through the side door around the corner from the lobby, makes the call, then pushes through the door and goes right through the lobby and out.'
'Billy said nobody came through the door,' Kuhn said.
A young plainclothes cop with his hands in his pockets shook his head. 'I swear to God, I don't see how anybody could've got through there. Lieutenant Carter told me to stay there, and even when Frank called, I stayed there. I saw everybody running…'
'But your back was to the door?' Kennett asked.
'Yeah, but I was right there,' the young cop said. He could feel the goat horns being fitted for his head.
Kennett turned to Lucas: 'You're sure he didn't come past you?'
'I don't see how. It's like this guy said…' Lucas pointed at the cop who looked at the faces. 'I looked at every goddamn face coming through the door; he just wasn't there.'
'All right, so he was inside,' Kennett said. 'We assume he made the radio call as a diversion to get out…'
'Or to hide,' somebody said. 'If he had a bolthole during the day…'
'We'll find out,' Kennett said, peering up at the brightly lighted windows. He glanced sideways at Lucas, who shook his head. Bekker was gone. 'The other possibility is that he went out a window somewhere and made the radio call to pull the guys off the street…'
'What if he had keys and was already outside, and was just taunting us?' one of the cops asked.
They talked for twenty minutes before drifting away to specific assignments, or simply drifting away, afraid that their names and faces might become associated with the disaster. In the alcove outside the stage door, a crime-scene crew worked under heavy lights, picking up what they could. But there was no real question: it was Bekker. But Bekker, how?
'Okay, now we're out of cop work: now we're down to politics,' Kennett said to Lucas as they stood together in the courtyard.
'You gonna hang?' Lucas asked.
'I could,' Kennett nodded. 'I gotta start calling people, gotta get some spin on the thing, fuzz it up.'
'Gonna be tough, with you right here,' Lucas said.
'So what would you do?' Kennett asked.
'Lie,' Lucas said.
Kennett was interested. 'How?'
'Blame Frank. Unlock the back door,' Lucas said, nodding to the opposite side of the courtyard. 'Tell them that Bekker hid in the building during the day and that he must've stolen keys from somewhere. That when he came out and got down here, cutting through the courtyard, using his keys-where we only had one man, because we'd secured the place ahead of time-he ran head-on into Frank. There was a fight, but Bekker's a PCP freak and he killed Frank and escaped back out the other side of the building. If anybody gets blamed, the blame goes on Frank. But nobody'll say anything, because Frank's dead. You could even do a little off-the-record action. Tell them that Frank fucked up, but we can't say it publicly. He was a good guy and now he's dead…'
'Hmph.' Kennett pulled at his lip. 'What about the radio call?'
'Somebody's already suggested that he was taunting us: go with that,' Lucas suggested. 'That he was already outside. That fits Bekker's character, as far as the media's concerned.'
'Do you think…?'
'No, I think he suckered us.'
'So do I.' Kennett stared at his feet for a moment, then glanced at Lily and O'Dell. 'The story might not hold up for long.'
'If we get him before it breaks, nobody'll care.'
Kennett nodded. 'I better go talk to O'Dell. We'll need a ferocious off-the-record media massage.'
'You think he'll help?'
Kennett permitted himself a very thin grin. 'He was here too,' Kennett said. 'They'd just pulled up outside…'
Kennett started toward Lily and O'Dell, then stopped and turned, hands in his pockets, no longer grinning. 'Get your ass back to Minneapolis. Find something for us, God damn it.'
CHAPTER
19
Lucas sat alone in the worst row of seats on the plane, in tourist class behind the bulkhead, no good place to put his feet except in the aisle. The stewardess was watching him before they crossed Niagara Falls.
'Are you all right?' she asked finally, touching his shoulder. He'd dropped the seat all the way back, tense, his eyes closed, like a patient waiting for a root canal.
'Are the wheels off the ground?' he grated.
'Uh-oh,' she said, fighting a smile. 'How about a scotch? Double scotch?'
'Doesn't work,' Lucas said. 'Unless you've got about nine phenobarbitals to put in it.'
'Sorry,' she said. Her face was professionally straight, but she was amused. 'It's only two more hours…'
'Wonderful…'
He could see it so clearly in his mind's eye: ripped chunks of aluminum skin and pieces of engine nacelle scattered around a Canadian cornfield, heads and arms and fingers like bits of trash, fires guttering just out of sight, putting out gouts of oily black smoke; women in stretch pants wandering through the wreckage, picking up money. A Raggedy Ann doll, cut in half, smiling senselessly; all images from movies, he thought. He'd never actually seen a plane crash, but you had to be a complete idiot not to be able to imagine it.
He sat and sweated, sat and sweated, until the stewardess came back and said, 'Almost there.'
'How long?' he croaked.
'Less than an hour…'
'Sweet bleedin' Jesus…' He'd been praying that it was only a minute or two; he'd been sure of it.
The plane came in over the grid of orange sodium-vapor lights and blue mercury lights, banking, Lucas holding on to the seat. The window was filled with the streaming cars, the black holes of the lakes stretching down from just west of the Minneapolis Loop. He looked at the floor. Jumped when the wheels came down. Made the mistake of glancing across the empty seat next to him and out the window, and saw the ground coming and closed his eyes again, braced for the impact.
The landing was routine. The bored pilot said the usual good-byes, the voice of a Tennessee hay-shaker, which he undoubtedly was, not qualified to fly a '52 Chevy much less a jetliner…
Lucas stunk with fear, he thought as he bolted from the plane, carrying his overnight bag. My God, that ride was the worst. He'd read that La Guardia was overcrowded, that in a plane you could get cut in half in an instant, right on the ground. And he'd have to do it again in a day or two.
He caught a cab, gave directions, collapsed in the backseat. The driver took his time, loafing along the river, north past the Ford plant. Lucas' house had a light in the window. The timer.
'Nice to get home, huh?' the cabdriver asked, making a notation in a trip log.
'You don't know how good,' Lucas said. He thrust a ten at the driver and hopped out. A couple strolled by on the river walk, across the street.
'Hey, Lucas,' the man called.
'Hey, Rick, Stephanie.' Neighbors: he could see her blond hair, his chrome-rimmed glasses 'You left your backyard sprinkler on. We turned it off and put the hose behind the garage.'
'Thanks…'
He picked up the mail inside the door, sorted out the ads and catalogs and dumped them in a wastebasket, showered to get the fear-stink off his body and fell into bed. In thirty seconds, he was gone.
'Lucas?' Quentin Daniel stuck his head out of his office. He had dark circles under his eyes and he'd lost weight. He'd been the Minneapolis chief of police for two terms, but that wasn't what was eating him. Innocent
