Silent Prey

CHAPTER
18

They wound up in the courtyard, a half-dozen senior police officers shouting at each other. Lights burned in every room of the building and uniformed cops crawled through it inch by inch, but the people in the courtyard knew the search was pointless.

"Silly motherfucker… How many got out? How many?"

"I was trying to save his ass. Where the fuck were your guys, huh? Where the fuck…" A square guy pushed a tall guy, and for a moment it looked like a fight; but then other cops got between them.

"Jesus Christ, you gotta go out the back, the fuckin' TV is sweeping the streets…"

"Who had the watch on the stairs? Where was…"

"Shut up." Kennett had been sitting on a bench, talking to Lily and O'Dell. Now he shouldered through the ring of cops, his voice cutting through the babble like an icicle going through a sponge cake. "Shut the fuck up."

He stood on the sidewalk, pale, two fingers hovering over his heart. He turned to one of the cops: "How many got out?"

"Listen, it wasn't my…"

"I don't give a shit whose fault it was," Kennett snarled. "We all fuckin' blew it. What I want to know is, how many got out?"

"I don't know," the cop said. "Twenty or thirty. When everybody stampeded backstage, a bunch of people in the lobby and near the doors just went outside. Nobody was there to stop them. When I came back… most of them were gone."

"There were only about fifty people in the auditorium," Kennett said. "So maybe half of them got out."

"But that's not the thing," the cop said.

"What's the thing?" Kennett asked. His voice was like a hangnail, sharp, ragged, painful.

"The thing is, I looked into every one of those faces. Bekker wasn't there. I don't care if you hang me up by my nuts, you ain't gonna get me to say he was, 'cause he wasn't. He wasn't there."

"He had to be somewhere," Carter snapped.

"Nobody came across the stage. Nobody went out through the courtyard. There was only one other door, and that doesn't go anywhere, it just comes back to the lobby…"

There was a long moment of silence, compounded of anger and fear. Heads would roll for this one. Heads would roll. A couple of cops glanced furtively at O'Dell and Lily, deep in private talk. After a moment, Huerta said, "He must've been here all the time. He must've hid out before we got here, saw that he couldn't get out, figured we'd sweep the place before we left, and nailed Frank to get his radio."

Kennett was nodding. "That couldn't have been Frank who called…"

"Sounded like Frank…"

"So Bekker's got a deep voice, big fuckin' deal. We had people back there in five seconds, and Frank was gone. It took a while to mess him up like that."

"Then why'd he call? Bekker? If he was already gone?" Kuhn asked.

"To get us running back there," Lucas said. "Say he goes back there, nails Frank, takes the radio, goes off through the side door around the corner from the lobby, makes the call, then pushes through the door and goes right through the lobby and out."

"Billy said nobody came through the door," Kuhn said.

A young plainclothes cop with his hands in his pockets shook his head. "I swear to God, I don't see how anybody could've got through there. Lieutenant Carter told me to stay there, and even when Frank called, I stayed there. I saw everybody running…"

"But your back was to the door?" Kennett asked.

"Yeah, but I was right there," the young cop said. He could feel the goat horns being fitted for his head.

Kennett turned to Lucas: "You're sure he didn't come past you?"

"I don't see how. It's like this guy said…" Lucas pointed at the cop who looked at the faces. "I looked at every goddamn face coming through the door; he just wasn't there."

"All right, so he was inside," Kennett said. "We assume he made the radio call as a diversion to get out…"

"Or to hide," somebody said. "If he had a bolthole during the day…"

"We'll find out," Kennett said, peering up at the brightly lighted windows. He glanced sideways at Lucas, who shook his head. Bekker was gone. "The other possibility is that he went out a window somewhere and made the radio call to pull the guys off the street…"

"What if he had keys and was already outside, and was just taunting us?" one of the cops asked.

They talked for twenty minutes before drifting away to specific assignments, or simply drifting away, afraid that their names and faces might become associated with the disaster. In the alcove outside the stage door, a crime-scene crew worked under heavy lights, picking up what they could. But there was no real question: it was Bekker. But Bekker, how?

"Okay, now we're out of cop work: now we're down to politics," Kennett said to Lucas as they stood together in the courtyard.

"You gonna hang?" Lucas asked.

"I could," Kennett nodded. "I gotta start calling people, gotta get some spin on the thing, fuzz it up."

"Gonna be tough, with you right here," Lucas said.

"So what would you do?" Kennett asked.

"Lie," Lucas said.

Kennett was interested. "How?"

"Blame Frank. Unlock the back door," Lucas said, nodding to the opposite side of the courtyard. "Tell them that Bekker hid in the building during the day and that he must've stolen keys from somewhere. That when he came out and got down here, cutting through the courtyard, using his keys-where we only had one man, because we'd secured the place ahead of time-he ran head-on into Frank. There was a fight, but Bekker's a PCP freak and he killed Frank and escaped back out the other side of the building. If anybody gets blamed, the blame goes on Frank. But nobody'll say anything, because Frank's dead. You could even do a little off-the-record action. Tell them that Frank fucked up, but we can't say it publicly. He was a good guy and now he's dead…"

"Hmph." Kennett pulled at his lip. "What about the radio call?"

"Somebody's already suggested that he was taunting us: go with that," Lucas suggested. "That he was already outside. That fits Bekker's character, as far as the media's concerned."

"Do you think…?"

"No, I think he suckered us."

"So do I." Kennett stared at his feet for a moment, then glanced at Lily and O'Dell. "The story might not hold up for long."

"If we get him before it breaks, nobody'll care."

Kennett nodded. "I better go talk to O'Dell. We'll need a ferocious off-the-record media massage."

"You think he'll help?"

Kennett permitted himself a very thin grin. "He was here too," Kennett said. "They'd just pulled up outside…"

Kennett started toward Lily and O'Dell, then stopped and turned, hands in his pockets, no longer grinning. "Get your ass back to Minneapolis. Find something for us, God damn it."