“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 & 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 café 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 . . .” r />
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 . . . .
CHAPTER
25
Lucas heard the first newspaper hit the front porch. That’d be the Pioneer Press. The StarTribune should be ten minutes later. He dozed, half listening, drifting from dream to linear thought and back to dream, dream editing reality, Jennifer and the baby, Cassie, other faces, other times. He inserted the thwap of the StarTribune; but the dream logic wouldn’t buy it, and he woke up, yawned and stumbled out to get the paper. At five-thirty it was still dark, but he could see the heavy gray clouds groaning overhead and smell the rain heavy in the air.
Not responsible . . . Lucas Smith.
He glanced at the comics and went back to bed, falling facedown across the sheets. Cassie’s perfume lingered on them, although she’d insisted on going back to her apartment.
“We’re getting close on the play. I shouldn’t fool around late and get up late. I have to work,” she’d said as she dressed.
The perfume was comforting, a sign of society. He slept on her side, dreaming again, until the telephone rang. Startled, he thought, Loverboy, and rose through his dreams and snatched at the telephone, almost knocking the lamp off the bedstand.
“Davenport.”
“Lucas, this is Del . . .”
“Yeah, what’s happening?” He sat up, put his feet on the floor. Cold.
“I’m, uh, over at Cheryl’s. We were talking last night, and she told me that Bekker has been creeping around her ward. He’s been seeing a woman patient almost every day—and the thing is, this woman can’t communicate.”
“Not at all?”