Hidden prey

Chapter 18

Lucas was lying on one side of the king-sized bed, copies of Smart Money, Barron's, and Rolling Stone on the other side, talking to Weather about the case-about how much longer he might be out of town, about Nadya's relationship with Reasons.

Weather said, "She told me that they were having a little fling. How could I disapprove? It's not something we haven't both done."

"I don't want to talk about that."

"Doesn't it seem a little hypocritical, though? You're so grumpy about it. I mean, look at you and Marcy-you can't say that didn't have some kind of effect inside the department. She was working for you, for God's sake. If that happened at the university, you'd have been out on your ear."

And as she said ear, Lucas heard a noise that made him sit up. A scream? Very faint. Where was Nadya's room? To Weather, he said, "Wait…" And then boom, boom, gunfire, a hollow sound, inside a room not far away.

"I hear a gun," he blurted into the phone. "I gotta go."

"What?"

He dropped the phone on the bed and grabbed his gun in its holster off the nightstand and slipped into his shoes without tying the laces and ran for the door and out the door and looked around, spotted the stairwell and ran that way, crashing into the stairwell. He saw the top of a man's head clattering down, a white paper hat and white shirt, turning on the landing below and he yelled, "Hey, hey," and nearly went after him; instinct pulled him into the path of the flight, but Nadya…

He turned and ran up, burst through the door into the corridor, saw Nadya's door open and then Nadya with a gun, in the doorway, face pale, blood on her hands, turning toward him, her gun coming up and he yelled, "No," and she shouted, "Jerry is shot, Jerry is shot."

Lucas ran to her door, saw the body on the floor and blood on Jerry's chest. Another man stepped out of his room down the hall and Lucas turned and shouted, "Get back inside and close the door," and he looked down again: Jerry's eyes were closed but he was shaking, trembling, and Lucas stepped over him into the room, punched 911 into the phone and shouted, "There's a cop shot in room seven forty-five in the Radisson, Jerry Reasons is shot. We need an ambulance and the cops."

As he went back past Nadya, he shouted, "Take care of him, the ambulance is on the way, talk on that telephone," and he plunged down the stairway, around and around, down, and out the door at the bottom and through the lobby, shouted at the girls at the desk, "Did a guy in a white shirt come through here?"

One of the girls at the desk looked as if she was about to run away, and the other one crouched slightly, and Lucas realized that he was waving his gun and he said, "I'm with the police. You've got a man shot in seven forty-five, get an elevator ready to go up. Did you see a man in a white shirt?"

"That way," one of the girls said, pointing. "He went down the hill. He was putting on a black jacket."

Lucas was outside, the cold air swatting him, but he barely noticed. Where? A siren started a few blocks away, and he ran in the direction that the woman had pointed. He could see two people, but one of them was a woman, and older; the other was a thin man in a dark jacket, looked like blond hair, walking fast, looking over his shoulder and Lucas ran after him, trying not to make too much noise. He'd worked the gap down to a hundred yards when the man saw him coming, and started running.

The fuckin' phone, Lucas thought. He'd dropped his cell phone on the bed. Stupid. He ran through the dark and the other man turned a corner, moving uphill across a vacant lot, through weeds and some bushes, past a house, and Lucas stumbled, almost lost a shoe-didn't tie his fuckin' shoes, either-and climbed over a thigh-high concrete-block retaining wall and plunged into the weeds of the vacant lot, moving fast, sand burrs ripping at his shoelaces and socks, looking uphill at a line of trees and lights in residential windows…

More sirens, three or four of them now. Lucas kept climbing, and realized he was losing the guy, the guy had gained ground on him. Lucas kept going, lost the guy in the darkness of a residential street, but knew which way he was going, and ran that way, saw him again-and the guy saw him, turned and raised his arm and Lucas saw three quick sparks and went down on his stomach, thinking, "Too late," but nothing came close, and he scrambled back to his feet and saw a man with a dog, and the man ran up on a lawn, away from him, and Lucas kept going, north, he thought, running awkwardly with his gun held in both hands out in front of him…

Saw the man again, again a spark-some kind of flash retarder on the pistol, Lucas thought-and the man had the hillside behind him, and Lucas raised over his head and fired two quick shots with his.45. Way too far away, but maybe, maybe it'd slow the guy down somehow. The man scrambled away, running through yards and around trees, sometimes a faint movement in the streetlights, sometimes simply absent.

Had to make him hide. If Lucas could make him stop, make him hide, make him play cat-and-mouse, he could get the Duluth cops to throw a cordon around the neighborhood, seal it up, and then start going through it yard by yard and garage by garage. If the guy kept moving, though, sooner or later he'd lose himself in the dark…

Lucas sprinted along the street, tired, mouth hanging open, gasping for air. He ran three miles, three times a week, but it was on the flat; so far this had been all uphill.

Now where? There: quick movement, man turning down the hill, running downhill now. Still crashing through yards, over fences. Lucas followed, but the noise was terrific as he hit stuff in the dark, bushes, branches, weeds, a can, then the guy out front of him hit a barbecue grill and it clattered across a patio and a few seconds later, a backyard light came on and Lucas saw him disappear through a hedge.

A branch caught him on the cheek and he felt the skin rip; shit. He kept going, through the lighted yard, managed to kick the lid on the barbecue, and a guy in a T-shirt on a three-season porch yelled, "Hey, what ya…" and Lucas was through the hedge into the next yard, between two houses, onto the next street, working back into business buildings.

Two ways to go, left or right. He ran left a few yards, saw nothing, turned back right, saw nothing, went that way, then saw the dark movement back to the left and ran after it. But he'd lost more ground. The movement this time was a hundred and fifty yards away: the guy had a definite advantage because he apparently knew where he was going, and Lucas thought, Car. He's gotta have a car, probably close to the hotel.

The problem was, they were both running back toward the hotel again, and there was no way to shortcut the other man. He got a stitch in his side, ran through it, turned the corner where he'd seen the movement. Nothing down the hill, but he ran that way anyway, crossed a street, was coming to another when a cop car went by, lights flashing, then suddenly pulled to a stop and Lucas came down into the street and the cop piled out of his car and screamed something at him and Lucas slowed and looked toward him and then the cop fired a shot with a pistol, and Lucas screamed, "BCA, BCA, BCA," and raised his hands and the cop screamed something and Lucas couldn't hear it, and then the cop fired again and Lucas felt something pluck at his shirt and he started running down the hill again.

A moment later, he heard the cop car coming around and he ducked around the next corner and saw, two blocks away, the last sight of the man in the black jacket, turning downhill on that block. No chance to catch him, the cop car coming, no way to outrun it.

Lucas stepped into the street, stuck his gun into his belt, lifted his hands above his head. The cop car slewed around the corner, then nearly ran across the curb into the building, and two cops jumped out, and Lucas screamed, "I'm a cop. I'm a cop with the BCA. The guy who shot Reasons-"

But the cops were screaming at him, their guns pointed, and Lucas shouted, "BCA, you dumb motherfuckers," and finally one of the cops waved a hand at his partner and said, "Put the gun on the street."

"Fuck you," Lucas yelled back. "My hands are over my head, I'm not touching the gun again, you dumb motherfuckers'll shoot me sure as shit. I'm Lucas Davenport, I'm with the state and I'm staying at the Radisson and the guy who shot Jerry Reasons just ran around that corner down there and he's gone, or he's gonna be gone by the time you assholes figure this out."

Now the two cops were confused, and another cop car pulled up and the passenger-side cop came from behind his door and said something to his partner, and they skated around the car, pistols pointed shakily at Lucas, and then one cop said, "Put your hands down and behind your back, sir. We're gonna cuff you till we find out what's going on."

Lucas tried to be calm: "The guy who shot Reasons just ran around that corner-"

"There are more people down the block; just try to be calm and put your hands down…"

Lucas put his hands down, and said, "If you don't get a car down there in five seconds, he's gone," and the cops said, "That's all taken care of, sir," but he didn't exactly say sir as if he meant it, and the driver-cop cuffed him, the other cop took the.45 out of his belt.

Lucas was talking fast. "If we go back to the Radisson, I've got my ID in my room, and I talked to a guy named Larry Kelly in your detective bureau when we found the old lady's stuff down by the tracks… and the Russian investigator can ID me… Listen, you gotta find out…" He stopped, took a breath: too late. "Ah, fuck, never mind."

"Never mind, what?" asked the cop who cuffed him. Lucas could tell he'd started to believe.

"Never mind trying to put more guys on the killer. He's gone. He's gone. Didn't even get a look at his fuckin' car…" He looked down the street, pulled around, hoping against hope that a car might zip through one of the intersections he could see. None did.

Now they believed him a little more; didn't uncuff him, but he said, "Look, let's go over to the hotel. Reasons looked pretty bad. And be careful of the.45. The safety's on, but it's still cocked and there's a round in the chamber."

He let them put him in the backseat of the squad car, and then said, "Put out a call and tell them to nail any speeders they see. I don't know what kind of car, but we're looking for a thin blond guy in a black jacket or a white shirt. He was wearing a white shirt when I saw him, but he pulled a black jacket over it."

The driver put out the call immediately; then the other guy said, "What about Reasons?"

Lucas thought about Reasons shaking and trembling on the floor of Nadya's room. Brain death. He'd seen it before, when a guy's brain was starving of oxygen. "I think Jerry… Jerry was hit pretty hard," Lucas said. "I called nine one one before I ran after the guy, but he was hit hard."

"You think…"

"Yeah, I think."

"Jesus Christ," the cop said, his eyes big. "Jesus Christ. I was just talking to him this afternoon."

The uniform cops brought Lucas through the police lines around the hotel, everybody looking at him hard-they thought he might be a suspect-and they went up in the elevator and Nadya, in the hallway, her blouse soaked with black blood, saw them coming and said, "Lucas, why are you…" and then Larry Kelly, the cop who'd been leading the Wheaton murder, and who had been talking to her, turned, saw his arms pinned behind him and asked, "What's going on with you?" looking querulously behind him at the uniform cops.

"How about Jerry?" Lucas asked.

Kelly shook his head. "Didn't even bother to transport him. He's still here."

Lucas stepped forward and looked in the room: Reasons was as Lucas had left him, sprawled faceup on the carpet.

"So what about you?" Kelly said, pressing.

"Found him in the street waving a gun, so we picked him up," one of the cops said, and then, to Lucas, "Sorry," and he stepped behind Lucas and popped off the cuffs.

"Did you see the man?" Nadya asked.

"I chased him about a fuckin' mile," Lucas said, rubbing his wrists. "Then we sort of got tangled up…"

"What?" Kelly demanded of the uniforms, incredulity riding his voice. "You had two guys running and you busted this one?"

"Ah, there was no way for them to know," Lucas said. "They couldn't see the other guy and there I was running around in the dark, no ID. Nothing but a gun. They did okay."

"Maybe not," one of the uniformed said. He handed Lucas his.45. "I sorta let off a couple of rounds."

"Yeah." Lucas remembered. He looked down at his left shirtsleeve, put his little finger through the nine-millimeter hole.

"Ah, fuck me," the cop said, turning away.

"We can talk about it," Lucas said. "Just everybody keep their mouths shut for a while, and… we can talk about it."

"Go," Kelly said to the uniforms. "But don't go too far."

"What about Jerry?" one of them asked.

"Jerry's dead," Kelly said.

"Jesus, I just talked to him this afternoon."

"Most of us did," Kelly said. "Go."

"Are you all right?" Lucas asked Nadya.

"Yes, I am all right. If Jerry hadn't been here, I would have been…" She tipped her head toward the doorway. And she didn't look all right; she looked scared to death; as they talked, she started to shake, and Kelly put his arm around her, squeezing her. "There is nothing between me and death, but luck and sex and coincidence."

"You believe in coincidence."

"Yes," she said, sadly.

"So what happened?"

"A man came to the door. He said he had a pizza, but I ordered no pizza. But Jerry was standing in the bedroom door and… he was leaving, we had been in bed already… and he went to the door and opened it and I came behind him to say I ordered no pizza, and the man there, bang. But not so loud a bang. I saw Jerry start to fall and I ran back to the bed and got his pistol and the man came to the door and I shoot at him three times, and he shoots at me two or three times and hits the lamp…"

"You didn't hit him?"

"No. I know the pistol well enough to fire it, but I am not intimate with it, and everything was so fast that he came to the door and I shoot, shoot, shoot, with no thinking. Then he ran, and I ran to the door, and then you came."

"Ah, brother…"

Kelly: "What the fuck is going on?"

"We don't know," Lucas said. To Nadya. "How good a look did you get? Could you identify him?"

She shook her head. "I see almost nothing. Nothing! I see the hat, I see the shoot, I run to get the gun and I shoot and shoot and then he was gone."

"Goddamnit."

"But," she said, holding up a finger. She turned and pointed at a blaze orange glove on the floor. "This is his glove. This belongs not to us, and I saw it when he was at the door… saw the orange. He must have lost it."

"We're gonna bag it, check it for DNA," Kelly said, as Lucas stepped over to look at it. It was a cheap, fuzzy, synthetic-cloth glove like the ones deer hunters used.

"You saw the guy," Kelly said to Lucas.

The phone rang and Nadya said, "I will get that," and edged around Reasons's body.

"Yes. White guy, white hat, one of those paper pizza hats, blond, I think, wearing a white shirt when I saw him first," Lucas said. "The girls down in the lobby said he was pulling on a black jacket when he went by them… He was carrying a pizza box. The whole fuckin' time, he was carrying a pizza box."

"All right. We'll check the pizza places, see if somebody picked up a pizza."

"Probably a dummy to cover the gun."

"Yeah, I think."

Nadya started shouting into the phone, in Russian, then she turned toward Kelly and Lucas and pointed at the phone and Lucas said, "Shit, it's somebody. You got a cell phone?"

Kelly handed him a cell phone and he called Harmon and when Harmon came up, as cool as ever, Lucas said, "We've got a phone call coming into room seven forty-five at the Radisson exactly now, and we need it traced… Shit."

Nadya was shaking her head, and hung up.

To Harmon, Lucas said, "You gotta trace that call. We got a big problem here…" He explained quickly and Harmon said, "This is a whole new thing. I'll check out guys, but I'm pretty sure that nobody that we're watching is in Duluth."

"Hang on," Lucas said.

To Nadya, "What was that all about?"

"I must call the embassy," she said. "This was a Russian, a man. He said that I should leave, or I will be killed, like Nikitin. He said this action is none of the concern of, of, my people. He called us the siloviki. This, I do not think, was an American. This siloviki, used this way, meaning members of the KGB, this is a new usage."

"So you're saying…"

"Maybe this is not the local Americans. Maybe… I don't know. This siloviki, this is a word Oleshev would have used."

"This is Harmon," he said, handing her the phone. "Tell him about it." She took the phone and stepped away.

Lucas said to Kelly, "We're gonna need the feds in a major way. This thing is out of control."

"You're saying Reasons was killed by a Russian. A Russian Russian. By mistake."

Lucas said, "I don't know anymore. For a pro, like you know, an international spy hit man, the guy kinda fucked up."

"I don't see that. There was no reason to think that Jerry would be here," Nadya said, the phone at her side. "Besides that, he was good enough."

"Yeah…" The orange glove caught his eye. "But would an international assassin wear a goddamn used blaze orange hunter's glove? Where would he even get one at this time of year?"

They thought about that for a minute, then Lucas: "Climbing down from the international intrigue for a minute… Has somebody gone to tell Mrs. Reasons?"

Nadya, hand to mouth: "Oh, my God." Lucas could hear Harmon's voice: "Hello? Hello?"