Eyes of Prey

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 treat 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 the 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."

"We've still got to get him with Bekker," Lucas protested.

"What we've got to do is turn him against Bekker, if they're really working together," Daniel said. "If we sweat him a little, we could do that."

"We don't have much to deal with," Sloan said. "With the politics of it, with four people dead, the goddamn media would have our heads if we dealt him down to get Bekker."

"Let me deal with the politics," Daniel said. He picked up one of the Polaroids and looked at it again, then up at Sloan. "We could do this: We charge him with first-degree murder, but deal down to second degree with concurrent sentences if he gives us Bekker. Then we tell the press that even though he's getting a second, we're asking the judge to depart upward on the sentence, so it's almost as good as a first…"

Sloan shrugged: "If you think you can sell it."

"I'd make us look like fuckin' geniuses," Daniel said.

"It'd still be nice if we could get something solid," Lucas pressed. "Can we cover his phones, at least? Maybe watch him for a few days before we move? See if we can get him talking to Bekker, or meeting him?"

"We couldn't get a warrant for the phones, not yet, there's just not enough," Daniel said. "If Stephanie Bekker's friend comes through, if he confirms this… then we get the warrant. And we'll want to put a microphone in his apartment."

"So everything depends on Loverboy," Lucas said. "He's got to call back tomorrow night."

"Right. Until then, we stay on Druze like holy on the pope," Daniel said, running his hands through his thinning hair. "Jesus, what a break. What a fuckin' break…"

"If it's true," Anderson said after a moment.

Bekker stood in the bay window, looking past the cut-glass diamonds in the center, out at the dark street, and decided: he had to move. Tomorrow. The cigarette case rode low in his pocket and he opened it, and chose. Nothing much, just a touch of the power. He put a tab of PCP between his teeth and sucked on it for a moment, then put it back in the case. The acrid chemicals bit into his tongue, but he hardly noticed anymore.

The drug helped him concentrate, took him out of his body, left his mind alone to work. Clarified the necessary moves. First the woman, then Druze. Get Druze to come with a last-minute call. The best time would be around five o'clock: Druze always ate at his apartment before walking over to the theater, and the woman would most likely be around at the same time.

No luxuries here, Doctor. No studies. Just do it and get out.

He paced, his legs seemingly in another country, working it out in his mind. If everything went right, it'd be so simple… But he ought to check the gun. Go to Wisconsin, fire a couple of shots. He hadn't fired it in years, not since a trip to New Mexico. He'd bought it originally in Texas, a casual purchase from a cowboy in El Paso, a drunk who needed money. Not much of a gun, a.38 special, but good enough.

As for the shot… he'd have to risk it. If she had a radio… Maybe four o'clock would be better. They should be at home then, and the people in the apartments adjoining the woman's would be less likely to be there.

He paced, working it out, working himself up, generating a heat, the light dose of PCP flipping him in and out of other-when.

At midnight, pressed by the needs of Beauty, he threw down two tabs of MDMA. The drug roared through him, hammered down the PCP, and he began to dance, to flap around the living room, on the deep carpets, and he went away…

When he returned, breathing hard, he found himself half stripped. What now? He was confused. What? The idea came. Of course. If something went wrong tomorrow-unlikely, but possible; he was confident without being stupid about it-he would have missed an opportunity. Excited now, his hands trembling, he pulled his clothes back on, got his jacket and hurried out to the car. The hospital was only ten minutes away…

He was stuck in the stairwell for five minutes.

He'd gone to his office first, done another MDMA for the creative sparkle and insight it brought, and a methamphetamine to sharpen the edge of his perceptions. Then he went to the locker room and changed into a scrub suit. The clean cotton felt cool and crisp against his skin, touching but not clinging to his chest, the insides of his arms, his thighs, like freshly starched sheets, the pleasure of its touch magnified by the ecstasy…

He left then, alternately hurrying and restraining himself. He couldn't wait. He crept up the stairs, not quite chortling, but feeling himself bursting with the joy of it. He was careful. If he was seen, it wouldn't be a disaster. But if he was not, it would be better.

At the top of the stairs, he opened the door just a crack, enough so that he could see the nurses' station fifty feet down the hall. He held onto the door handle: if anyone came through unexpectedly, he could react as though he were about to pull the door open…

The nurse spent five minutes on the telephone, standing up, laughing, while he watched her through the crack and cursed her: the drugs were working in his blood, were demanding that he go to Sybil. He held back but wasn't sure how long he could last…

There. The nurse, still smiling to herself, hung up the phone, sat down and pivoted in her chair, facing away from Bekker. He opened the door and quickly stepped through, across the hall, to where her line of vision was cut off. He moved away silently, the surgical moccasins muffling his footsteps, down the hall to Sybil's room.

Her television peered down from the ceiling; it was tuned to the word processor. He frowned. She wasn't supposed to be able to use it. He stepped next to the bed and bent over in the dim light. The processor console sat on a table to the left side of her bed. He reached out, rolled her head: she was wearing the switch. Looking up at the screen, he used the keyboard's arrow keys to move a cursor to the Select option, then pressed Enter. A series of options came up, including a dozen files. Nine of the files were named. Three were not: they had only numbers.

He was moving the cursor to select the first of the files when he realized that she was awake. Her eyes were dark and terrified.

"It's time," he whispered. The drugs roared and he moved closer to her bedside, peering down into her eyes. She closed them.

"Open your eyes," he said. She would not.

"Open your eyes…" Her eyes remained closed.

"Open your… Sybil, I really need to know what you see, there at the end; I need to see your reactions. I need your eyes open, Sybil…" He rattled a key on the keyboard. "I'm looking at your files, Sybil…"

Her eyes opened, quickly, almost involuntarily. "Ah," he said, "so there is a reason I should look…"

Her eyes were flashing frantically from Bekker to the screen. He moved the cursor to the first numbered file and pushed Enter. There were two letters on the screen: MB.

"Ah. That wouldn't stand for 'Michael Bekker,' would it?" he asked. He erased the letters, moved to the next file. KLD. He erased them. "A little message here? Do you really think they would've understood? Of course, with a few more days, you might have been able to squeeze out some more…"

Bekker went to the final file. ME. "Got the 'me' done, anyway," he said. He backspaced over the letters, and they were gone.

"Well," he said, turning back to her. "Can I convince you to keep your eyes open?"

She closed them.

"Time," he said. "And this time, we're going all the way. Really, truly, Sybil. All the way…"

He stepped to the doorway and glanced down the hall. Nobody. Sybil's eyes followed him across the room and back, dark, wet. Bekker, his eyebrows arched, placed his palm over Sybil's mouth and gently pinched her nose with the thumb and index finger of the same hand. She closed her eyes. With the index and middle fingers of the other hand, he lifted her eyelids. She stared blankly, unmoving, for fifteen seconds. Then her eyes skewed wildly, from side to side, looking for help. Her chest began to tremble and then her eyes stopped their wild careen, fixed beyond him, and began to shine.

"What is it?" Bekker whispered. "Do you see? Are you seeing? What? What?"

She couldn't tell; and at the end, her eyes, the shine still on them, rolled up, the pupils gone…

"Hello?"

Panicked, he let go of her nose, backed away from the bed, the hair rising on the back of his neck. He was trembling violently, unable to control himself. She was so close. So close.

"Hello-o-o?"

He staggered to the door, barely able to breathe, peeked out. He could see a corner of the nurses' station, but nobody there. Then a woman's voice, two rooms down the hall toward the nurses' station. The nurse: "Did you call me, Mrs. Lamey?"

Bekker chanced it, crossed the hall in three long strides and went out through the internal door. He let the door close of its own weight, let it slide shut with a barely audible hiss, then started down the stairs two at a time. Just as the door shut, he heard the nurse's voice again.

"Hello?"

She must have seen or heard something, or sensed it. Bekker fled down the stairs, the moccasins muffling his footfalls. He opened the door on his floor, stepped through and from far above heard another, more distant "Hello?"

Ten seconds later he was in his office, the door locked, the lights out. Breathing hard, heart beating wildly. Safe. A Xanax would help. He popped one, two, sat down in the dark. He would wait awhile, get his clothes. The MDMA bit him again, and he went away…

Lucas went to pick Cassie up at the theater, and waited while she scrubbed her face, watching again for Druze. And again, Druze was somewhere else.

"How's the play going?" Lucas asked.

"Pretty good. We're actually making some money, which is the important thing. It's kind of funny, has its message. That's a good combination in Minneapolis."

"Sugar pill," Lucas said.

"Something like that."

They ate a midnight snack at a French cafe in downtown Minneapolis, then went for a walk, looking in the windows of art galleries and trendoid restaurants. Two of them featured raised floors, and the younger burghers of Minneapolis peered down at them through the windows, their fat legs tucked under tablecloths almost at eye level.

"I kept looking at Carlo, I couldn't help it," Cassie said. "I'm afraid he's going to catch me and think I'm coming on to him or something."

"Be careful around him," Lucas said. "If he comes to your apartment, tell him you're in the shower, still wet, or something. Or that you've got me in there… Keep him out. Keep the door shut. Don't be alone with him."

She shivered. "No way. Though… there's a funny thing about this. Before I saw those pictures, I might have said, 'Yeah, Carlo could kill somebody.' Now, it's hard to believe that somebody you know could be doing this. Especially the business about the eyes. Carlo doesn't seem out of control; I mean, he could be crazy, but you feel like it would be a real cold crazy. Not a hot crazy. I could see Carlo strangling somebody and never showing any expression: I just can't see him in some kind of frenzy…"

"Could he fake it? Could he be cold enough to do the eyes without feeling it?"

She thought for a moment, then said, "I don't know. Maybe." She shivered again. "But I'd hate to think anybody could be that cold. And why would he, anyway?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "We don't know what's going on, yet."

At Lucas' house, in the bedroom, Cassie lay on top of him, a compact mass of muscle. She reached down and grabbed an inch of skin at his waist. "No love handles. Pretty impressive for a guy as ancient as yourself."

Lucas grunted. "I'm in awful shape. I sat on my ass all winter."

"Need a workout?"

"Like what?"

"No sex until you pin me for a three-count?"

"Aw, c'mon…"

"You c'mon, wimpy…"

They wrestled, and after a time, but not too long, she was pinned.

Beauty arrived home at about the same time. The night's work had been both frightening and exhilarating. A disappointment in some ways, true, but then again: he could go back. He still had Sybil to do. As Lucas and Cassie made love, Bekker ate two more MDMAs and danced to Carmina Burana, bouncing around the Oriental carpet until he began to bleed…