Eyes of Prey ld-3

by John Sandford

  "Blackmail," she said.

  "Law enforcement."

  "Sure," she said, with distaste. "I don't think I could live with that."

  She got out of the car and led the way across the street. The theater was dark, but as she opened the door with her key, she called, "Hello? Anybody here?"

  No answer. "This way," she said in a hushed voice. They crossed the lobby in the weak light from the street and started down a hallway. Cassie patted the left wall, found a light switch and turned on a single hall light. Lucas followed her to a red wooden door. She tried the doorknob and found it locked. "Damn it. I was hoping it'd be open," she said.

  "Let me look," Lucas said. He took a small metal flashlight from his jacket pocket, knelt at the lock, shined the light into the crack between the door and the jamb, turned the knob as far as he could, then turned it back.

  "Can you open it?"

  "Yeah." He took the wallet, a trifold, from his pocket. He opened it, laid it flat on the floor and slipped out a thin metal blade.

  "What're you doing?"

  "Magic," he said. He put the blade in the crack between the door and the jamb, and rotated the blade downward; the bolt slipped back. "Shazam."

  The office was small, untidy, with lime-green walls, a metal desk with a phone, four chairs, a bulletin board and file cabinets. A faint smell of mildew and old cigarette smoke hung in the air. As Lucas put his lock set back into his pocket, Cassie stepped to one of the file cabinets and pulled open a drawer. Hundreds of eight-by-ten photos were jammed into manila folders. She took out two, a bulging pair, and laid them on the desk.

  "He'll be in these," she said. She started going through them, tapping Druze's face wherever she found it. "Here… here… here he is again."

  "He's good at avoiding the camera," Lucas said. He took several of the photos and held them under the light. Druze was always in stage paint or makeup. Sometimes his face was obscured by a hat; at other times by a hand gesture.

  "Here's the best one so far," Cassie said, flipping a photo out to Lucas.

  Troll, he thought. Druze had a round head, too large for his body. And although he was wearing makeup, there were obvious changes in his skin texture, as if his face had been quilted together. His nose was shortened, ruined.

  "That's the best," Cassie said, finishing with the pictures. "But, ah…" She glanced at another file cabinet.

  "What?"

  "If we can get this other cabinet open, we could look through the personnel files. There may be a straight head-shot… The cabinet's always locked."

  "Let's look," Lucas said. He glanced at the lock on the cabinet, took a pick out of the wallet and had the lock open in less than a second.

  "That's fast," Cassie said, impressed.

  "For office file cabinets, you get more of a master key than a pick," Lucas said. "I'm not that good with the picks."

  "Where do you get them?" she asked.

  "I know a guy," Lucas said. He pulled open the top drawer and found a file labeled "Druze." Inside was a block of what once had been eight wallet-sized photos, headshots, straight on, no makeup. Two of them had been cut away with scissors. "Passport shots. And he does look like the cyclops, kind of," Lucas said. He went to the office desk, found a pair of scissors in the top drawer, cut out one of the photos and showed it to Cassie.

  "Uh-huh." She glanced at it, then went back to the file she was holding.

  "What's that?"

  She looked up, a piece of notebook paper in her hand, a sad smile on her face. "It's my file. There's a note from Elizabeth. It says my work has to be evaluated in case financial circumstances worsen."

  "What does that…?"

  "She was going to fire me," Cassie said. A tear trickled down her cheek. "Fuckin' theater people, man…"

  Lucas used the pick to lock the cabinet. The office door locked from the inside, then simply pulled shut. On the way out, they turned off the lights.

  Cassie had taken Armistead's note, and when they were back in the car again, she reread it under the dome light. "I can't believe it," she said. "I can't believe she'd do this."

  "Well, she's gone-things have changed," Lucas said. "I've seen you act, and you're good…"

  "But she was supposed to be my friend," Cassie said, wadding up the note. "We talked together. We were always talking about what we wanted to do."

  "Your friends… are sometimes different people than you think they are. Most of your friends are halfway made-up. They're what you'd like them to be."

  "Do you mind if I sit here and cry for a couple of minutes?"

  "C'mon," said Lucas, "that'd really bum me out." He put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the forehead, and she grabbed his jacket lapel and buried her face on his shoulder. "C'mon, Cassie…"

  He stroked her hair and she cried.

  CHAPTER 24

  Daniel, looking from the photograph to Lucas, was stunned. "We got him? Like that?"

  "Maybe," Lucas said. "He fits what we know about the killer. He looks right, he acts right, and my friend says he's something of a sociopath. He had reason to kill Armistead. And Bekker gave me those tickets, which suggested that his wife had something going at the theater…"

  "We've had two guys full-time on that and as far as they can tell, nobody ever saw her there-or remembers it, anyway," Daniel said. He looked at the photo again. "But this guy looks like the cyclops."

  "And we've got those American Express charge slips…"

  "Yeah, yeah." Daniel scratched his head, still looking at the photo of Druze.

  "I think we need to put a team on him…"

  "We'll do that, definitely. Since we pulled the team on Bekker…"

  "The problem is, if Druze saw that story, he might have thought we were watching him."

  A thin smile creased Daniel's ruddy face. "So for the past two days he's been slinking around with his back to the wall, seeing spies."

  "I was thinking…"

  "Yeah?"

  "You could accuse Channel Eight of damaging the investigation, saying they tipped an unnamed suspect to the surveillance and the police have been forced to pull the surveillance after the suspect confronted a departmental officer… that being me."

  "Yeah. Hmm. It'd back off the TVs a little, too," Daniel said. The grin flicked across his face again. "I'll have Lester do it. He'll enjoy it."

  "And if there's a political kickback, you can always blame it on him," Lucas said, grinning himself.

  "Did I say that?" Daniel asked innocently, his hand over his heart. "About this guy, Druze… maybe we could get some video on him, walking at a distance, show it to this kid out in Maplewood."

  "Yeah, good," Lucas said.

  "We oughta do that today," Daniel said. He walked around his desk, staring at the photo as if it were a talisman.

  "I still think Bekker's in here somewhere," Lucas said. "If Druze and Bekker are talking, maybe we can come up with some phone records."

  Daniel nodded. "We can do that, too. All right. Make a list for Anderson, tell him to do it," Daniel directed. "Now, how're you planning to get this picture to Stephanie Bekker's lover?"

  Lucas shrugged. "I haven't got that figured…"

  "Try this," Daniel said. He sat behind his desk, opened his humidor, stared into it and snapped it shut. "I've been thinking about it. Channel Two still goes off the air sometime after midnight. We ask them to go back on at, say, three o'clock, with the photo. Just for a minute. Nobody'd see it, unless they were accidentally clicking around channels. And the lover would be safe. He could get it on any TV in the metro area, cable or no. And if he's got a VCR, he could record it."

  "Great. Have you got any clout with Two?" Lucas asked. Channel Two was the educational station.

  "Yeah. Shouldn't be a problem."

  Lucas nodded. "Sounds perfect. I'll have an ad in the StarTribune tomorrow morning. When he calls me, I'll try to talk him in. If he won't come, I'll tell him when to watch."

  "Until then, we trea
t Druze as though he was the one. And let's get with the other people on this, so everybody knows what we're doing…" He leaned over his desk and pressed the intercom button. "Linda, get Sloan in here, and Anderson, and the point guys on the Bekker case, everybody who's around. Half an hour…"

  "We've really got nothing on him yet, it's all speculation," Lucas reminded him.

  "We stay with him," Daniel said sharply. "I want to know every step he fuckin' takes. I got a feeling about this guy, Lucas. I get strong vibrations."

  "I'm thinking-" Lucas said. He was thinking of cracking Druze's apartment: an informal survey without a warrant.

  Daniel stopped him in midsentence. "Don't say it. But, uh, it would be nice to know some things…"

  Lucas nodded, bent over Daniel's desk, opened the humidor and peered inside. Three cigars. He snapped it shut.

  "What?" Daniel asked.

  "I always wondered what you really had in there…"

  The investigation file on Druze was thin. Nothing on NCIC-Anderson had run him against the federal computers as soon as Daniel called the meeting. Druze had been interviewed by Detective Shawn Draper after the Armistead murder, and the interview had been summarized in a half-dozen tight paragraphs. Subject said he was in theater at the time of the murder. Cited several incidents that placed him there. Brief cross-checks with other actors confirmed those incidents…

  Daniel, Anderson, Lester, Sloan, Del, Draper, Shearson and three or four other detectives sat in Daniel's office, plotting out the surveillance, while Lucas sat in a corner reading the file. Draper, a large, sleepy man in a knit suit, slumped on a folding chair behind Anderson.

  "You interviewed him, Shawn," Lucas said during a break in the discussion. "Did you think, in person, that he looked at all like the cyclops picture? Was there anything…?"

  Draper scratched an ear. "Naw… I wouldn't say so. I mean… he looked fucked up, but he wasn't… Naw."

  "Was he solid for an alibi on Armistead?"

  "When the chief called about the meeting, I went back and looked at my notes. He really had the evening nailed down, after about seven or seven-thirty. Earlier than that, it was sketchy."

  "We think she was killed, what, about seven?" Lucas asked.

  "Give or take," Sloan said.

  "So he could have done her, then come back and tried to make himself obvious around the place…"

  Anderson jumped into the exchange. "Yeah, but he didn't try to cover himself that much for the actual time of the murder. If I'd been doing it, I would have done something to establish myself before I went over. Then I would have gone over, done it and come back as fast as I could, maybe with a bunch of doughnuts or something, and established myself again," he said.

  "Well, he didn't," Draper said shortly. "He was solid later, but not earlier."

  "Hmph," Lucas grunted.

  "What?" asked Daniel.

  "I'm still trying to fit that phone call in…"

  The Star Tribune classified-advertising manager said he would see to the ad himself. Not responsible for the debts of Lucille K. Smith, signed Lucas Smith. It would appear the next morning.

  "This is critical," Lucas said. "Keep your mouth shut, but this is the most important ad you'll run all year."

  "It'll be there…"

  Lucas called Cassie from the lobby.

  "What're you doing here? Oh Gawd, the apartment is a wreck…" Cassie buzzed him through the door. She met him, flushed, at her apartment door.

  "Looks nice," Lucas said as he stepped inside. The apartment was small, a kitchen nook opening directly off the living room, a short hall with three doors leading off it, a bathroom, a closet and the single bedroom.

  "That's because I just stuffed four days' clothes in a closet, two days' dishes in the dishwasher, and did about a month's worth of cleaning." She laughed, stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, took in the briefcase he was carrying. "What're you doing? You look like Mr. Businessman. I was about to leave for the theater."

  "I was over at the U and thought I'd stop by," he said. "You have to leave right away?"

  She nodded and produced a sleepy-eyed pout. "Pretty soon. Since I read Elizabeth's note, I thought I'd be on time for work."

  "Ah… well."

  "We could take a quick shower…" she offered.

  "Nah. If we started a shower… And I've got to get back to work, anyway. See you after?"

  "Sure. We'll be done before eleven."

  "I'll take you someplace expensive."

  "Shameless sweet-talker, you." She caught his ear and pulled his head down and kissed him again.

  "See you…"

  He was in.

  Druze's apartment was three floors below, and Lucas hadn't wanted to risk raking the lobby locks. That Cassie lived in the same building was not quite pure luck: several other Lost River players lived there, drawn by its proximity to the theater and the low rent. Lucas took the stairs down, emerging a few doors away from Druze's apartment. The hall was empty. Lucas stepped back into the stairwell, took a handset from the briefcase and called the surveillance team leader. At his last check, Druze was at the theater.

  "Where is he?"

  "Still inside." The team leader didn't know where Lucas was.

  "The instant he moves…"

  "Right."

  The theater was less than a block from the apartment. If Druze had to run home for something, Lucas wanted adequate warning. He called Dispatch and gave the dispatcher Druze's telephone number.

  "Patch me through… let it ring as long as necessary. The guy may be outside mowing the lawn," he said.

  "Sure…" Jesus, he thought. He had just made the whole dispatch department an accessory to a felony. He put the handset under his arm, so he could hear it if the dispatcher called back, and stepped into the hall. Sixteen doors, spaced alternately down the hall. Plasterboard walls, aging rug. The power rake would clatter, but there was no help for it. He walked down to Druze's apartment and heard the phone ringing. Five times, ten. Nobody. He tried the door, just in case-it was locked-and took the rake from the briefcase. The rake looked like an electric drill, but was smaller, thinner. A prong stuck out of the tip; Lucas slipped it into the lock and pulled the trigger.

  The rake began to clatter, a sound like a ball bearing dropped into a garbage disposal. The clatter seemed to go on forever, but a second or two after it started, Lucas turned the lock and the door popped open.

  "Hello? Anybody home?" The phone was still ringing when he stepped inside. "Hello?"

  The apartment was neat, but only because there was almost nothing in it. A stack of scripts and a few books on acting were piled into a small built-in bookcase, along with a tape player and a few cassettes. A couch was centered on a television, the remote left carelessly on the floor next to the couch. In his years in the police department, Lucas had been in dozens of cheap boardinghouses and transient apartments, places where single men lived alone. The rooms often had an air of meticulous neatness about them, as though the inhabitants had nothing better to do than arrange their ashtrays, their radios, their hot plates, their cans of Carnation evaporated milk. Druze's apartment had that air, a lack of idiosyncracy so startling it became an idiosyncracy of its own…

  The telephone was still ringing. Lucas got on the handset and said, "Betty? About that call-forget it."

  "Okay, Lucas." A few seconds later, the ringing stopped.

  The bedroom first. Lucas didn't know exactly what he was looking for, but if he saw it…

  He went rapidly through the closets, patting the pockets of the sport coats and pants, checked the detritus on the dresser top, pulled the dresser drawers. Nothing. The kitchen went even quicker. Druze had little of the usual kitchen equipment, no bowls, no canisters, none of the usual hiding places. He checked the refrigerator: nothing but a head of lettuce, a bottle of A.1. sauce, a chunk of hamburger wrapped in plastic, an open box of Arm amp; Hammer baking soda and a red-and-white can of Carnation. Always a can of Carnation. Nothing in th
e ice cube trays. Nothing in the bottom drawer of the stove…

  Druze did have a nice blunt weapon, a sharpening steel. Lucas took it out of the kitchen drawer, swung it, inspected it. No sign of hair or blood-but the steel was exceptionally clean, as though it had been washed recently. He took a piece of modeling clay from the briefcase, held it flat in his hand, and hit it once, sharply, with the steel. The steel stuck to the clay when he pulled it out, but the impression was good enough. He put the steel back into the kitchen drawer, and the clay, wrapped in wax paper, into his briefcase.

  The living room was next. Nothing under the couch but dust. Nothing but pages in the books. In a cupboard under the built-in bookcase, he found a file cabinet, unlocked. Bills, employment records, car insurance receipts, tax forms for six years. Check the front closet…

  "Damn." A black ski jacket with teal insets. Just like ten thousand other jackets, but still: the lover had seen a jacket like this. Lucas took it out of the closet, slipped it on, got a Polaroid camera from his briefcase, put it on the bookcase shelf, aimed it, set the self-timer and shot himself wearing the jacket-two views, front and back.

  When he'd checked the photos, he rehung the jacket. He'd been in the apartment for fifteen minutes. Long enough. He went to the door, looked around one last time. Down the stairs. Out.

  "Lucas?" Daniel calling back.

  "Yeah." He was sitting in the Porsche, looking at the Polaroids. "Did you get in touch with Channel Two?"

  "We're all set," Daniel said. "If he calls you tomorrow night, we can go on the air an hour later. Four o'clock…"

  "Can I get another picture on?"

  "Of what?"

  "Of a guy in a ski jacket…"

  Later:

  Daniel paced around his office, excited, cranked. Lucas and Del sat in visitors' chairs, Sloan leaned against the wall, Anderson stood with his hands in his pockets.

  "I've got a real feeling," Daniel insisted. Lucas had cut his own face out of the ski jacket photos before he gave them to Daniel. Daniel and Anderson had looked at them, and agreed that it could be the jacket Stephanie Bekker's lover had described. "Almost certainly is, with what we know," Anderson said. "It's too much of a coincidence. Maybe we ought to pick him up and sweat him."