Eyes of Prey ld-3

by John Sandford

Bekker rambled through the neighborhood, looking it over, and made another pass at the front of the funeral home before he stopped.

  "He's out of the car, looking at the door," the radio said.

  "Everybody…" Lucas said.

  A finger of joy touched his soul. In five minutes…

  Bekker wore a trench coat and a crushable hat, with leather driving gloves. The scalpel, a plastic tube protecting the point, was clipped in his shirt pocket. The funeral home door, he thought, looked like the door on a bad ski chalet…

  The funeral home was overly warm. An antique mirror, like those collected by Stephanie, surprised him just inside the door. He flinched, jerked his eyes away, but found them drawn back…

  Druze was gone. Beauty looked back at him. Beauty looked fine, he thought, but tired. Unusual lines crossed his wide brow, gathered at the corners of his eyes. A different look, he thought, but not unattractive. French, perhaps, a world-weariness… like the actor with the home-rolled cigarette. What was his name? He couldn't concentrate, his own image floating in front of him like a dream. And then a gathering darkness behind his image, and…

  He pulled his eyes away. Druze was there, still waiting.

  "Buchanan?"

  "What?" Bekker jumped. He'd been so engrossed in the mirror that he hadn't heard the funeral home receptionist until the man was virtually on top of him.

  "Are you here for Mr. Buchanan?" The receptionist seemed ordinary, a thin man in a conservative coat and flannel slacks, a man with no particular relationship to death, although he worked in the middle of it. No imagination…

  "No…" Bekker said, "ah, Mr. Druze?"

  "Oh, yes. That would be the Rose Chapel. Down to your right…" The receptionist pointed like a real estate man giving directions to the third bedroom, the one that was a little too small.

  "Thank you."

  The funeral home was quiet, all sounds smothered by plush drapes and heavy carpets. To quiet the weeping, Bekker guessed. As he stepped into the Rose Chapel, he glanced back at the receptionist. The man had turned away and seemed about to go down to the next room, when a phone rang in the entry. The receptionist stopped, picked up the receiver and launched into a conversation. Good. Bekker stepped into the chapel.

  Lucas stood out of sight, heard the Intelligence guy ask the question, heard Bekker say, "No… ah, Mr. Druze?" A moment later the phone rang. Worried that Bekker might arrive and yet develop cold feet, they'd worked out the diversion of the telephone, with Sloan calling from a back room. If Bekker could hear the receptionist talking, he'd be encouraged to act.

  The Rose Chapel was small, with fifteen dark wooden chairs facing the coffin. The plaster walls were a pale shade of rose; the woodwork an antique cream. A closed pair of double doors was straight ahead of Bekker, apparently leading to the depths of the funeral home; they were sized to take a coffin on a gurney.

  The coffin itself was to Bekker's right, on a dais within a plaster alcove. Roses were molded into the plaster, and individually hand-painted. The dais was covered with a rose-colored drape, a deeper shade than the walls. Bekker could see the side of Druze's head and his heavy shoulders under a dark suit.

  Beauty was pushing through now, anxious for the celebration, moving him. He could hear the receptionist talking, faintly, far away, and he moved to the front. His hand went to his pocket, found the scalpel. He pulled the tube off the end and moved next to the coffin.

  Druze's head was large, he thought. Not just a pumpkin, but a big pumpkin. His face had been liberally worked with makeup, so the patchwork of skin grafts was barely visible. The nose, of course… not much you could do about that. He frowned. Too bad. Druze actually had been something of a friend. A man you could talk to. But he had to go; Bekker had known that from the beginning. Murder was something you didn't share, except with the dead.

  Lucas pressed his eye to the hole in the double doors. He couldn't see Bekker as he came in, couldn't see his beautiful face as he went by. Bekker paused, just for a moment, in front of the coffin, looking down. Lucas could hear the receptionist muttering in the hall, and then, suddenly, Bekker was on Druze, bending over, the hand out of sight, but working over him…

  Bekker glanced back over his shoulder, then reached across Druze's face with his left hand and lifted his eyelid. The eye beneath was intact, but dull, dry, a piece of leather, staring sightlessly and unflinchingly at the ceiling. His heart pounding, the pressure in his veins, the murmur of the receptionist's conversation providing him with the necessary security, Bekker plunged the point of the scalpel into Druze's eyeball, and then turned the handle, like a corkscrew. He felt some of the weight leave him, a pressure gone from his shoulders.

  Quickly, quickly, his mouth open, panting, he did the second eye, looking over his shoulder, twisting the knife…

  And he was free. He felt it, almost as if he were being lifted from the floor. He did a little step, Beauty coming on, and looked back at Druze.

  The eyelids were open, wrinkled and pulled up, like fragments of dead leaves. His heart beating hard and with joy, Beauty reached out to smooth them down, round them carefully, the scalpel still in his hand. He stepped back.

  "Cut his eyes, Mike?"

  The voice broke on him like a bucket of ice water, crashing down, snatching his breath away, each word hurting, a sharp stone: CUT HIS EYES, MIKE?

  Bekker whirled, the scalpel still in his right hand.

  Davenport was there, leaning in the double doors, wearing a dark leather jacket, a pistol in his hands, pointed not at Bekker but to one side. He looked wired, his eyes wide, his hair dirty, his face unshaven. A thug. Another man came in from the left, and then a third, Stephanie's dope-addict cousin, Del. The receptionist was behind them.

  "… 'Cause if you cut his eyes, Mike, we got you for the kids, too. We just dug them up today and the medical examiner says they were done with a knife just like that one, a scalpel. Is that a scalpel, Mike?"

  Bekker stood speechless, the words bouncing through his brain, GOT YOU FOR THE KIDS, TOO, and Davenport moved in on him. One of the other cops, a thin man, said, "Be cool," but Bekker had no idea what that meant.

  Lucas moved in on him, the pistol in his hand. Bekker was startlingly beautiful in the soft light coming off the rose plaster, a violent contrast to the leathery patchwork face of the man behind him.

  Lucas' mind was pure ice: he could do anything when his mind was like this, he thought. Some of it was the speed. He'd been up three days now, but felt awake and in control, sharp, as sharp as he ever had. He reached Bekker, brushed past him, ignoring the scalpel, stretched past him, lifted Druze's eyelids with his left hand, just as Bekker had. Bekker turned away.

  Lucas, ice, stepped away from the coffin and glanced at Sloan.

  "Cut them right through. Want to take a look?"

  Lucas was crowding Bekker with his hip, and Bekker tried to move back, letting the scalpel slip from his fingers as he moved. It bounced off the deep carpet, the blade pointing at him like a steel finger.

  "Got them both-really did a job," Sloan said, bending over Druze's body.

  "What I want to know," Lucas said to Bekker in a conversational tone, "is why you killed Cassie Lasch. Why'd you have to do that? Couldn't you just have done Druze? Just gone in there, stuck the gun in his ear and pulled the trigger? You could have stashed the photos anyway and we'd have gotten the point…"

  Bekker's mouth was open, but no sound came out.

  "I need an answer," Lucas said.

  "Cool," said Sloan, catching his coat sleeve.

  "Fuck cool," said Del, moving up on the other side of Bekker. He put his face four inches from the other man and said, "I knew Stephanie longer than you did, Mike. Loved that girl. So you know what?"

  Bekker, caught between Lucas and Del, shrinking back against the wall, still didn't answer.

  "You know what?" Del screamed, his eyes wide.

  "Hey, now," said the Intelligence cop. He had Del by the coat.

  "What?
" Bekker croaked, half under his breath.

  "I'm going to beat the snot out of you, m'boy," Del said. His right hand came around in an arc and hit Bekker in the nose. Bekker slammed against the wall, his nose broken, blood gushing down his chin. He put his arms up, crossed his face.

  "Wait," Sloan yelled. He tried to step around Lucas, but Lucas pushed him; and before Sloan could recover, Del hit Bekker twice more, once with each hand, evading Bekker's feeble block. Bekker's head snapped back twice more, the back of it knocking the wall like a judge's gavel, and another cut opened on his eyebrow. The Intelligence cop was on Del's back, and Sloan wrapped him from the front and pushed him away. Bekker was moaning, one hand cupping his nose, a high, dying sound: "Eeeee…"

  "That's enough, that's enough!" Sloan screamed. They hauled Del back, and Bekker dropped one of his covering hands.

  "No, it's not," Lucas said quietly. He was less than an arm's length from Bekker. Sloan and the Intelligence cop were struggling with Del but looking toward Lucas.

  The pistol came around like a whip, the front sight leading the arc.

  " 'Member Cassie, motherfucker?" Lucas said, the words as much a groan as a scream. Saliva sprayed into Bekker's face, and Lucas had him by the throat with his left hand. Bekker had time only to flinch before the sight sliced across his cheek and the side of his nose. A ragged furrow opened in its wake. Bekker grunted from the impact, a pain like fire ripping through his face.

  Lucas, precise, quick, moving with the easy coordination of a speed-bag man, hit Bekker with the gun a dozen times, leading with the sight.

  Ripped his forehead, twice, three times, opened his eyebrows, carved bloody canyons across his nose, the left cheek, then the right, sliced through his lips, his hands a blur…

  Sloan hit Lucas in the back, wrapped up one arm. Lucas flailed with the pistol, a last wild swing ripping across Becker's chin, opening the flesh as effectively as a chainsaw.

  Lucas, mind blank, focused, could barely feel Sloan's arms binding him, barely feel the Intelligence cop sweeping him off his feet, barely feel the uniforms barreling into the room, pinning him.

  Even as he went down, his eyes were focused on Bekker, his hands straining. Sloan had the pistol, was twisting, his thumb under the hammer…

  Lucas was aware of weight on his chest, and Sloan, then of Sloan looking away, looking back up at Bekker, who was sliding a bloody path down the plaster walls. Sloan was looking at Bekker's face, and Lucas heard Sloan say, "Oh Christ, ah Christ, ah sweet Jesus…"

  The doctor's face was a mask of blood and curling, wounded flesh. Even Druze might have turned away, had he been alive to see it.

  In ten minutes, the world was moving again.

  Lucas sat on a hard wooden bench in the entry, Sloan next to him.

  Del was down the hall, his hands in his pockets. The Intelligence man, two uniforms and the paramedics were with Bekker. When they brought him out, on a gurney, one of the paramedics held a drip bottle above him, the line plugged into one of Bekker's arms. He was conscious. One of his eyes was puffed nearly shut, but the other was open.

  He saw Lucas, recognized him, and a noise came through his ruined lips.

  "What?" Lucas asked. "Hold it… What'd he say?"

  The paramedics stopped and looked down. Bekker, struggling, one eye open, blood running into it, tried to sit up, put the words together…

  "You should have…" He lost it for a moment, then came back, a red bubble of blood on his lips.

  "What?" Lucas asked. He stooped over and the blood bubble burst.

  "You should have…"

  "What, what, motherfucker…?" Lucas shouted down at him, Sloan on his arms again.

  "… killed me…" Bekker tried to smile. His lips, cut nearly in half, failed him. "Fool."

  CHAPTER 32

  Lucas sat outside Daniel's office, six feet from the secretary's desk. She had tried talking to him but eventually gave up. When the secretary's intercom beeped, she tipped her head toward the office door and Lucas went inside.

  "Come in," Daniel said. His voice was formal, his office was not. Papers were scattered across the top of his desk and an amber cursor blinked on his computer screen, halfway down a column of numbers. A veil of cigar smoke hung in the room. Daniel pointed to the good guest chair. "What a fuckin' week. How are you?"

  "Messed up," Lucas said. "I'd only known Cassie for a few days, and I don't think we would have lasted… but shit. She was pulling me up. I was feeling almost human."

  "Are you going back over the edge?" Daniel's face was questioning, concerned.

  "Christ, I hope not," Lucas said, rubbing his face with his open hands. He was exhausted. After the arrest, he'd gone home and crashed, slept the night and the day through, until he was shaken out of bed by Daniel's call. "Anything but that."

  "Hmm." Daniel picked up a dead cigar, rolled it between his fingers. "You've heard about the answering machine."

  "No, I've been out of it…"

  "One of the crime-scene guys-you know Andre?"

  "Yeah…"

  "Andre was going through Bekker's office, and a secretary said she'd seen Bekker coming out of the next office down from his. She thought he was just doing some housekeeping for his neighbor, who's off in Europe on a fellowship. Anyway, Andre gets on the phone and calls this guy in Europe, tells him what happened, gets his okay, and they check out his office. There's an answering machine in his desk and it's turned on. Andre pushes the button and the tape just stops; it's been rewound. But when he pushes it again, it starts running, and it's a message from Druze to Bekker, telling him it's done… We went back to the phone company, checked it, and the call came in a half-hour after the woman was killed at Maplewood. There's another fragment of conversation under that, just a few words, but it's Bekker."

  "So that ties it," Lucas said.

  "Yeah. And there are a couple of other things, coming along."

  "What about Loverboy?" Lucas asked.

  "I pulled Shearson off the shrink. Shearson thinks he's the one, but we'll never know. Not unless he just comes out and tells us." Daniel rolled the cigar between his palms. He looked more than unhappy.

  "What's wrong?" Lucas asked.

  "Shit." Daniel backhanded the cigar butt at the wall, where it bounced off the black-and-white face of Robert Kennedy and fell to the floor.

  "Let's have it," Lucas said.

  Daniel swiveled his chair to look out the window at the street. Spring was definitely coming, the days stretching toward summer. The street was sunlit, although the temperatures hung in the forties. "Lucas… God damn it. You beat up Bekker. His fuckin' face… And remember that pimp, that kid, Whitcomb? His goddamn attorney has been back to Internal Affairs-Whitcomb's family don't believe a word of that pimp story, they think their little boy fell into the hands of a bad cop. They're talking about the courts…"

  "We've handled it before…" Lucas suggested.

  "Not like this. You've been in fights. These people… Shit, these people didn't have much of a chance."

  "Whitcomb is a fucking violence freak," Lucas said, leaning forward. "Has his attorney looked at the girl he worked over?"

  "Yeah, yeah. Whitcomb's a criminal-but you're not supposed to be. And now there are rumors about you going into Druze's apartment. Too many people know about it. If you tried to deny it at a hearing, you'd be perjuring yourself. And there's more…"

  "Like what?"

  "A guy from Channel Eight was talking about making a formal complaint that you gave special privileges to one of the reporters from TV3. That wouldn't be any big deal, normally, except that Barlow picked it up, and decided that you fed her confidential investigatory material."

  "You could quash that," Lucas said.

  "Yeah. That. Or any one of the others. But the whole bunch…"

  "Cut to the action," Lucas said. "What're you telling me?"

  Daniel sighed, turned back and leaned over his desk. "I can't fuckin' save you."

  "Can't save
me?" Lucas said it quietly, almost pensively.

  "They're gonna hang your ass," Daniel said. "The shooflies and a couple of guys on the council… And I can't do a fuckin' thing about it. I told them that you'd maybe had some psychological problems, they were straightening out. They said bullshit: If he's nuts, get him off the street. And you've killed a few guys. You see that Pioneer Press editorial? Our own serial killer…"

  "Jesus Christ," Lucas said. He levered himself out of the chair and took a turn around the office, looking at all the black-and-white mug shots, the smiling sharks, a lifetime of politicians. He stopped at the color, the Hmong tapestry, the Minnesota weather calendar. "I'm gone?"

  "You could fight it, but it'd be pretty bad," Daniel said. "They'd be asking about the break-in, about the fight with Whitcomb and about Bekker's face… I mean, Jesus, you look at a picture of the way Bekker used to be, and his face now. Jesus, he looks like Frankenstein. On top of it all, you haven't gone out of your way to win any popularity contests."

  "There are some people in the press…"

  "They'll turn on you like rats," Daniel said. "Nothing gives an editorial writer more satisfaction than seeing somebody else booted out of his job."

  "I've got friends…"

  "Sure. I'm one. I'd testify for you… but like I said-and I'm a politician, I know what I'm talking about-I can't save your ass. As a friend, I tell you this: If you resign, I can turn it all off. I can short-circuit it. You walk away clean. If you decide to fight it, I'll stand with you, but…"

  "It wouldn't do any good."

  "No."

  Lucas stared bleakly at the weather calendar, then nodded and turned to face Daniel. "I knew I was getting close to the end of my string," he said. "Too much shit coming down. I just kind of wish…"

  "What?"

  "I wish I'd dumped Bekker. Damn it…"

  "Don't talk like that. To anybody," Daniel said, pointing a finger at Lucas. "That can only bring you grief."

  "When do I go?"

  Daniel tipped his head. "Soon. Like now."

  "Do you have a sheet of department paper?" Lucas asked.