Lucas Davenport Collection: Books 11-15

by John Sandford

  “Not us,” Lucas said.

  “What about your shadow? The FBI man you talk to—there must be one.”

  “I’ll ask,” Lucas said. He pulled his phone from his pocket. “What was his name again?”

  Nadya smiled and said, “I wouldn’t know that,” and waved at a waitress. “But say hello for me.”

  LUCAS CALLED Andy Harmon again and said, “This is Davenport. I’m sitting here eating a waffle and talking to Nadya. She says hello to my shadow. She says somebody just called the Russian embassy in Washington and asked to be put in touch with Nadya’s shadow. Nadya says she doesn’t have one, and she wants to know if it was you guys who called the embassy. ’Cause if it wasn’t, that would mean that the embassy is probably talking to the killer.”

  “Wasn’t us,” Harmon said. “It just flat wasn’t us. If the embassy will give us the time the call came in, we could try to trace it.”

  “Just a minute,” Lucas said. He turned to Nadya and said, “If the embassy can give us the time the call came in, we can trace it.”

  “Let me talk,” she said. Lucas passed her the phone and she and Harmon talked for a minute, and she gave Harmon the name of a man at the embassy he could check with.

  When she was done, Lucas took the phone back and asked, “What are the chances?”

  “I don’t know,” Harmon said. “But we’ll check it. By the way, she’s lying to you about the shadow. She’s got one. Be nice to find him, or identify him, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “Get back to you,” Harmon said.

  FOR BREAKFAST, Nadya had a bowl of strawberries with a smidgen of cream, and two cups of coffee. She was a slow eater, and they went over the case again, piece by piece, as she worked her way through the strawberries. Finally, Reasons said, “I’m gonna go talk to the boss. What are you guys doing?”

  “Maybe I oughta go back to Virginia and jack up the Spivaks.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Reasons said.

  “Then that’s what I’ll do,” Lucas said.

  NADYA WENT WITH HIM. Before they left, they both went to their rooms to check for messages, and Lucas used the break to call Andreno in Virginia. “Anything?”

  “No. I just got going a couple of hours ago. Spivak’s gonna be checked again this morning and then they’re gonna let him out. They’re gonna take him down to the police station and get a drawing of the guy who hanged him, for whatever that’s worth.”

  “Where’re you?”

  “In the van across from the hospital. His son went in fifteen minutes ago, and since Spivak doesn’t have a car here, I’d guess the son is picking him up.”

  “All right. Stay with him. I’m coming up that way with Nadya. I’m gonna jack the guy up a little. Maybe his kids, too.”

  LUCAS AND NADYA drove north mostly in quiet, at the start, Pink Floyd’s A Collection of Great Dance Songs playing soft on the CD. Nadya, it turned out, was married, now separated, and had three children, two boys and a girl, one at Moscow State University, the other two in secondary school. Both her husband and her father were professors at the university—her father had, in fact, introduced her to the man who’d become her husband. Her father was a chemist, her husband did computer software research.

  “I once owned a software company,” Lucas told her.

  Her eyebrows went up. “This is serious?”

  “Sure. Davenport Simulations. We made software programs that would simulate different kinds of emergencies on police computer systems to train people to respond. You know, you have a centralized communications center, and you get two car accidents with injuries and then a shooting, all coming in at the same time, and then one of the cars you expect to send is off the air, and another one breaks down on the way to a scene, what do you do, where do you put your people? We had dozens of different scenarios. I’m out of it now, but the company still exists. I hear it’s been making a bunch of money since the World Trade Center attacks. Government contracts.”

  “You don’t look like, mmm, a technologist,” she said. She had more questions, and Lucas found himself being thoroughly and pleasantly debriefed. When she’d finished, she said, “Hmph.”

  “Hmph, what?”

  She smiled: “I would prefer to work with somebody a little stupider.”

  HE LAUGHED and his cell phone rang. “Yeah?”

  Marcy said, “Lucas. I think we have a line on your guy. What do you want to do?”

  “What do you have?”

  “He’s a student, majors in psychology. Name is Larry Schmidt. Twenty-four. Six years in school, hasn’t graduated yet. He might be hanging around because it gives him access to his market. Handles hot electronics—mostly computer equipment and sound stuff. He’s been busted twice, walked both times. He’s not big, he’s not small, he’s just . . . profitable.”

  “You got enough for a warrant?”

  “Absolutely. We’ve got three different people who name him as a fence and who tell us he sells out of his apartment.”

  “Get one. I can be down there . . .” He looked at his watch. “By four o’clock. I’ll see you at your office.”

  “Do that.”

  NADYA SAID, “WHAT?”

  “We found the guy who probably has the computer. Or had it,” Lucas said.

  “You will arrest him?”

  “Yeah. I’m going down this afternoon.”

  “I will come. Maybe we should go now . . .”

  Lucas said, “We’re right at Virginia. We take a half hour to scare the shit out of the Spivaks, to see if that produces anything, and then we head back.”

  “Good,” she said. “Maybe things start to move.”

  AT THE HOSPITAL, they were told that Spivak had already left. One of the nurses said he was apparently going to the police station. Lucas called the number he’d been given by the chief, and the duty officer said that Spivak had just left, and he thought he was headed for the bar.

  The bar was open: Spivak was in the back with his son, and unhappy to see them come through the door. “What, you didn’t get me killed the first time you came, so you come back,” he grated. He was wearing a plastic neck collar, but his voice had improved.

  “That wasn’t us,” Lucas said. Spivak was sitting at a table, a beer in front of him; his son had just come out of the Pointers. Lucas pulled a chair around, sat down, and faced the older man. Nadya stood, looking down at him, and his son pulled out a stool at another table. “What happened was, you took a meeting that you shouldn’t have. We want to know what it was about. Are you a Russian spy? Are you selling dope? Information? What? What’s going on?”

  “Spy,” Spivak said, recoiling. “Me. I was in the fuckin’ army, I’m an American. Were you in the army? You come in here and almost get me killed by some crazy man . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Nadya said. “This is all very . . .” She flipped a hand, as if brushing him away. “ . . . dramatic. Rehearsed. We don’t need this. I think Mr. Davenport would tell you that he doesn’t care about spy. What we need to know is, What did Oleshev say to you? What did he say that caused him to be killed? If you wish, we can pretend that you only overheard it.”

  Lucas pointed a finger at him: “You got lucky the first time, pal. Some guy walking through the alley, sees you strung up. If he hadn’t been there, you’d be dead. Right now, you’d be lying in a coffin down at the funeral home. And I’ll tell you: whoever killed Oleshev, he’s still out there. He killed Mary Wheaton in Duluth just because he thought she might have seen his face. He’s coming back. He’s a pro, and I don’t think he’ll miss you twice.”

  “BUT I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!” Spivak shouted. “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!”

  Lucas leaned back in his chair, looking at the other man’s reddened face. Nadya shook her head, looked at Lucas, and said, “He’s lying. If we had him in Moscow . . .”

  “Maybe we’ll export him,” Lucas said.

  “I think you two better leave, and we should get a lawyer,” the s
on said. “Dad, stop talking.”

  Lucas looked at the younger man and said, “I wasn’t joking about the killer coming back. But he might figure that if your father didn’t talk when he was standing on the beer bottles, that he’ll never talk. He might come and get you or your sister, try to get some leverage.”

  The son was shaking his head: “We will be careful, and I think it’s all bullshit anyway. Dad doesn’t know anything. This asshole should have figured it out. If Dad knew anything, he would have told him, instead of letting himself get hanged, for Christ’s sakes.”

  “I hope so,” Lucas said. “But if I’m right, and you’re wrong . . .” He looked at Nadya. “There’re going to be some dead people in the Spivak family.”

  “Maybe all of them,” Nadya said. “This man . . . perhaps you should ask your police chief to see the pictures of old Mrs. Wheaton. He nearly cut her head off, with this wire. Maybe then you’ll believe.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Spivak repeated. He took a nervous hit on the beer. “Honest to God . . .”

  “It’s not us you’re gonna have to convince,” Lucas said. “You got guns? You better get some. Maybe the local cops will give you bodyguards.”

  Nadya shook her head, speaking to Lucas, as one sober police officer to another. “That wouldn’t work. This killer, as you say, is a professional.” She looked at the Spivaks, from father to son and back. “To you two, I say, and to your sister and wife, good-bye. I believe because you do not tell us what happens, some of you will be dead before I return.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, and then Lucas said, “Well, fuck ya. We told you.”

  “Good-bye,” Nadya said. “I am so sad . . .”

  OUTSIDE, in the street, Lucas said, “That was pretty good.”

  Nadya said, “Standard procedure. He will ripen in a day or two.”

  “If he’s not dead.”

  “That is my worry,” she said. “That I was not fooling about.”

  12

  THEY STOPPED IN Duluth to pick up clothes, and decided to keep their rooms; they’d be gone only overnight. As they headed south, they crossed the line of a weather front coming in from the west, a thin wedge of cloud that spit rain at them for a hundred miles, and then began to dissipate as they rolled through the northern suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

  On the way, Lucas called Weather and told her that they’d have an overnight guest.

  “The Russian guy?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  MARCY SHERRILL AND two of her intelligence cops were waiting in a no-parking zone by a McDonald’s in the Minneapolis student village called Dinkytown, just off the University of Minnesota campus. Lucas pulled in behind them, and Sherrill got out of the unmarked car and walked back, sipping a cup of McDonald’s coffee, a pretty, dark-haired woman who liked to fight.

  “Where’re we going?” Lucas asked, rolling his window down.

  “Jesus, not even a how-do-you-do,” Marcy said. She stooped to look past Lucas to Nadya and said, “You must be the Russian guy.”

  “Yes,” Nadya said. “You are the policeman?”

  “Listen,” Lucas said hastily, “Is this guy going to be a problem? Larry?”

  Marcy switched her eyes back to Lucas and shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope so. I haven’t kicked anybody’s ass in a long time.”

  “Yeah, yeah, very macho. Is he gonna be a problem?”

  “No reason to think so, but he could be a runner. I’ve got a couple of squads ready to roll; they’ll come in right behind us and cover the outside, back and front.”

  “What about a hammer?”

  “Got one in the car.”

  “So let’s go.”

  “What’s happening?” Nadya asked, as they pulled away from the curb. Her face was pink, her eyes bright.

  “Gonna sneak up on this guy’s apartment and knock the door down. Grab him before he can run,” Lucas said. And that, Lucas thought, should have been clear enough to any real cop.

  LIKE STUDENT VILLAGES everywhere, Dinkytown was a collection of old retail buildings that housed overpriced student supplies and clothing, and even older residences that had been converted to overpriced apartments that were given as little maintenance as was legally possible.

  Larry, the fence, lived in a crappy green shingle-sided two-story house with a sagging front porch and four rusting mailboxes nailed to the outside wall next to the door. Marcy’s sources had said that there were four apartments inside, two up and two down, and that Larry rented both the upstairs apartments. There was a connecting door between the two of them with deadbolts on both sides, and the informants said Larry hoped to use one or the other as an escape route if the cops came.

  They parked down the block, sideways out of sight from the apartment. Another intelligence cop wandered down the block toward them and said, “He’s still inside. His girlfriend’s in there with him.”

  “We understand he’s got those fire rope things, tied to radiators, ready to go. When we kick the door, he runs into the other apartment, locks the connecting door, goes out the window,” Marcy said.

  “But we’ve got the squads,” Lucas said.

  “With the best on-duty runners.” Sherrill reached under her coat, pulled out a Glock, checked it, reholstered it, and said, “If everybody’s ready . . .” She lifted a radio to her face, got the squads, and said, “Go.”

  They went down the street in a rush, Nadya trailing. They were exposed to view from an upstairs window for five seconds, and then they were on the porch, still moving quietly, careful not to bang open the outer door. A student with a backpack stood on the sidewalk across the street, gaping at them.

  One of the intelligence cops, wearing soft Nike running shoes, led the way up the interior stairs, gun drawn, the hammer man right behind him; the stairway smelled of old flaking wallpaper and detergent and onions and maybe the early twentieth century. Marcy followed behind the hammer, then the third intelligence guy. The rest of them came up behind, as quietly as they could. Lucas had just crossed the top stair when the hammer man hit the door lock, and with a rush, the first few were inside and one of the cops was yelling, “Wait wait wait wait,” and there was another bang as a second door went down, and a woman began screaming, “Run, Larry, run.” She didn’t sound frightened; she sounded excited, like a bettor at a racetrack.

  Then Lucas was inside and heard a male voice saying, “Take it easy, I’m not running, take it easy, man, okay, okay . . .”

  Lucas followed the sound of the voices through a bedroom, where a cop was looking up at a tall, skinny, black-haired young woman standing on a bed, wearing only semitransparent underpants. She had small cupcake breasts with brown nipples, a tattoo of a dragon around her navel, and was pierced in several places by bits and pieces of metal; she was bouncing on the bed, excited, laughing, clapping her hands.

  The voices were in the next room, and when Lucas went through, he found two of the intelligence cops leaning over a blond man in white Jockey shorts who lay on the floor, his hands bent behind him. One of the cops was putting on handcuffs. “Not too tight, for Christ’s sakes, I play the piano,” the guy said.

  “Gonna be the skin flute from now on,” the cop said.

  “Look at this place,” Marcy said, coming in behind Lucas. “We hit the fuckin’ mother lode.”

  Dozens of laptop computers, piles of high-end audio equipment, perhaps fifty televisions, and what appeared to be hundreds of PDAs were lined up on raw pine-board shelves along the walls.

  The intelligence cops lifted Larry to his feet and they all backed into the first room, where the woman was still standing on the bed. “Get down from there,” Marcy said.

  “You gay?” the woman asked.

  “Get off the fuckin’ bed,” Marcy said.

  “You’re getting a pretty good look,” the woman said. She stuck her tongue out at Marcy, then said, “Watch this.” She licked her two index fingers and then twirled them over her nipples which pe
rked right up. “Pretty good, huh?”

  “You want me to get her off?” asked the intelligence cop who’d kept her on the bed. He looked like he’d enjoy it.

  “Yeah, do that,” the woman said to the cop. “I need somebody to get me off.”

  Lucas said, “Just hose her down with Mace, put the cuffs on, and throw her into the fuckin’ car.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” the woman said, offended. “I’m coming down.” To Lucas: “Jesus Christ, I was just kidding.” She hopped off the bed, picked up a shirt, and pulled it over her head. As they brought Larry out of the back room, she stepped close to him and kissed him and said, “See you around in a couple years, I guess.”

  “Ah, fuck you,” Larry said, but he laughed.

  Nadya, who’d followed well behind the entry, peered first at Larry, then at the young woman, and said, “This was very interesting.” To the woman, who was buttoning her shirt, “Why do you poke so many holes in yourself?”

  “ ’Cause it feels so creamy,” the woman said.

  LARRY AND THE WOMAN, both of whom were allowed to put on jeans and boots, as soon as the cops figured they were under control, were hustled down the stairs to the squads. Lucas, Marcy, and Nadya sorted through the piles of computers and came up with four Sony Vaios. Lucas lined them up on the kitchen counter and plugged them in, then brought them up, one after the other. All four were loaded with Microsoft Word; the third one showed a Cyrillic character set.

  “Excellent,” Nadya said. “I will translate.”

  Lucas shook his head, shut down the machine. “We’ve got our own translators,” he said, grinning at her. “They’ll save you the trouble.”

  “You see,” she said, seriously, “you do not trust me.”

  LUCAS CALLED ANDY HARMON, who said he was in Duluth, and who was intrigued by the computer. “Barney’s gonna be happy with this. Good job, Davenport. Where are you going to take it?”