Eyes of Prey

by John Sandford

  The conference started angry and got angrier. Lester hadn’t wanted to do it, and every reporter but one had been beaten on it. By the end, the Channel Eight reporter was standing on a chair, shouting at Lester. When she stood on the chair, the cops around her sat down; she wore a very short black leather skirt.

  “I guess you gotta get what you can get,” Sloan said, laughing. Lester had fled, and Sloan, Lucas and Harmon Anderson walked together down the hall toward Homicide.

  “Department full of fuckin’ perverts,” Anderson said, adding, “You could see the crack of her ass, if you sat just right.”

  “Jesus Christ, Harmon, I think that’s sexual abuse in the third degree,” Lucas said, laughing with Sloan.

  “You know why they’ve got such great voices, the TV people?” Anderson asked, going off in a new direction. “Because they reverberate in the space where most people have brains . . .”

  Swanson came slouching down the hall toward them, heavyset, glittering gold-rimmed glasses. “Did I miss it?”

  “You missed it,” Sloan confirmed. “Anderson got his first look at a woman’s ass in twenty years.”

  “How about Bekker?” Lucas asked.

  “Not a thing. We got his ass in here first thing, asked him if he wanted a lawyer, he said no. He said he’d ask if he needed one. So we said, What’d you do? He said he spent the late afternoon working at home, and the evening watching television. We asked what he was watching, and he told us. He was, like, watching CNBC in the afternoon, some kind of stock market shows, and then the news . . . . He went out around nine o’clock to get a bite to eat. We got that confirmed . . . .”

  “How about phone calls?”

  “He talked to one guy on the phone, a guy from the hospital, but that was late, way after the killing.”

  “Who called who?” Lucas asked. The four detectives circled around each other as Swanson talked.

  “The other guy called in . . .” Swanson said.

  “Could have a VCR, tape the shows,” Anderson suggested.

  “He does have a VCR,” Swanson said. “I don’t know about taping the shows. Anyway, we got his statement, and shit, there was nothing to say. He didn’t know Armistead, doesn’t even know if he’d ever seen her on the stage . . . . He was just . . . There wasn’t anything there. We sent him home.”

  “You believe him?” Lucas asked.

  Swanson’s forehead furrowed. “I don’t know. When you’re leaning on a guy, like we been leaning on Bekker, scouting around his neighborhood, calling his neighbors, all that . . . and something happened that could clear him, you’d think he’d be peeing all over himself in a rush to prove he didn’t do it. He wasn’t like that. He was cool. Answered all the questions like he was reading off of file cards.”

  “Keep up the pressure,” Anderson said.

  Swanson shook his head. “That ain’t gonna work with this guy. I’m starting to think—he’s an asshole, but he could be innocent.”

  They were still talking about it when Jennifer Carey turned the corner.

  “Lucas . . .” Her voice was feminine, clear, professional.

  Lucas turned in instant recognition. Sloan, Anderson and Swanson turned with him, then moved away down the corridor, furtively watching, as Lucas walked toward her.

  “Daniel said you’d be talking afterwards,” Jennifer said. She was slender and blonde, with a few thirties wrinkles on a well-kept face. She wore a pink silk blouse with a gray suit, and almost stopped his heart. She and Lucas had a two-year-old daughter but had never married. They’d been estranged ever since their daughter had been wounded.

  “Yeah. Didn’t see you at the conference.”

  “I just got here. Where will you be talking? Down at the conference room?” She was all business, brisk, impersonal. There would be more to it than that, Lucas knew.

  “Nah. I’ll just be around . . . . How are you?”

  “I’m working with a new unit,” she said, ignoring the question. “Could we get you outside, on the steps?”

  “Sure. How’ve you been?” he persisted.

  She shrugged and turned away, heading for the steps. “About the same. Are you coming over Saturday afternoon?”

  “I . . . don’t think so,” he said, tagging along, hands in his pockets.

  “Fine.”

  “When are we going to talk?”

  “I don’t know,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Soon?”

  “I don’t think so,” she threw back. “Not soon.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. He reached forward, hooked her arm and spun her around.

  “Let the fuck go of me,” she said, jerking her arm away, angry.

  Lucas had always worried that women feared him: that he was too rough, even when he didn’t mean to be. But her tone cut. He put a hand against her chest and shoved, and she went back against the wall of the corridor, her head snapping back. “Shut up . . .” he snarled.

  “You fuck . . .” He thought she was going to swing, and stepped back, then realized that she was frightened and that her hand, coming up, was meant to block a punch. Her wrist looked thin and delicate, and he put up his hands, palms out.

  “Just listen,” he said, his voice dragging out in a hoarse near-whisper. “I’m tired of this shit. More than tired. I can’t stand it anymore. In the past couple of days, I went through to the other side. So I’m telling you: I’m ready to quit. I’m ready to get out. You’ve been jerking me around for months and I can’t deal with it and I won’t deal with it. I’m not gone yet, but if you ever want to talk, you better decide soon, because I’ll tell you what: You wait much longer and I ain’t gonna be there to talk to.”

  She shook her head, tears starting, but they were tears of anger, and he turned and walked down the corridor. A TV3 producer stepped out into the hallway and looked down toward Jennifer, still flattened against the wall, looked into Lucas’ face as he went by, then looked back at Jennifer and said, “Jen, you okay? Jen? What happened?”

  As he went out on the steps to meet the cameras, Lucas heard Jennifer answer, “Nothing happened.”

  All five stations did quick interviews, Lucas standing on the City Hall steps for four of them, suppressing his anger with Jennifer, aware as he talked that it was slowly leaking away, leaving behind a cold hollowness. He did the fifth interview on the street, leaning against his Porsche. When the camera was done, Lucas stepped around the hood of the Porsche to get into the car, looking carefully for Jennifer, half hoping she’d be there, not believing she would be. She wasn’t. Instead, a Star Tribune reporter came after him, a dark-haired, overweight man with a beard who always carried a pocketful of sliced carrots wrapped in waxed paper.

  “Tell me something,” the reporter said. He waggled a carrot slice at Lucas, in a friendly way. “Between you and me—background, not for attribution, whatever. Are you looking forward to hunting this guy?”

  Lucas thought for a second, glanced at the last television reporter, who was out of earshot, and nodded. “Yeah. I am. There’s not been much going on.”

  “After busting the Crows, the other stuff must seem small-time . . . .” The reporter gobbled the carrot stick in two quick bites.

  “Nah,” Lucas said. “But this is . . . interesting. People are dying.”

  “Will you get him?”

  Lucas nodded. “I don’t know. But we’d be better off if we could get to Stephanie Bekker’s lover. He knows things he doesn’t know he knows . . . .”

  “Wait a minute,” the reporter said, slipping a slender notebook out of the breast pocket of his sport coat. “Can I attribute this last part? Can we go back on the record just for that?”

  “Okay. But just that bit: Mrs. Bekker’s friend—quote me as calling him a friend—has actually seen the guy. He might think he’s told us about her, calling nine-one-one, sending the note, but he hasn’t. A good interview team would find things in his memory that he has no idea are there. And I’m not talking about giving him t
he third degree, either. If I could get him ten minutes on the telephone, or if Sloan could . . . I think we’d have a hundred-percent-better chance of breaking this thing in a hurry.”

  The reporter was scribbling notes. “So you want him to come in.”

  “We want anything we can get from him,” Lucas said. He unlocked the Porsche’s door and opened it. “Off the record again?”

  “Sure.”

  “Loverboy’s our only handle, that’s how bad we need him. There’s something wrong with this case, and without his help, I don’t know how we’ll find out what it is.”

  His anger with Jennifer came back as he drove across town, replaying the scene in the hall. She knew about scenes, knew about drama, knew psychology. She didn’t have to be the one who asked him for an interview. She was jerking him around, and it was working. The optimism, the lift of the last few days, was gone. He accelerated out the Sixth Street exit onto I-94. Go home and go to bed, he thought. Think it over. But his eye caught the sign for the Riverside exit, and without good reason, he took it, then turned left at the top of the ramp and headed down toward the West Bank theater district.

  Cassie Lasch was sitting on the floor of the ticket lobby of the Lost River Theater. She was wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt and was digging through a gray plastic garbage bag. Lucas pushed through the revolving door into the lobby, and, as she looked up at him, he stopped short.

  “The actress,” Lucas said. He paused, his eyes still adjusting to the dim light. “Lasch. Cathy.”

  “Cassie. How are you, Davenport? Want to help? I’m looking for a clue.”

  Lucas squatted next to her. The weather was too cold for a T-shirt, but the woman seemed not to notice. Her arms were strong, with long, round muscles that carried up to her neck. And she was tanned, as much as a redhead could tan, too smoothly, by artificial lights. A lifter, Lucas thought. “What clue?”

  “The cops were here all morning and I forgot to tell them . . .” She stopped rummaging through the garbage for a moment. A tiny scrap of paper was stuck to the side of her jaw, and her red hair had fallen over her eyes. She brushed it back and said, “Nobody asked about the guy who tried to get on the guest list last night. Remember, I told you that the ticket-office lady tried to call Elizabeth about the freebee, and couldn’t get her?”

  “I remember,” Lucas said, nodding. He reached over to her cheek, peeled off the scrap of paper, showed it to her and flicked it away.

  “Thanks . . . uh . . .” She’d lost her thought, and she smiled up at him, her crooked tooth catching on her lower lip. Her face was just the slightest bit foxy, and mobile. Freckles were scattered lightly over the bridge of her nose.

  “The guest list,” Lucas prompted.

  “Oh, yeah. This guy says he’s some big-time reviewer and wants on the list as Elizabeth’s friend. I asked the ticket-takers this morning and they said they didn’t give out any freebees last night. Whoever called didn’t show up. That could be a clue.” She said it seriously, intently, like a Miss Marple with terrific breasts.

  “Why is that a clue?”

  “Because maybe if he knew Elizabeth, he went over there . . . . I don’t know, but he didn’t show up.”

  Lucas thought for a minute, then nodded. “You’re right. The list is in here?”

  “Somewhere. On a piece of notebook paper from one of those teeny brown spiral notebooks. Probably wadded up.”

  “So let’s dump it out,” he said. He picked up the garbage bag by its bottom and shook it onto the lobby rug. Most of the litter was paper, much of it soaked with Coke and 7-Up, and toward the bottom, they found a paper coffee filter full of grounds.

  “Ugh. Maybe you shouldn’t have done that,” Cassie said, wrinkling her nose at the mess.

  “The hell with it,” Lucas said. “We need the list.”

  They spent five minutes pawing through the sodden trash, working shoulder to shoulder. She had, Lucas decided, one of the better bodies he’d ever brushed up against. Everything was hard, except what was supposed to be soft, and that looked very soft. Every time she leaned forward, her breasts swelled forward against the thin fabric of the T-shirt . . . .

  Jesus Christ, Davenport, you’re ready for the peep shows. . . .

  He smiled to himself and picked up a cardboard cup. Inside was a paper wad the size of a marble. He unwrapped it, turned it around. At the top somebody had written “Guests” and, under that, “Donaldson Whitney, LA Times.”

  “This it?”

  Cassie took it, looked at it and said, “That’s it. Kelly—the ticket-window lady—said the guy was from LA.”

  Lucas stood, the cartilage in his knees popping. “Got a phone? Someplace quiet?”

  “There’s one in the office, but there’re a couple of people in there . . . . There’s another one in the control booth. What do we do about this garbage?” She looked down at the pile of trash on the floor. The coffee grounds were smeared where Lucas had stepped on them.

  He frowned, as though seeing it for the first time, and said, “I don’t care. Whatever you want.”

  “Well, fuck that, I didn’t put it there,” Cassie said. She flipped her hair and turned away. “C’mon, I’ll show you the control booth.”

  She led him down a hall to the theater auditorium. In the light of day, the place was a mess. Black paint was scaling off concrete-block walls, the seatbacks were stained, the overhead light rack was a tangle of electrical wires, ropes, spotlights, outlets and pulleys. At night, none of that would be visible.

  The control booth was at the back of the auditorium, up two short flights of stairs. The booth itself was built out of plywood, painted black on the outside, unfinished inside. A barstool and a secretary’s swivel chair sat in front of a control panel. Extension and computer cords were fixed to the walls and floors with gaffer tape. A phone was screwed to the wall to the left of the control panel.

  Cassie noticed him looking around and said, “No money for luxuries.”

  “First time I’ve been in a theater control booth,” Lucas said.

  She shrugged. “They mostly look like this, unless the theater’s getting government money.”

  Lucas used his credit card to call Los Angeles, Cassie leaning against the control panel, arms locked behind her back, listening with interest. Whitney was not at his desk, Lucas was told. He pressed, was switched around, and eventually talked to an arts copy editor who made the mistake of picking up a ringing telephone. He said that Whitney was on vacation.

  “In Minneapolis?” Lucas asked.

  “Why would he be in fuckin’ Minneapolis in April?” the copy editor asked crossly. “He’s in Micronesia on a skin-diving trip.”

  “Well?” Cassie asked, when Lucas had hung up.

  “Well, what?”

  “Was it him last night?”

  “Uh, I appreciate your help, Miss Lasch, but this is police business . . . .”

  “You’re not going to tell me?” She couldn’t believe it. She reached out, took hold of his jacket sleeve and tugged at it. “C’mon.”

  “No.”

  “No fair . . .” Her eyes were as large as any he’d ever seen, and dark again, with a spark. She tipped her head, a tiny smile on her face. “I’ll show you my tits if you tell me.”

  “What?” He was surprised and amused. Amused, he thought, watching himself.

  “Out there in the lobby, you were doing everything but feeling me up, so . . . tell me, and I’ll give you a look.”

  Lucas considered. “This is embarrassing,” he said finally.

  “I don’t embarrass very easily.”

  “Maybe not, but I do,” Lucas said.

  Her eyebrows went up. “You’re embarrassed? That shows a certain unexpected depth. Do you play the piano?”

  She was moving too fast. “Ah, no . . .”

  “Quick, Davenport, make up your mind . . . .” She was teasing now.

  Lucas put her off: “What do you do besides act? You said you don’t get the good par
ts.”

  “I’m one of the world’s great waitresses. I learned in the theater restaurants in New York . . . .”

  “Hmph.”

  “So how about it?” she pressed.

  “You’d have to keep your mouth shut,” he said severely.

  “Sure. I’m very secretive.”

  “I’ll bet . . . . All right: The Times guy is in Micronesia, on a skin-diving trip. Micronesia’s in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “I know where it is, I’ve been there,” she said. “Then there’s no way in hell he could have been here last night.”

  “No.” Lucas glanced around. There was no one else in the theater area, and the booth was even more isolated. “So . . .”

  “If you’re waiting to see my tits, forget it,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Ha. Rat out on a deal, huh?” he said, grinning.

  “Of course. When you want to find out something, first you try treachery—that wouldn’t work in this case—and then you make weird sex offers,” she said calmly. “Usually, you’ll find out what you want to know. I learned that from dealing with agents.”

  “Fuckin’ women,” Lucas said. “So casual about the way you break a guy’s heart.”

  “You look thoroughly destroyed,” she said.

  Lucas took a short step toward her, not knowing exactly what he was planning to do. Whatever it was, she didn’t back away; but at that moment, a man walked out on the stage below them, and Lucas stopped and looked down. Without a word, and apparently unaware that they were in the booth, the man hit a light switch, stepped to the center of the stage and began juggling. He’d brought a half-dozen baseballs with him, and they spun in a circle, smoothly, without a miss, and then, just as abruptly as he’d begun juggling, he started to tap-dance. Not a simple tap, but a dance almost baroque in its complication, and all the time the balls were in the air.

  The man was in blackface. There was something about his head . . . . An effect of the makeup, the wide white-greasepainted lips, the strange flat nose?