John Sandford - Silent Prey

"Too fuckin' old for this shit," he said.

Lucas, focused on the room, said, "Flashlights."

"What?"

"Get some flashlights…"

With quick peeks around the corner, they established that the interior of the basement wasn't quite dark. A light was on somewhere, but seemed to be partially blocked, as though the thin illumination were seeping through a crack in the door, or coming from a child's night-light. Lucas and Fell, looking over the sights of their weapons, could see the blocky shapes of furniture, a rectangle that might be a bookcase.

"Got 'em," the sergeant said.

"Poke them around the corner, hit the interior, about head high. Keep your hand back if you can. Tell me when you're going, I'll shoot at a muzzle flash," Lucas said. He looked at Fell, saw that she was sweating, and grinned at her. "Life in the big city."

The cop nodded. "Ready?"

"Anytime."

"Now."

The cop thrust the light around the corner, and Lucas, four feet below, followed with the muzzle of his gun, and his arm, and one eye. No movement. The sergeant leaned a bit into the hallway, played the light around the interior.

"I'm going," said Lucas.

"Go," said Fell.

Lucas scrambled across the floor to the apartment door, then, flat on the floor, eased his head and shoulders through the door, reached up, flicked a light switch. A single bulb came on. Nothing moving. He crouched, and Fell eased down the hall.

"What's that?" she whispered.

Lucas listened.

Jesus loves me…

Not a child's voice. But not an adult's, either-nothing human, he thought. Something from a movie, a special effect, weird, chilling.

For the Bible tells me so…

"Bekker," Lucas whispered. "Over there, I think…"

He was inside the apartment, duckwalking, the.45 in a double-handed grip, following his eye-track around the apartment. Fell, behind him, said, "Covered to the right."

"I got the right, you watch that dark door…" The sergeant's voice. Lucas glanced back, quickly, saw the older man easing inside with his piece-of-shit.38.

"Got it," Fell agreed.

"He's in the corner," Lucas said. He half stood, looking at a velour couch. The couch was pushed away from the wall, and the unearthly voice was coming from behind it.

"Bekker," he called.

Jesus loves me…

"Stand up, Bekker…"

This I know…

Lucas focused on the couch, crept up on it, the gun fully extended. Up close, he could see the top of Bekker's head, shaven, smooth, bobbing up and down with the simple rhythms of the song.

"Up, motherfucker," he yelled. And to Fell and the cop: "He's here, got him…"

"Watch a gun, watch a gun…"

Lucas, pointing his weapon at the top of Bekker's head, slid around the side of the couch and looked down at him. Bekker looked up, then stood, hands across his chest, rocking, humming…

"Turn around," Lucas shouted.

Fell moved up beside him…

"Nuttier 'n shit," she whispered.

"Watch him, watch him…"

She stepped around to get a better angle, then batted at her face and batted again, then waved her hand overhead.

Lucas, glancing sideways: "What?"

"I'm tangled…"

Bekker's head turned, like a ball bearing rotating in a socket. "Spiders…" he said.

The sergeant, near the kitchen door, coming up slowly, punched a light switch, and Fell groaned, weakly, thrashing at the objects that hung around her head.

"Get away," she choked. "Get away from me…"

They hung on individual black threads from a bundle of crossed wire coat hangers, floating in their separate orbits around Fell's head, wrinkled now, drying, the varicolored lashes as sleek as the day the eyelids were cut from their owners…

Fell staggered away from them, appalled, her mouth open.

"Get him," Lucas said, his pistol three feet from Bekker's vacant eyes. The sergeant took a step forward. Behind Fell, a thin shaft of light cut through a crack in a door. The light was hard, sharp, blue, professional. As the sergeant stepped forward, Fell pushed the door open.

Bekker took a step toward Lucas, his hands crossed on his chest. "Spi…"

An old woman lay there, bound and wired silent, her eyes permanently open now, staring, white eyeballs, the skin removed from her chest…

Alive…

"Aw, fuck," Fell screamed. She pivoted, the gun coming up, her mouth open, working, her hands clutching.

Lucas had time to say, "No."

Bekker said, "… ders." And one hand dropped and the other swung up, a glint of steel. He thrust the derringer at Lucas' chest… … and Fell fired a single.357 round through the bridge of Michael Bekker's nose and blew out the back of Michael Bekker's sleek, shaven head.

The walls of Lily's office seemed to melt, and Petty was there, the adult face superimposed on the child's face, both of them together.

And then Kennett's face.

Kennett's face in the dark, in Lily's bedroom. Must've been in winter: she'd bought a Christmas tree, shipped into a lot on Sixth Avenue from somewhere in Maine, and she could remember the scent of pine needles in the apartment as they talked.

No sex, just sleeping together. Kennett laughing about it, but unhappy, too. His heart attack not that far past…

"Hanging out with a geek," he said. "I can't believe it. I'm not enough, she's got a geek on the side."

"Not a geek," she said.

"All right. A dork. A nerd. Revenge of the Nerds, visited on Richard X. Kennett personally. A nerd may be dorking my woman. Or wait, maybe it's a dork is nerding my woman. Or wait…"

"Shut up," she said, mock-severely. "Or I will fondle your delicate parts and then leave you hanging-in good health, of course."

"Lily…" A change of tone. Sex on the mind.

"No. I'm sorry I said it. Kennett…"

"All right. Back to the dork…"

"He's not a dork. He's really a nice guy, and if he cracks this thing, he could go somewhere…"

She'd talked, Lily had, about the Robin Hood case. She'd talked in bed. She'd talked about the intelligence guys who'd stumbled over it, she'd talked about Petty being assigned to it, she'd talked about computers.

Not all at once. Not formally. But bits and pieces. Pillow talk. But Kennett got most of it. With what Copland overheard, and what Kennett got in bed, they must've known it all.

Petty's image floated in her mind's eye, his hair slicked down, his red ears sticking out, running down the Brooklyn sidewalk with the paper overhead, so happy to see her…

"I killed you," she said to his image, speaking aloud. Her voice was stark as a winter crow. "I killed you, Walt."

The river was black as ink, but thick, oily, roiled, as it pushed the last few miles toward the sea. A full moon had come up in the east, red, huge, shrouded by smog over the city. Lily waited until the elderly night guard and his dog were at the far end of the marina, then used her key at the member's gate.

The docks were cluttered, as always, badly lit by widely spaced yellow bug lights. Out in the water, anchor lights shone off the masts of a half-dozen anchored boats. Here and there, lights showed at portholes, and a light breeze banged halyards against aluminum masts, a pleasant whipping tinkle like wind chimes. The smell of marijuana hovered around a small Capri daysailer and a man was giggling inside the tiny cabin. She walked out of the marijuana stink into the river smell, compounded of mud and decaying fish.

"Lily." Kennett's voice came out of the dark as she approached the Lestrade. He was sitting behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. "I was wondering if you'd come."

"You know about Bekker?"

"Yeah. And that I've been cut out of the loop."

Lily stepped into the cockpit, sat down, staring at him. His face was flat, solemn; he was looking steadily back. "You're Robin Hood," she said.