[Prey 11] - Easy Prey

by John Sandford

  "That's not exactly what we wanted."

  "No, but that's as good as we're gonna get it," Del said.

  Lucas thought about it for a second. The movie people weren't stupid; if they thought they were being manipulated, there'd be trouble. But if they weren't thrown some kind of meat, they'd be running around like a pack of wolves, and pretty soon the politicians would start to panic, and then the attorney general—you never wanted to stand between the attorney general and a TV camera—would get into it, on some theme like police negligence. In a fairly short time, a world-class pissing match would be going on and…

  "All right. If that's what we got."

  "I've already tipped TV3 to be ready to roll between noon and one o'clock," Del said. "Rose Marie and the mayor already said at the press conference that you'd be monitoring the investigation. So if you're monitoring the raid, and if they want to put two and two together… that's their problem."

  "But the raid isn't a put-up job, is it? I mean, it's legit?"

  "It's fine. Shaw got a ton of shit a week ago, but he's been moving, wholesaling it to all the little assholes. Couldn't find him. Now he's holed up at his sister-in-law's and he's still got some left."

  Lucas nodded. "Because if it was a put-up job, and somebody gets hurt, the word would get out and we'd all be in shit city."

  Del nodded. "We're okay The drug guys were talking about it last night, before Alie'e, as soon as they spotted Shaw walking home."

  The twelve-man emergency response team met at a south side precinct house and was briefed by a guy named Lapstrake from Intelligence. Lapstrake was a bland, twenty-something guy with a home haircut who wore blue Sears work pants and a blue shirt that said "Cairns Glass" on the back. He used a flip pad to illustrate the approaches to George Shaw's house. Lucas and Del sat on folding chairs in the back of the room, listening in.

  "We're gonna have to move fast," Lapstrake said, pointing with a laser. "George's got relatives all over the neighborhood, and every one of them's got him on speed-dial. Four guys go in the back, coming in from Thirty-fourth. You'll split up and go around this house…" He put a red laser-dot on the house behind Shaw's. "… and go right over the fence and cover the back door and side windows. It's a hurricane fence, no problem."

  "A dog?" somebody asked.

  "Used to be, but it died," the Intelligence cop said.

  "Aw, shit," somebody said. "They got pit bulls down there."

  "He's gone, really," Lapstrake said, grinning. "I promise."

  He put another red dot on the front of the house. "We got Group Two coming in from the front, blocking, watching down the sides. Group Three hits the front door. We think George sleeps in what used to be the dining room. When you go in, you'll be in the living room. There'll be a hall straight ahead, and an arch over to the right. The dining room is behind the arch, and that's where George should be, but there's also a connection between the dining room and the kitchen."

  Lapstrake sketched it quickly, and made sure the entry group had it. "From the time we hit the sidewalk, we need to be on top of him in one minute, no more. There's a possibility that he'll be upstairs. There's no bathroom upstairs and no way out, and we don't think it's likely he'll be up there. The stairs come down into the front room—you'll see them on your left when you go through the door."

  "Who else is in the house?" somebody asked. "And what're we looking for, specifically?"

  "We think he's probably got anything from a quarter kilo to a kilo of cocaine on him, and some amount of heroin, but we don't know how much. He usually carries it in plastic squeeze bottles, like the kind you get at camping stores, REI, like that. We heard last week that he'd gotten a delivery the week before, and was putting it on the street, but we couldn't find him, so who knows what he's got left? Maybe he's got a ton, maybe he's sold it all. The coke is definite, one of our guys saw it last night," Lapstrake said. "As for who else in the house, the house is owned by his sister-in-law, Mary Lou Carter. The thing is, you gotta watch Mary Lou. Get her on the floor. She tends to go off."

  "She got a gun?" somebody else asked.

  "Not her style, but there's probably a few in the house. She basically has a really explosive temper, and she's big and strong. If she comes after you, don't mess around. Take her down. Dick Hardesty ran into her a couple of years ago, and she almost beat his brains out."

  "What about Shaw? Is he gonna fight? He's a tough guy."

  "Yeah, but he's a pro, and he's getting older and slower. I don't think he'll fight," Lapstrake said. He looked around and asked, "Any more questions? No? Then Chief Davenport wants to say a word. He and Del are gonna ride along."

  Lucas stood up and said, "Number one, nobody get hurt. Number two, there's gonna be some media around. The Homicide guys think Shaw's heroin may have been getting to Alie'e Maison, and you've all heard about that situation. Homicide thinks maybe her killing was drug-related. So… take it easy, but we want to look sharp."

  Lucas looked around, got a few nods. Lapstrake picked up a jacket and said, "So let's go."

  Out the door, Del wandered down the sidewalk, pulled out a cell phone, punched in a number, said a few words, and punched off.

  "We're set," he said. On the way to the target house, lagging a bit behind the entry team, Del asked, "Do you remember George Shaw?"

  "Yeah. I didn't know him real well."

  "It's just that Lapstrake said he was getting older and slower and probably wouldn't fight."

  "Yeah?"

  "Shaw's about our age."

  "Fuck Lapstrake," Lucas said.

  They turned the corner onto Thirty-fifth just in time to see the armored ERT take down the front door. The entry team flowed inside as Lucas eased the car to the curb; at the same time, doors started opening down the street, and a few kids wandered toward them. Two minutes later, Lapstrake appeared at the front door, looked up and down the street, spotted them, and waved them in. As Lucas and Del walked toward the house, a TV van turned the corner.

  "Must of been close," Del muttered. "Lemme get outa sight."

  He hurried on ahead, up the steps and into the house, as Lucas idled along the sidewalk. Lapstrake met him at the lot line: "Got him."

  "Any coke?"

  "Yup. Quite a bit," Lapstrake said, "and some heroin."

  "Good. We—"

  Another cop appeared at the door. "You guys gotta come look at this."

  "What?"

  "Come on."

  Whatever it was, was good, Lucas thought. The cop was too cheerful for it to be anything else.

  "Got some stuff upstairs, Chief," one of the armored team members said as Lucas ducked inside the house. The house was old, with ceilings that felt an inch too low, floors that creaked underfoot, and rooms that seemed a foot short in both lateral dimensions. The wallpaper on the walls was loose, with warps and water damage near the floor. A couple of rag rugs in once-bright, now dirt-muted, colors made ovals in front of a big-screen television. The place smelled of tacos—hamburger and onions. Most of the cops were crowded into the dining room. Lucas stepped that way, and saw a large black man in olive-green underwear, a dazed expression on his face, handcuffed on an open studio bed. Del was squatting next to him, talking.

  "Where's Mary Lou?" Lucas asked.

  "She went out a few minutes ago, about the time we were starting over here," Lapstrake said. "She got on a downtown bus, and we let her go."

  "Upstairs," said the armored cop, a little impatient.

  Upstairs, in the single bedroom, what looked like a full cord of marijuana bricks were stacked on a plastic sheet in the middle of the room.

  "All right," said Lapstrake. "Now we're talking."

  Lucas picked up one of the bricks, sniffed it, dropped it. A small upstairs window was open, two thin curtains fluttering in a breath of breeze; outside, through the screen, he could see a little boy playing in a tractor-tire sandbox. Ten yards away, a little girl, a few years older than the boy, stood looking diagonally across the yard
at what must have been the cops in the street. Her arms and legs were rigid with attention and possibly fear or anger. He was struck by the similarity of the view from the window and a camera shot in a World War II movie he'd seen on television the week before. But then the men in black combat gear, with the helmets and guns, rousting people from their houses, had been Nazis.

  Just a movie.

  He turned back to Lapstrake. "I'm gonna tell the TV people to hang around. When you get this documented, let them in, let them get some shots of you guys carrying the stuff out," Lucas said. "And flash the cocaine, too."

  "Not me," Lapstrake said.

  "So get a front guy. Get Jones down here from dope, he's good at this shit," Lucas said.

  Downstairs again, Del eased over and said, "I'm outa here—I'll get a ride with one of the squads. We got maybe a kilo and a half of powder cocaine and a bottle of heroin, plus that weed. No crack."

  "What do you think about Shaw?"

  "George is history," Del said.

  "Is there any possibility that any of this shit really could have gotten to Alie'e?"

  "He's not really in that high end of the trade," Del said. "But who knows? I'll talk to him again downtown."

  Del and Lapstrake stayed out of sight while the entry team took George Shaw out to a car and put him inside, and when the cameras started following the head-down figure of Shaw, now dressed in dark slacks and tennis shoes, Del went out the back. Lucas followed the Shaw parade. As soon as the police car was moving, one of the TV reporters shouted his name, and he walked toward them. The reporters were accompanied by three cameramen, who refocused from the car to Lucas.

  "Chief Davenport, we understand this raid was a direct reaction to the murder of Alie'e Maison this morning. Is that right?"

  Lucas shook his head. "I can't comment on an ongoing investigation. I can tell you that we've found a substantial quantity of illegal drugs."

  "What drugs?"

  "Both cocaine and heroin and a very large amount of marijuana," Lucas said, looking into the cameras. "The marijuana looks like a stack of firewood."

  "We understand that cocaine and heroin may have been involved in Maison's death."

  "I have heard that, but my source probably wasn't any better than yours," Lucas said mildly.

  "Weren't you at the death scene early this morning?"

  "Yes, I was." Reluctantly.

  "And now you're here investigating the exact same drugs that were found."

  "Look," Lucas said, interrupting, "I don't want to talk about the Maison investigation. Chief Roux is taking direct charge of that investigation, and all comment has to come through her."

  "But we understand that you are coordinating—"

  "I really can't comment, sorry. Excuse me." Lucas pushed through the group, walking down toward the cars. The interview-on-the-scene was over, and the cameras went down, but the reporters tagged along behind.

  "There's gotta be more than that, Lucas," one of the reporters said. She was an intense young woman with short dark hair and small, pretty features.

  "I wish I could tell you more, but I can't," Lucas said. "I just can't. But I'll tell you what—if you hang around here, I'll talk to Jim Jones, Lieutenant Jones from Narcotics, and I'll get you inside the house. Marijuana might not be that big a deal, but it is when you've got a mountain of it, and there's a mountain of it in there. And I'll get them to show you the cocaine and heroin."

  "Alie'e was using heroin, at least in New York she was," another reporter asserted. This one was a honey blonde, with a nose so tidy that it could only be explained as the product of surgery.

  "Listen," Lucas said, dropping his voice. "This has honest-to-God gotta be off the record, okay? I'm serious."

  The three reporters glanced at each other and nodded. "Alie'e had what's called a short pop of heroin about the time she was murdered. I don't know what they're planning to say downtown, but that's the truth. If you push them on it, they'll confirm it." He looked back at Shaw's house—significantly, he hoped. "That's all I can tell you."

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute," the blonde said. "You said, 'short pop,' is that the phrase?"

  "Yeah, short pop."

  "That's good. That sounds really, you know, ghetto," she said. "And one more question, this can't hurt anyone. When you saw Alie'e this morning… was she wearing a green dress?"

  "A green dress?"

  "Yes, a green dress with a narrow, dropped neck and—"

  "This has gotta be off the record." He couldn't see how it could hurt.

  "Sure. Of course. We just want to know," she said.

  "It was green. Kind of semitranslucent."

  "Excellent." The cameramen had been drifting over to listen in, their cameras pointed away—this was off the record, and they knew the rules. The blonde picked out her cameraman and lifted a hand, palm up, and said, "The dress was green."

  They high-fived, and Lucas asked, "What?" The other reporters looked as puzzled as he was.

  "Death dress," the reporter said. "We got it on tape yesterday. It's by Gurleon. A twenty-five-thousand-fucking-dollar shroud, and we got it on tape, with Alie'e in it. Are we fuckin' good, or what?"

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  "… and became a beautiful filmy-green twenty-five-thousand-dollar shroud for the mysterious women with the jade-green eyes. Back to you, Henry."

  The first man hadn't gotten any sleep; he paced his office, watching the TV. The blond reporter was smiling at him. Filmy green shroud. She was proud of that. Filmy green.

  At the tips of his fingers, the man could still feel the soft skin of Alie'e's throat. He hadn't had any choice with her. She'd come along at the precisely wrong time in everybody's life…

  Sandy Lansing was panicking, she was going to run. He'd had to talk with her, to discipline her: You did not run when there was business to be done. He'd reached out, intending to push her against the wail. Somehow the pit of his palm had landed under her chin, and when he pushed, her head snapped back, into a molding around a door. He'd actually felt her skull crack, the vibration through the heel of his hand—like feeling a raw egg crack on the edge of a china cup.

  Her eyes had gone up, and she'd slipped down the wall, and he'd glanced back up the hallway toward the party. If the door opened… "Get up," he said. "Come on, get the fuck up."

  He'd taken her arm and pulled, but her arm was deathly slack. And after a minute, he'd believed. He'd looked for a pulse, tried to find a heartbeat, but could find neither. He'd been seized by fear: Christ, she was dead. He crouched over the body, like a jackal over a baked ham, looking from her face to the still-closed door. He hadn't meant to kill her.

  But nobody knew…

  The body was next to a door. He pulled the door open: a closet, with a rack of cold-weather jackets and coats. He lifted her, her heels dragging, and shoved her into the closet. She wouldn't fit; she kept slumping, and she had to be upright to fit. He was holding her by the throat with one hand, trying to get the door shut, when a voice said from a few inches behind his ear, "What are you doing?"

  He'd almost had a heart attack. He turned and saw the green eyes; and the closet door finally clicked shut. Alie'e asked again, "Why did you put her in the closet?"

  The second man heard about Alie'e's death from his dashboard radio. At first, he thought he'd misheard; and then it occurred . to him that he was crazy—that he wasn't hearing this at all. But the radio kept talking, talking, talking… and when he changed stations they were talking, talking…

  Alie'e this, Alie'e that.

  Alie'e with lesbians.

  Alie'e nude in a photo shoot.

  Alie'e dead.

  The second man swerved to the side of the road, pulled on the park brake, put his head on the steering wheel, and wept. Couldn't stop: his shoulders shaking, his mouth open, breathing in stuttering gasps.

  After a long five minutes, he wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve, turned, found a clipboard in the back, clipped i
n a piece of notepaper.

  He wrote: Who did this? And drew a line under it.

  And under that, he wrote the first name.

  There would, he thought, be quite a few names before he finished the list.

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  On the way back to police headquarters, Lucas took out his cell phone, thumbed it on, and called Rose Marie Roux on her command line. She picked up and Lucas said, "We got the media fixed. The raid turned up a ton of grass, and a bunch of coke and heroin. I think they all bought it."

  "Good. Now we need a second act."

  "It's like managing the media has gotten more important than finding the killer."

  Roux said, "You know the truth about that, Lucas. We'll either get the killer or we won't, no matter what the media does. But the media can kill us. And I don't have anything else I'd rather be doing right now."

  For the rest of the day, Lucas hung around the interrogation rooms, listening in. One item came up early—Alie'e didn't have any dope in her possession, or any cooking equipment for the heroin, or a syringe or needles. Somebody else put the dope on her, but nobody at the party was admitting to the use of dope, and nobody knew anybody else who was using.

  A question they asked everyone involved the scribble on Sandy Lansing's wrist. They got the answer to that in the early afternoon.

  "A woman named Pella," Swanson told Lucas. "She's going to England in December, for three weeks, and Lansing was going to get her a rate at a hotel. She said Lansing wrote her name on her wrist to remember to set it up."

  "This holds water?"

  Swanson shrugged. "Does with me, I guess. Pella said a decent hotel in London is gonna cost her two hundred a night, but with Lansing's connection, she can get the same room for one and a quarter. That's something like fifteen hundred bucks in savings."