Lucas was also standing, propped against a windowsill, arms crossed. "If Bekker kills another one and carves her eyes out, then what'll you do? The goddamned press'll be down here with pitchforks and torches."
Daniel threw up his hands in exasperation. "Look, I know this actress woman and you…"
"Doesn't have anything to do with it," Lucas said. His head still felt like a chunk of wood. Cassie did have something to do with it, of course. Revenge wouldn't be enough, but it would be something. "Druze may have killed her, but Bekker was behind it."
"Have you talked to the lab people since you came in?"
"No…"
"They looked at that jacket in Druze's closet. There was blood on the back of it. You can't see it, because the fabric was black and the blood was soaked in. But it was there, and they've done some preliminary tests. The blood is the same type as Stephanie Bekker's…"
Lucas nodded. "I think Druze killed Stephanie, all right…"
"And George. We got a taxi routing from the airport to the Lost River Theater the night George was done."
"What about Elizabeth Armistead? I'm not so sure about that one. I asked that night, or the next day, and everybody agreed Druze was at the theater most of the afternoon."
Daniel jabbed a forefinger at Lucas: "But maybe not every minute. He could've been gone half an hour and that would have been enough. And the woman who saw the guy at Armistead's said he was in some kind of utility-man getup. That sounds like an actor to me-we've got Homicide guys over at the theater right now, going through their wardrobe."
"What about the phone call?"
"Come on, Lucas. That so-called phone call doesn't make sense no matter how you cut it. And the kid out in Maplewood is pretty sure that Druze is the guy who did the Romm woman." Daniel took a manila folder from his desk and handed it to Lucas. "They found these in Druze's apartment."
Lucas opened the folder: inside were photographs of Stephanie Bekker and Elizabeth Armistead. The eyes had been cut out. "Where'd they get these?"
"Druze's file cabinet. Stuffed in the back."
"Bullshit," said Lucas, shaking his head. "I went through the file cabinet. These weren't there."
"Maybe he carried them with him."
"And puts them in the file cabinet before he goes upstairs to blow his brains out?" Lucas said. "Look, take this any way you want: as a continuing homicide investigation or just covering your political ass. We've got to stay with Bekker. We can tell the press that the case is cleared, but we've got to stay on him. We can start by exhuming these kids."
"What do we say about that?" Daniel asked. "How do we explain…"
"We don't say anything. Why should we say anything to anybody? If we can convince the parents to keep quiet…"
Daniel walked around the quiet office, head down, rubbing his hands. Finally he nodded. "Damn, I'd hoped we'd finished with it."
"We're not finished until Bekker falls. You saw the tapes with Sybil, for Christ's sake…"
"And you heard what the lawyers said. A dying woman, maybe paranoid, loaded with drugs? C'mon. I believe her, Merriam believes her, Sloan does, so do you-but there's no way a judge is going to put that in front of a jury."
"Dying declaration…"
"Oh, bullshit, Lucas-she didn't make it while she was dying, for Christ's sake…"
"You know what Cassie couldn't understand about the killings? The eyes. She said Druze would never do the eyes. You know what my friend Elle says about them? The shrink. She says he has to do the eyes. So if Bekker is nuts, and he kills somebody else… Jesus, can't you see it? He'll do the eyes again, and your balls will be hanging from a pole outside the City Hall door."
Daniel pulled on his lip, sighed and nodded. "Go ahead. Talk to the kids' parents. If they say okay on an exhumation, do it. If they say no, come back here and we'll talk. I don't want to go for a court order."
Lucas met Anderson in the hallway.
"You've heard?" Anderson asked.
"What?"
"The lab guys say that Druze didn't have much in the way of nitrites on his hands. He may have had a handkerchief on the gun, but still…"
"So what are they saying?"
"Maybe he didn't kill himself. The M.E. says the whole scene is a little weird, the way he did it, the way he must have been standing when he pulled the trigger. Can't figure out how the gun got underneath him, either. The muzzle was three or four inches from his temple when he pulled the trigger, and with the shock of the bullet and the recoil, he should have gone one way and the gun another. Instead, it beat him to the floor."
"The M.E. still working on him?"
"Oh, yeah. They've got samples of everything. I don't know, it's getting curiouser."
Lucas sat in his office, thinking it over, feeling the rats of depression galloping just below the surface of his mind. If he stopped concentrating, they'd be out. He forced his mind into it: Did Druze kill Cassie? Despite the questions, it seemed likely. In most murders, the most obvious answer is correct-and in any crime investigation, there are always anomalies. The gun shouldn't have beaten Druze's body to the floor, but maybe it did.
One of the rats slipped out: If only Cassie had identified him a day earlier and Loverboy had called with a definite identification…
Fuckin' Loverboy…
Lucas frowned, picked up the phone and called Violent Crimes. Sloan was at home, they said, trying to get some sleep. Lucas called, got him out of bed.
"Last night, when I was doped up. Did anybody call?"
"No."
"Hmph. What time did we identify Druze for television and release the news that it was part of the series…?"
"This morning-I mean, they had Druze's name last night, midnight or so, but just the name. We didn't release the serial-killing business until this morning."
"Huh. Okay, thanks." He let Sloan go, dialed TV3 and got Carly Bancroft. "This is Lucas. Did you make Druze's name on the news last night?"
"No, we had it for the wake-up report," she said. "I could have used a little help…"
"I was… out of shape," Lucas said. "What about the other channels? Did they have it?"
"Not as far as I know. We picked up the news release on morning cop checks. Nobody was bitching about getting beat, and they would have, on something like this. When can you talk to us? You found them, right? What-"
"I really can't talk," Lucas said. "I'll call you later."
He hung up and sat in his chair, rubbing his temples. Loverboy hadn't called.
Jennifer's car was in the driveway when he got home. He rolled past it slowly as the garage door went up, and parked and walked out of the garage as she got out of her car.
"How are you?" she asked. She was wearing a black turtleneck under a cardigan, with gold loop earrings visible under her short-cropped blond hair.
"What do you want?" His voice was so cold that she stepped back.
"I wanted to see how you were…"
"Did Elle put you up to this?" Jennifer had her back to the car door and he loomed over her. His hands were in fists, inside his jacket pockets.
"She said you were in trouble."
"I don't need your help. The last time I needed your help, I got my head pushed under," he said. He turned away, walked back into the garage.
"Lucas…"
His mind was moving like a freight train, all the facts and suppositions and memories and plans and possibilities flying like boxcars just behind his eyes, unsuppressible. Jennifer. Green eyes. Full lips. Sarah, a bundle, squealing when he tossed her in the air. Jennifer and Sarah together in the delivery room, up at the lake cabin, Jennifer skinny-dipping in the moonlight, Sarah starting to crawl…