Bekker pulled the trigger.
Dropped the gun.
Recoiled from the blast…
The blast, confined in the small bedroom, was terrific, stunning. Bekker jerked back as Cassie arched up, twisting frantically at the tape.
Druze simply collapsed, the gun disappearing beneath him.
Cassie's sweater was speckled with Druze's blood and small amorphous shreds of bone and brain tissue.
Bekker's robot-controlled body touched Druze's. Dead. No question of it. The drugs sang in his blood and he went away. He sighed, and came back: Jesus. He'd been gone. How long? He glanced at his watch. Four-twenty. Cassie was staring at him from the bed, her hands working frantically behind her back. He hadn't been gone long, a few minutes at most. He listened. Anybody coming? Not so far. No knocks, no sound of running feet…
He looked at Druze on the floor. He'd have to leave him like that, there might be some kind of blood pattern from the shot or something. He couldn't do the eyes, of course. He worried about that, but there was nothing to be done. If Druze was going to take the blame…
Cassie.
She'd stopped fighting the tape, but her back was arched, her head turning, trying to see him. He had to hurry: he still had to stop at Druze's apartment, to leave the photos. He started into the kitchen, when a door slammed down the hall, and he stopped. Listened.
Was that a movement? Out in the hall. He strained, listening. The hall was carpeted, would muffle steps. He waited a minute, then a few more seconds.
He couldn't wait longer. He still had to visit Druze's apartment. He patted his chest, confirming that the pictures were there. He'd cut the eyes out…
He'd have to be careful. If the cops had bugged Druze's apartment and realized he was gone, but hadn't left the building, they might be on the way. Maybe he shouldn't try it. If he were caught in the apartment… that didn't bear thinking about.
Bekker, the PCP pounding in his blood, went into the kitchen and got a bread knife, the sharpest he could find.
And there again… Movement? Somebody in the hall. He froze, listened… No. He had to move.
He didn't do it well, and he didn't do it quickly, but he did it: he cut Cassie's throat from ear to ear, and sat with her, holding her green eyes open with his fingers, as she died.
CHAPTER 27
Lucas spent ten minutes at the funeral home with a cheerful, round-faced mortician who wanted to talk golf.
"Damn, Lucas, I already been out twice," he said. He had a putter and was tapping orange balls across a plush carpet toward a coffee cup lying on its side. "It was a little muddy, but what the hell. In another two weeks, it'll be every morning…"
"I need to know about the eyes…"
"So don't talk to me about golf," the mortician complained. He putted the last ball, and it bounced off the rim of the cup. "Nobody wants to talk golf. You know how hard it is to talk golf when you're in the funeral business?"
"I can guess," Lucas said dryly.
"So what exactly do you want to know?" the mortician asked, propping the putter against an easy chair.
They were in a small apartment above the funeral home, where the night man stayed. A lot of people die at night, the mortician said, and if you're not there, they might call somebody else. To the average, unknowledgeable member of the general public, one funeral home was as good as another.
"What about the eyes? Do you leave them in or take them out, or what?"
"Why'd we take them out?" the cheerful mortician asked, relishing the conversation. Lucas was uncomfortable, and he could see it.
"I don't know, I just… I don't know. So you leave them in?"
"Sure."
"Do you sew the eyelids shut or glue them shut or anything?"
"No, no, once they're shut, they stay that way."
"How about the viewings? Is there always somebody around?"
"Well, there's always somebody around, but not necessarily right there. We go by judgment. If we see a street person going into the viewing room, we'd go with him, of course-we don't want to get any rings stolen, or whatever. But if the guy looks straight, if he's a member of the family, then we pretty much let him go. We might check every couple of minutes, but a lot of people, when they're saying good-bye, don't like funeral-home people standing around staring at them. They feel like they're being rushed, you know, like when a salesman stands right next to you in a department store. But it's judgment. One time this whole family warned us about a particular guy, one of the grandfathers. The deceased had this gold plate, probably worth a couple hundred, and this old guy was a thief. So we hung on him. He was kneeling there praying, and he kept looking at us and then praying some more… He must've prayed for half an hour. The family members said that was the longest prayer of his life, by about twenty-nine minutes."
"But theoretically, if somebody wanted to get in and touch a body, or look at its eyes… he could do it. If you didn't have some warning."
The funeral home man shrugged. "No theory about it- sure he could. No problem. But what can you do to a dead man in two minutes?"
Lucas kept a handset stashed under the seat, and Del caught him halfway back into the loop.
"Something's happened with Druze," Del said. "He's gone. The surveillance guys swear there was no way he got out of the building, but he doesn't answer his phone and he's late for rehearsal."
"What do you think? Check his apartment?"
"I don't know. I thought we'd wait a while longer… We've been calling every two or three minutes, so it's not like he's on the can."
"Keep watching. I'll come on up."
He didn't think of her, not right away. The traffic was heavy on Minnehaha Avenue headed north and he was stuck for three blocks behind a dump truck that resisted all of his attempts to pass. Cursing, he finally got around it, and got the finger from a scowling, long-haired truck driver. He hit three red lights in a row, and then she popped up in his mind. Same building. A chill ran through him, and he picked up the handset and called through to Del.
"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…