"I have a friend in that building. She's an actress with the same theater Druze is at," he said. "Would you call her?"
"Sure…"
Lucas could see the apartments along I-94, six blocks from the theater, when Del called back. "No answer."
"Shit." Lucas glanced at his watch. She should be at the theater. "Could you call the theater, ask for her?"
He was on Riverside, hurrying now, weaving through traffic. He jumped a light, scared a drunk and a student, saw the apartment building ahead.
"Lucas, we called, and she hasn't shown up."
"Ah, Jesus, listen, I gotta check on her. We've been talking about the case…"
"I'll meet you out in front. I've talked to the manager a couple of times."
Del was walking across Riverside when Lucas arrived. Lucas dumped the car and met him on the sidewalk.
"Anything?"
"No. I called the manager, she should be… There she is."
The manager was holding the lobby door, and Del introduced Lucas. "This is not official," Lucas said. "She's a personal friend of mine, she's had some serious problems, and she hasn't shown up at work. We're worried."
"Okay. Since you're the police."
They rode up to the sixth floor in silence, listening to the elevator rattle against the sides of the shaft, watching the numbers click on the counter. There was nobody in the corridor outside Cassie's apartment. Lucas knocked on her door. Nothing. Knocked again.
"Open it," he said to the manager, stepping back. She fitted her key to the lock and pushed the door open. Del shoved past Lucas. An odor filled the small front room…
"You stay right fuckin' here, Lucas," Del shouted. He grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out of the doorway, and held the woman back with the other hand. "You stay right fuckin' here…"
Del headed for the bedroom. Lucas pushed past the bewildered woman, right behind him.
Cassie.
Her face was turned away. He knew, but he thought Maybe she's… But the blood was all over the bed, and when he stumbled up to it, and saw her eyes… and the huge red gash under her chin, cutting through layers of tape… and Druze on the floor beside her, blood everywhere…
Somebody moaned, a long, horrible, low-pitched sound, and he realized that it was coming from his own throat, and he reached out and touched her…
"Cassie…" He screamed it, and Del pivoted, grabbed him by the jacket and pushed him away like a linebacker working a blocking sled. Del himself screamed, "No, no, no…"
The manager, hands clenched in front of her, looked through the bedroom door and then staggered backward, still looking, her mouth hanging open. She ran to the doorway and began retching, and screaming, and retching again, and the stink of vomit overlay the smell of the butchery inside the bedroom…
Lucas strained against his friend, and Del said, "Stay the fuck out, Lucas, stay the fuck out, we need to process, Lucas she's dead, Lucas she's dead…" He pushed Lucas into a chair and picked up the phone.
"We got another one. We need everything you got, apartment six-forty-two. We got two of them, yeah, it's Druze…"
He looked at Lucas, who was back on his feet, ready to go after him. But Lucas walked away from the bedroom and did something that frightened Del more than any effort to look at Cassie: he stood staring at a wall from a distance of no more than a foot, expressionless, unmoving, his eyes open.
"Lucas?" No answer. "Davenport, for Christ's sakes…"
"You want to go to the hospital?" Sloan asked.
"What for?" Del had pulled him off the wall, stuffed him into the elevator, guided him to the lobby and held him there.
"Get some dope."
"No."
"You're totally fucked, man. You can't be like this," Sloan said. He was driving the Porsche, while Lucas slumped beside him in the passenger seat.
"Just get me home," Lucas said. The storm was back in his head, the storm he'd feared. Cassie's face. The things he could have done, might have done, that she might have done. Going around, thousands of options, millions of intricate possibilities, all leading to life or to death… Sybil's face popped into his head.
"We saved the life of a woman who's gonna die in a week…" he moaned.
"But we maybe got Bekker, the lawyers are looking at the tapes right now."
"Fuck me," Lucas said, dropping his chin on his chest. He had to cry, but he couldn't.
And then he said, "I went to a funeral home. If I'd come here…"
And then he said, "Every fuckin' woman I see gets hurt. I'm a goddamned curse on their heads…"
And then he said, "I could've saved her…"
"I gotta make a call," Sloan said suddenly, taking the car into a convenience-store parking lot. "Just take a minute."
Sloan called Elle Kruger, looking back over his shoulder at Lucas in the passenger seat of the Porsche. All he could see was the top of Lucas' head. The nun's phone was answered by a woman at a switchboard; Sloan explained that he was calling on a police emergency. The woman said she'd try to find Elle, and began switching. A moment later, she came back on to say that the nun was at dinner, and a friend would get her. She told Sloan to hold on.
"Lucas?" Elle asked when she picked up the phone.
"No, this is his friend Sloan. Lucas has a problem…"
When Sloan returned to the car, Lucas' eyes were closed, and he was breathing slowly, as though he were sleeping. "You okay?" Sloan asked.
"That fuckin' Loverboy. If he'd come in, he could've looked at the picture of Druze the minute I found it, and we could've busted him. But we had to go through this newspaper-ad bullshit…"
"Let it go," Sloan said. "Nothing we can do about it now." • • • Elle was waiting at Lucas' house with another nun and a small black car.
"How are you?" she asked.
He shook his head, looking down at the driveway. Meeting her eyes would be impossible, too complicated.
"I'll call my friend, get a sedative for you."
"I've got this stuff going around in my head…" he said. And the guns: he could feel the guns in the basement. Not heavy, not like last winter, but they were back.
"Let me call my friend." Elle took his arm, then his hand, and led him toward the door like a child, while Sloan and the other nun followed behind.
Lucas woke the next morning exhausted.
The sedatives had beaten him into a dreamless sleep. The storm in his head had dissipated, but he could feel it just over the horizon of consciousness. He slid tentatively out of bed, stood up, swayed, opened the bedroom door and almost fell over the couch. Sloan had pushed it up against the door and was struggling to get up.
"Lucas…" Sloan, in a T-shirt and suit pants, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, looked tired and scared.
"What the fuck are you doing, Sloan?"
Sloan shrugged. "We thought it might be a good idea, in case you sleepwalked…"
"In case I started looking for my guns?"
"Something like that," Sloan admitted, looking up at him. "You look like shit. How do you feel?"
"Like shit," Lucas said. "I gotta get some dead kids dug up."
The blood seemed to drain from Sloan's face, and Lucas smiled despite himself, smiled as a widow might smile the day before her husband is buried. "Don't worry about it. I'm not nuts. Let me tell you about Bekker…"
CHAPTER 28
Daniel prowled around his office with his hands in his pockets. He'd pulled the shades but hadn't turned on the lights, and the office was almost dark.
"Homicide is satisfied," he said. "You know I don't clear murder cases on the basis of politics-and there's every indication that we got him. You got him. Bekker is something else."