Текст книги "Lucas Davenport Novels 1-5"

Автор книги: John Sandford

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 105 страниц)

The line was busy.

“Where’s that file Anderson made?” the negotiator asked his radio man. The radio man passed a notebook. “Call the phone company, tell them what’s happening and ask them to check the number, see where the call’s going.”

“Check his family,” Lucas suggested. “There oughta be a phone number.”

The negotiator found the Bemidji number in Anderson’s notebook, dialed it, found it busy. “That’s it,” he said. “We ought to have somebody get onto the sheriff’s office up there, get them to go see his wife. We might want to talk to her. We can get her to call here, and then switch her in, so we can hear what they’re saying.”

A plainclothes cop hurried up. “One of the roommates says that Hood tried to fire a rifle and it blew up on him. He’s hurt. He’s got a cut on his face, he’s bleeding. The roommate doesn’t think it’s too bad.”

Lucas looked at Lily, and Lily grinned and nodded.

Five minutes later, the negotiator got through again.

“You can’t get out, Billy. All that’s gonna happen is that somebody’s gonna get hurt. We’ll get you a lawyer, free, we’ll get you . . . Fuck.”

“Try his wife?” Lucas suggested.

“How about those two guys who came out?” asked Lily. “Maybe they’d help . . . .”

Kieffer drifted up to the car. “I thought you were out of here,” Lucas said, standing to confront him.

“We’re observing,” Kieffer said bitterly.

“Observe my ass.” Lucas stood directly in front of Kieffer, their chests almost touching.

“Fuckin’ touch me, Davenport,” Kieffer said. “I’ll have your ass in jail . . . .”

“I’ll touch you,” Lily said, pushing between them. Lucas reluctantly gave a step. “You gonna put me in jail for assault? I’m not so polite as these Minneapolis assholes, Kieffer, and I don’t have to honor any of Daniel’s deals. I can go talk to the TV on my own.”

“Fuck it,” Kieffer said, stepping back. “I’m observing.”

The negotiator tried again, spoke longer this time. “You can trust us . . . . Wait a minute, let me talk to a guy . . . .”

He finally turned to Lucas, covered the mouthpiece on the phone and said, “You know any Indians?”

“A few.”

“You want to try him? He’s scared. Mention these people you know . . . .”

Lucas took the phone. “Billy Hood. This is Lucas Davenport from the Minneapolis cops. Listen, you know Dick Yellow Hand, a friend of Bluebird’s? Or Chief Dooley, the barber? Do you know Earl and Betty May? They’re friends of mine, man. They’d be worried about you. I’m worried about you. There’s nothing you can do in there. You’ll just get hurt. If you come out, you’ll be okay. I swear.”

There was another moment of silence. Then Hood said, “You know Earl and Betty?”

“Yeah, man. You could call them. They’d tell you I’m okay.”

“You white?”

“Yeah, yeah, but I don’t want to hurt anybody. Come on out, Billy. I swear to God nobody wants to shoot at you. Walk on out and we can all go home.”

“Let me think, man. Let me think, okay?”

“Okay, Billy.” The line went dead.

“What?” Lucas asked the negotiator, who had been listening on a headset.

“He may be calling these people. Earl and Betty, was that their names?”

“Yeah. Just about everybody knows them.”

“We’ll give him two minutes and try again.”

Two minutes later, the line was busy. After three, they got through. The negotiator said a few words, then handed the phone to Lucas.

“Is this the guy who knows Earl and Betty?” Hood asked.

“Yeah. Davenport,” Lucas said.

“I’ll come out, but I want you to come up here and get me. If I just come outside, one of those white boys is gonna snipe me.”

“No, they won’t, Billy . . . . Listen . . .” Lucas hunched over the phone.

“Bullshit, man, don’t bullshit me. Those guys been against me for a long time. Ever since I was born, man. They’re just waiting. I got nothing against you, so you’d be safe. You want me out, you come up here.”

Lucas looked at the negotiator. “What do you think?”

“He killed the guy in New York,” the negotiator said. “He tried to kill the FBI team.”

“He had a reason. Maybe he really wants the protection.”

“He’s scared,” the negotiator agreed.

“What are you going to do?” Hood asked.

“Hold on a minute, we’re talking,” Lucas said. He looked at Lily. “There might not be any other way to take him alive.”

“You’d be nuts to go in there,” Lily objected. “We’ve got him. Sooner or later he’s got to come out and nobody has to get hurt. Nobody out here . . .”

“We need to talk to him.”

“I don’t need to talk to him,” she said. “I just need him any way we can get him. Dead or alive.”

“You don’t care if we get the rest of the group?” Lucas asked.

“Sure. Theoretically. But Hood’s my man. After he’s taken care of, the rest is up to you and the feebs.”

Kieffer had been standing back from the car, looking down the street at the apartment. “It’d take some balls to go in there,” he said.

His tone was ambiguous, as if he weren’t sure that Lucas would do it.

“Hey, we aren’t talking balls here,” the negotiator said, anger in his voice.

“Yeah, what the fuck did that crack mean, Kieffer?” Lily asked, turning to Kieffer with her hands on her hips.

“Take it easy,” Lucas said, waving them off. He didn’t look at Kieffer but stared past the negotiator at the apartment window. With the glass broken out, it was a black square in the red stone. “I’ll give it a try.”

“God damn it, Davenport, you’re crazy,” Lily said. But then she said, “Talk to him through the window. Don’t go inside, just talk over the ledge.”

Lucas got back on the phone. “Billy? I’m ready, man.”

“Well, come on.”

“You’re not bullshitting me?”

“I’m not, I just don’t want one of them white boys to snipe me, man.”

“They see him from across the street. They got a gun on him. He’s halfway up into the room,” the radio man said quietly, as he listened on his headset. “Del says that when you get up there, if he tries anything, you drop below the window; we’ll hose him down.”

“Okay.” Lucas glanced at Lily, nodded and said into the phone, “I’m stepping out, Billy. I’m down the street, way to your right as you look out the window.”

“Come on, man. This is getting old.”

Lucas stepped out from behind the car, his hands held wide and open at shoulder height.

“Okay, man,” he yelled at the window.

He walked slowly down the street, his hands wide, conscious of two dozen sets of eyes following him. The day was cool, but he could feel sweat starting on his back. A line of blue-and-white pigeons watched from a red-tiled roof down the street. On another roof, beside a chimney and out of Hood’s line of sight, an ERU officer was lined up on the window with an M-16. A police radio poked unintelligible sentences into the morning air. Lucas was thirty feet out.

“Come on, man, you’re okay,” Hood called from the window. Lucas moved closer, his hands still away from his side. When he was five feet from the window, Hood called again. “Come straight on in. I’ll be off to the left. I don’t want to see no gun pointing at me, man. I’m really tight, you know?”

Lucas reached out, touched the outer wall of the building and eased up to the window. Looking in at a sharp angle, he could see nothing but a broken-down chair. He moved a little farther into the window opening. There was nobody in his line of sight. The red beanbag was squashed in the middle of the floor, with a dent in it, as though somebody had been thrown on top of it.

“I’m giving up, man,” Hood said. His voice came from off to the right, but Lucas still couldn’t see him. He took another step.

“I want you inside,” Hood said.

“I can’t do that, Billy,” Lucas said.

“You’re just setting me up, man. You’re just making me a target. If I come to that window, I’m a dead man, aren’t I?”

“I swear to God, Billy . . . .”

“You don’t have to swear to God. Just get up in that window. I’ll be there. I want you to go out right in front of me, man, so those white boys don’t snipe me.”

Lucas looked around once, muttered “Fuck it” under his breath, put his hands on the window ledge and boosted himself up. As he crawled onto the ledge, Hood was suddenly there, his back to the outer wall. He was looking at Lucas over the shotgun.

“Step in further,” he said. The muzzle of the shotgun followed Lucas’ head like a steel eye.

“Come on, man,” Lucas said. There hadn’t been any shells in the closet with the shotgun. Since Hood was using it, he either had found the shells or was bluffing with an empty weapon. Why would he bluff? He’d used a pistol of some kind, anyone would be willing to believe that the pistol was loaded . . . . “This can’t do any good.”

“Shut up,” Hood said. He was wound tight as a spring, frightened. “Get in here.”

Lucas hopped down from the window ledge.

“Did one of you wise-ass cops fuck up my rifle? You did, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know about a rifle,” Lucas said. Hood’s face was bleeding from a long cut over one eye. On the floor near his foot was a .45, the slide locked open. Out of ammo, Lucas decided.

“Pulled the trigger on that cocksucker rifle and almost blew my face off. There was a rag in it,” Hood said.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Lucas said. He could feel the P7 pushing into his back.

“Bullshit,” Hood snapped. “But I know you didn’t know about these . . . .”

He kept the shotgun muzzle on Lucas’ head but opened the hand under the shotgun’s fore-end. He had two shells in his hand.

“Buckshot, for deer,” Hood said. “I had them stuck in with the thirty-thirty shells. Somebody missed them, huh?”

“Bill . . .” Lucas started. Inside, he was cursing himself for not taking the .30-.30 shells, or at least checking the box. “You won’t get out of here this way . . . .”

“Buckshot’s no good when those fuckers out there got M-16s, but this buckshot is going to get me out of here, because I got you, white boy,” he said. He gestured with the muzzle. “Lay down. On the floor.”

“Billy, I trusted you, man. This is no good.” Lucas felt the sweat start at his temples, felt the heat in his armpits.

“So I lied, motherfucker,” Hood said. “Get the fuck down.” He dipped the barrel of the shotgun an inch, to indicate down.

Lucas got down on his knees, thought about going for the P7, but the shotgun muzzle never wavered.

“Keep your hands away from your body . . . .”

From outside, the ERU team leader called on a loudspeaker. “You coming out? Everything okay?”

“Everything fine,” Hood yelled back. “We’re talking. Let us talk.”

“Nothing you can do is going to help . . .” Lucas started.

“On your fuckin’ belly,” Hood snapped.

Lucas let himself down on the floor. It smelled of city grime. Grit cut into his chin.

“I’ll tell you what we’re doing, so you don’t fuck me up,” Hood said. Sweat was pouring down his face, and Lucas could smell the fear on him. “I’m going to march you out of here with this gun. We’re going to take a car and we’re going down the Mississippi to the res. Someplace along the way I’ll get out and get off in the woods. Once I’m in the woods, I’m gone, man.”

“They’ll come through with dogs . . . .”

“Let them. There’ll be Indians all over the place, running them fuckin’ dogs to death, man. They’ll never get me out of them swamps down there.” Lucas felt Hood easing up close to him; then the shotgun muzzle touched the back of his head. “Just to let you know I’m here. I want your face straight down, until I tell you different.”

Lucas lay facedown, still thinking about the gun on his hip. Hood was doing something behind him, but he couldn’t see what it was. There was a ripping sound and he tried tipping his face, but Hood said, “Hey,” and Lucas tipped it back. “I gotta breathe,” Lucas said.

“You can breathe, don’t bullshit me . . . . Now you’re going to feel the gun on your head. I ’spect you’ve got a gun and maybe you’re one of them karate experts, but if you so much as jiggle, I’m going to blow your fucking brains out . . . . I got my finger on the trigger and the safety is off, you got it?”

“I got it,” Lucas said.

He felt the cold touch of the muzzle on the skin behind his ear. “Now push your head back until you’re looking off the floor. Look out into the kitchen, but don’t move anything else but your head,” Hood said. Lucas lifted his head, and a second later Hood took a quick turn of tape around his forehead, then another. Lucas gritted his teeth.

“The muzzle of the gun is taped to your head,” Hood said when he had finished. His voice was a notch less tense. “If one of them white boys snipes me, you’re dead. If anything happens, you’re dead. A couple of pounds of pull on the trigger and you’re gone, man. You know what I’m saying? Lights out.” A third and fourth loop of tape overlapped the first two. The last loop partially covered Lucas’ left eye. He could feel the buttons on his shirt pressing into his chest and suddenly found it hard to breathe.

“Jesus Christ, man, be careful,” he said, struggling to keep a whine out of his voice.

“You just be cool, man . . . . Now get up.”

Lucas got to his hands and knees and shakily stood up. The muzzle of the gun stayed with him, behind his right ear.

“Everything all right?” the ERU team leader called.

“Everything is great, motherfucker,” Hood yelled back. “We’re coming out in a minute.” He turned back to Lucas. “My car’s about fucked up. I want a cop car and I need some time. We’re going out there and get it.”

“Tell them what you’re doing,” Lucas said. The weight of the gun pulled his head to the side. The tape over his left eye was sticking to his eyelid, and he struggled with a sudden feeling of claustrophobia. “If they see me with my hands up and you behind me, maybe somebody who can’t see what’s going on will take a shot at you.”

“You tell them,” Hood said. “They’ll believe you. Over to the window.”

Lucas stepped over to the window. Hood held onto his shirt collar with his left hand. The shotgun was in his right and he used the end of the barrel to push Lucas to the windowsill.

“Everybody hold it,” Lucas screamed as he stepped into the opening. He put his arms up over his head, his fingers spread. “Everybody fuckin’ hold it. He’s got a shotgun taped to my head. Everybody fuckin’ hold it.”

There was movement inside the apartment across the street, just a flicker at the window. Hood pulled him closer, the shotgun cutting into the flesh behind his ear.

“Billy . . .” said the loudspeaker.

“I want a car, man,” Hood shouted. He prodded Lucas forward until he was sitting on the windowsill. Carefully, carefully, he climbed up beside him. “You get down first,” he said.

“Jesus,” said Lucas. “Don’t jar anything.”

“Get down.”

Lucas dropped the five feet, flexing his knees, his eyes closed as he landed. The world was still there. Hood landed next to him. Lucas took another breath. “I want a cop car and I want everybody out of my way,” Hood screamed.

“Billy, this isn’t going to help, man, everything was fine,” the team leader called. The loudspeaker echoed in Lucas’ ears. He looked at the street, the cars blocking it, the people half visible behind them, and he wondered if they would suddenly wink out and Lucas Davenport would be a shell on the cold ground, with a crowd looking down at him . . . .

“Just give me the car, man, bring a car down here.” Hood was tensing up again, his voice screeching toward blind panic.

“Give him the fuckin’ car,” Lucas yelled. The scent of pines came through. There were no pines there; no vegetation at all, but the scent of pines was there, just as though he were at his Wisconsin cabin. A refrain started running through the back of Lucas’ mind, Not yet, please not yet, but the cold circle of the shotgun muzzle pressed into the flesh behind his ear . . . .

“Okay, okay, okay, we’re calling for a car, take it easy, Billy, we don’t want anybody else hurt . . . .”

“Where’s the car?” Hood screamed. “Where’s the car?” He jerked on the shotgun and Lucas’ head snapped back.

“Take it easy, take it easy, man,” Lucas said, his heart in his throat. His neck hurt his head hurt, and Hood pressed against him like an unwanted partner in a three-legged race. “If you fire this thing accidentally, you’re a dead motherfucker just like me.”

“Shut up,” Hood snapped.

“You can have a car, Christ, take it easy,” the ERU team leader called. He was directly across the street. “Take the car down to your right, down to your right. See the cop getting out? The keys are in that car.”

Hood turned to look at it and Lucas looked with him. The car was next to the negotiator’s car. He could see Lily behind it.

“Okay, we’re walking to the car,” Hood yelled toward the ERU leader. They edged sideways, like crabs, slowly, the shotgun pressing . . . . Twenty feet out from the car.

“Billy? Billy? I’m the guy on the telephone. We’ve got a doctor here,” the negotiator called. The negotiator took a step away from his car and Lucas noticed that he’d taken off his sidearm. “We got a doctor, a registered psychologist, we want you to talk with her . . . .”

Lily stepped out from behind the car and stood beside the negotiator, clutching her purse in both hands. She looked like a very scared public-health nurse.

“We brought her in to see if you were okay. She says she’ll ride with the two of you, in case there’s any trouble, she wants to talk . . . .”

“I don’t want any talk, man, I just want the car.” Hood prodded Lucas and Lucas sidestepped toward the car, his head twisted by the angle of the shotgun.

“I can help you,” Lily called. She was fifteen feet away.

“I don’t want you, man,” Hood said. He was sweating, and the odor of the fear sweat filled the air around him. “Just get the fuck out of my way.”

“Listen, you’ve got to listen to me, Billy. Please? I’ve worked with a lot of Indian people and this is not the Indian way.” She took a step closer, and another, and with their movement toward the car, she was now less than ten feet away.

“Just get away from me, will you?” Hood said in exasperation. “I don’t need no fuckin’ shrink, okay?”

“Billy, please . . .” Lily said, a pleading note in her voice. Six feet. She let the purse drop to her side on its shoulder strap, one hand gesturing while the other plucked at her jacket. “Let me . . .” Her voice suddenly changed from persuasion to urgency. “Billy, you’ve got a problem. Okay? Let me tell you about this, okay? You’ve got a problem that you don’t know about. I mean it. Billy, there’s a wasp on your hair. Above your right ear. If it stings, don’t pull the trigger, it’s just a wasp . . . . We don’t want a tragedy.”

“A wasp, man . . . where is it?” Hood stopped, his voice suddenly tight. Lucas’ mind flashed to the box of antihistamine tablets in Hood’s medicine cabinet.

“On your hair just above your right ear, right there, it’s crawling down toward your ear . . . .”

Hood had his left hand around Lucas’ neck and Lucas felt the stock of the gun come up as Hood tried to brush the nonexistent wasp away with his gun hand. With his finger through the trigger guard, he couldn’t quite reach his ear; for just the barest part of a second, not thinking, he pulled his trigger finger out of the guard, reaching toward his head. As his finger came out of the guard, Lily went into her belly with her right hand, the hand that had been nervously plucking at her jacket button, and came out with the full-cocked .45. She thrust it at Hood’s head almost as if she were throwing a dart, and he saw it just soon enough to flinch. Lucas closed his eyes and started to turn away; the .45 went off and Lucas felt a hot stinging on his face, as though he’d been hit by a handful of beach sand. Hood kicked back onto the ground as Lucas fell to his knees and screamed:

“Get it off get it off get it off get it off.”

The negotiator knelt beside him and said, “You’re okay, you’re okay.” A hand grasped the shotgun barrel, held it, and Lucas, his breath ragged, groaned, “Get it off, get it off,” and there was a flat cutting sound and the muzzle was gone.

Again, everything was sharp, the blacktop beneath his knees, the smell of tar and city garbage, the sound of the radios, an ERU officer running, Lily saying “Jesus, Jesus,” the team leader’s knee next to his face, Billy Hood’s gym shoe twisted in the dirt. Then Lucas’ breakfast came up, and he knelt outside Billy Hood’s apartment and vomited and vomited; and when he couldn’t vomit anymore, dry heaves shook his shoulders and racked his stomach. Members of the ERU team were gathering around the body, and from somewhere he could hear a woman’s wail over the shouting and the chatter. The team leader’s hand was on the back of his neck, warm against his cold skin. He heard somebody crack the shotgun and a green-cased shotgun shell flipped out.

When the stomach spasms stopped, when he had controlled them, Lucas turned his head and saw Billy Hood’s face. The front of it was caved in, as though somebody had hit him with a claw hammer.

“One shot in the ten ring,” Lily said. She was standing above him, her face pale as winter, looking down at Hood. “Right on the bridge of his nose.” And although her voice was brave, she sounded ineffably sad. Lucas got to his hands and knees, then to his feet, wobbling.

The team leader helped him strip the tape off his head, and turned to look at Lily. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” Lily said.

“How about you?” the negotiator asked Lucas.

“Fuck, no.” Lucas took a couple wobbly steps and Lily slipped an arm around his waist. “It could take a couple of minutes. I was a dead man.”

“Maybe he would have let you go,” Lily said, looking back at Hood’s body.

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Billy Hood was an angry man,” Lucas said. “He was ready to die and he wasn’t going alone.”

He stopped and turned and, like Lily, looked back at the body. Hood’s face wasn’t peaceful in death. It was simply dead, and empty, like a beer can crushed on the side of a road. A red-hot anger washed through Lucas.

“God damn, we needed him. We needed the motherfucker to talk, the stupid shit. The stupid shit, why’d he do this?” He was shouting and the ERU team was looking at him.

Lily tightened her grip around his waist and gave him a gentle push toward the house across the street.

“Did I say ‘Thank you’?” Lucas asked, looking down at Lily.

“Not yet.”

“You could have blown my fuckin’ brains out, Rothenburg. And I’ve got all kinds of shit buried in my face.”

“I’m too good a shot to have hit you. And the shit in your face is better than shotgun pellets behind your ear,” she said.

“So, thanks. You saved my ass.”

“I accept your abject gratitude, and while it’s not enough . . .”

“I’ll give you all the gratitude you can handle. You know that,” he said. The hair on the top of her head brushed against his cheek.

“Fuckin’ men,” she muttered.