Silent Prey

Reed's head bobbed. "I don't want nothing more to do with New York."

On the way back to the airport, Pike said, "I don't think I'd like New York."

"It's got some low points," Lucas said. He took a card from his pocket diary, scribbled his home phone number on the back of it. "Listen, thanks for the help. If you ever need anything from New York or Mi

The flight to Atlanta was bad, but on the way to New York, the fear seemed to slip away. Lucas had reached a tolerance level: his fifth flight in three days. He'd never flown that much in his life. More or less relaxed, he found a notepad in his overnight case and doodled on it, working it out.

Bobby Rich hadn't been assigned to work the case because he had the best qualifications-he'd been assigned simply because he knew a guy who knew Red Reed. So that Red Reed could call his friend and insist that the friend pass information to the cops about the shooting of Fred Waites.

Except that Reed hadn't been there at all. The man with white hair and the deep tan was an O'Dell invention. Lucas gri

He closed his eyes, avoiding the next question: Did Lily know?

At La Guardia he saw a copy of the Times with Bekker as a blond woman. He bought a copy, queued for a cab, got a buck-toothed driver who wanted to talk.

"Bekker, huh?" buck-tooth said, his eyes on the rearview mirror. He could see the picture on the front of the paper as Lucas read the copy inside. "There's a goofball for ya. Dressed up like a woman."

"Yeah."

"This last one, man, took her right out of a parking garage. Girlfriend says Bekker was right there with them, could've took them both."

Lucas folded the paper down and looked at the back of the driver's head. "There's another one? Today?"

"Yeah, this morning. They found her in a parking lot with the wire gag and the cut-off eyelids and the whole works. I say, when they get him, they ought to hang him off a street sign by his nuts. Be an example."

Lucas nodded and said, "Listen, forget about the hotel. Take me to Midtown South."

CHAPTER

23

Carter, Huerta and James were huddled together over a tabloid newspaper in the coordinating office, all three of them with Styrofoam coffee cups in their hands. Lucas looked in and James said, "Ke

"Have you seen Barbara Fell?" Lucas asked.

"Gone home." There was a rapid-fire exchange of glances among the three cops, a vein of thin amusement. They knew he was sleeping with Fell.

"Anything happening?"

"About a thousand sightings on Bekker, including three good ones," Carter said. "He's driving a Volkswagen Bug…"

"Jesus, that's terrific," Lucas said. "Who saw him? How'd you get the car?"

"Two witnesses last night at the parking ramp. The Carson woman's girlfriend and the cashier. The girlfriend is a sure thing-she even told us he was wearing too much Poison. That's a perfume…"

"Yeah."

"… And the cashier remembers the blond part, and says she-he-was driving an old Volkswagen. He remembers because it looked like it was in pretty good shape and he wondered if Bekker was an artist or something. He thinks it was dark green or dark blue. We're ru

"You said three people…"

"The third's a maybe, but pretty definite. The night clerk in a bookstore down in the Village says he remembers the face very clearly, says it was Bekker. He says he was buying some weird book about torture."

"Huh."

"We're getting close," Carter said. "We'll have him in two or three days, at the outside."

"I hope," Lucas said. "Any returns on that stun-gun business?"

"Three. Nothing."

"Phones?"

"Nope. Goddamn rat's nest."

"Okay…"

Lucas started to turn away, and Carter said, "You've seen the papers?"

"With Bekker? Yeah…"

"No, that was this morning; the afternoon paper…" Huerta picked up the paper they'd been looking at, closed it, and handed it to Lucas. On the cover was a woman's face, eyes staring; before the headlines reached the brain, the terror of the face came through, then the words: "Kill #8-Bekker Death Pix. "

"This legit?" Lucas asked.

"That's Carson," Carter said grimly. "He sent notes and photos to three newspapers and two TV stations. They're using them."

"Jesus…"

From down the hall, he heard a woman's voice.

Lily.

He walked down to the corner, found the room in semidarkness, the door open. He knocked, standing back, and Ke

Lucas stuck his head in. "Davenport," he said.

"Come on in. We were just talking about you," Ke

"Fuckin' photographs," Lucas said.

"The shit is hitting the fan," Ke

Lucas dragged a third chair around, bumped Ke

"And me with a fuckin' bad heart," Ke

"You told Fell about the transvestite thing," Lily said. She pushed the phone books out of the way, picked up the necktie.

Lucas shrugged, sat down, put his feet up. "We talked it over and decided it was likely."

"That came at a good time. We told everybody that Carson'll probably be the last, that we've pretty much got him pi

"Should have thought of it sooner, the cross-dressing," Ke

"Hell, you did everything right…" Lily began.

Ke

"He's pi

"We fuckin' hope," Ke

Lily had been rolling the tie in her fingers, and now she looked down at the bare-breasted Polynesian woman, shook her head and said, "This is the craziest tie."

"Don't knocker it," said Ke

"You were jerking me around, Gauguin and Christian Dior," Lucas said to Ke

Lily laughed again, and Ke

"Looked him up," Lucas said. "He died in 1903. He was associated with the symbolists."

"Now if you knew what a symbolist was, you'd be in fat city," Lily said.

"It was the use of color specifically for its symbolic impact, the emotional and intellectual impact," Lucas said. "Which makes sense. Some holding cells are painted bubble-gum pink for the same reason. The color cools people out."

Ke

"Carter tells me you'll have Bekker in three days at the outside," Lucas said.

"That fuckhead. That's the kind of talk that gets us in trouble," Ke

"Still…"

"I figure no more than a week," Ke