hurrying, but they were covering ground, and Davenport would be at the Porsche before she could get close. Then he’d see her, and if he saw her . . .

  “Shit! This was so stupid,” Alyssa said. “What were we thinking? If he sees us coming, he’ll know what’s up. He’ll kill us.”

  “So we take him home,” Fairy said. “Hey: he’s a cop. This is a first time we’ve done a cop. Let’s calm down. Calm down and take him home.”

  Lucas said to Del, “Okay, Cheryl’s appointment’s at ten? Let me know what happens.”

  “I will—I’m a little scared,” Del said. “She’s always been healthy as a horse. God only knows what you can get in a hospital now. They’ve got all these weird germs. And she used to assist with angiograms, who knows how much radiation she got? And she’s really been feeling rocky. I thought she was better last week, but now it’s back.”

  “Let me know,” Lucas said. And, as Del turned away, “You’re all right? About the shooting?”

  “Pretty sure,” Del said. He shrugged. “Maybe people like us can forget it. Let it go. Go get a cheeseburger.”

  “You’ll think about it for a while,” Lucas said. “I believe you’ll be okay, but if you aren’t, tell someone. They got pills.”

  “Yeah. Pills. Check you tomorrow, big guy.”

  Lucas called Weather from the car.

  “Are we all over the TV?”

  “Everywhere. Networks, cable. Lucas—we’ve gotta talk. This has been crazy, first you get shot, and then this.”

  “We’ll talk,” he said. “Maybe I’ll become a humble carpenter. Or I could become the skate sharpener for the Gopher women’s hockey team.”

  “Lucas . . . really, how’re you feeling?”

  “My ass is kicked, but I’m okay,” Lucas said. “I’m still a little worried about Shrake and Del, but they say they’re okay.”

  “See what happens tomorrow,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “So. Would you have time to stop at the SA? I just dropped a bottle of milk and it’s all over the place. We’ll need some for breakfast tomorrow. ”

  “Sure. See you in twenty minutes.”

  He took it easy heading home. He had a Super America convenience store in mind, and headed down Maryland on remote control, thinking about the day. The Siggy investigation had been mostly a BCA deal, but when the final explosion occurred, St. Paul had carried a lot of the weight. They’d also been the guys in the sharp-looking BDUs and armor and helmets with the big guns, and they were the ones who’d gotten the TV time.

  Which was fine with him.

  Idled through a green light, heading down the hill toward the SA, flashed on the first animal he’d ever killed while hunting. It’d been a rabbit, and he was shooting a .410 single-shot shotgun, the first gun of his life. The bunny broke cover thirty feet ahead of him, at the edge of an empty, harvested bean field.

  He remembered how cold it was then, in late October, and how he’d shucked one mitten and his father had said, “Take him.” The rabbit ran away, as they do, but then, as they also do, began turning, a long curved run, as though the rabbit were inscribing a circle with Lucas as the center point. He led it by a foot or two, pulled the trigger, and the rabbit tumbled head over heels, dead before it hit the ground.

  He thought about it because it was exactly the way that Del had shot the runner. Lucas had been watching it, the rest of them had too much background to risk a shot after him, and then he saw Del swinging with the man’s pace and the single shot and the man went down like the shot bunny.

  Lucas found himself standing in front of the SA store, hardly knowing how he got there.

  He nodded at the counterman going in, got a bottle of one-percent and a couple of bottles of diet Coke. Checking out, the counterman said, “Looks like rain.”

  “Spring’s coming,” Lucas said.

  “Wouldn’t be surprised to see a little more snow.”

  “Won’t last,” Lucas said.

  “Take it easy . . .”

  He went out to the Porsche, carrying the grocery bag, popped the passenger-side door so he could put the bag on the floor . . .

  Fairy whispered, to all of them, “Go, go . . .” And she was out the door, the car idling by the curb, across the verge of damp grass, coming up to the gas pumps where he�
��d parked, behind them, actually, out of sight, the gun heavy in her hand, around the pumps, and he was right there and he stood up and saw her and she was six feet away, the gun swinging up . . .

  Lucas caught a flash of urgent motion between the pumps and turned, still bent over the bag, saw her, recognized her, saw her hand moving, knew what was happening, had no chance for his gun or for anything, trapped by the door of the car and he reached onto the front seat and caught the vest and yanked it up and the gun went off and the blow hit him in the heart and he went down . . .

  One bright flash and one horrifying bang and he was down beside the car and Alyssa was screaming, “Go, go,” and she turned and ran before the counterman in the gas station could see her, and she was in the car and she swung in a U-turn. . . .

  Lucas sat up, alive, breathing, holding his chest. The blow hadn’t actually been heavy enough to knock him down, but he’d gone down anyway, because somehow, that’s what you did when you were shot, and it took him a few seconds to realize that there was no blood and he staggered to his feet, the vest in his hand, realized he’d managed to smother the muzzle of the gun with the vest, and he looked toward the street and saw Alyssa’s big green Benz swing in a U-turn and then he was in the Porsche and the counterman was running toward him, and he cranked the car and the anger clawed at his throat and they were out of there, a hundred feet behind her and he was gonna eat her fuckin’ lunch. . . .

  She saw him stand up, realized that she’d missed, and she screamed at herself, “Jesus, Jesus,” and then she stopped thinking altogether and thought about getting home, getting somewhere safe, and she stood on the gas pedal and was through the light, swinging past skidding cars, left onto 35E, headed south, and a moment later she saw the blue lights of the Porsche behind her and Fairy rose out of her chest and took the car and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. . . .

  Lucas was on the phone, screaming at St. Paul: “Headed south on 35E, she’s headed straight back into town, going past Pennsylvania, coming up on 94 . . .”

  The dispatcher said, “We’ve got a car coming up. Aw, he says you’re in front of him, he can see you,” and Lucas flicked his eyes toward the rearview mirror and saw the lights, but they were falling back.