Eyes of Prey

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Book: Read Eyes of Prey for Free Online
Authors: John Sandford
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers
eyes closed, turned his back, lathered himself, rinsed and stepped out.
    Did he have time? Of course: he always had time for this. He rubbed emollients into his face, dabbed after-shave along his jawline, cologne on his chest, behind his ears and under his balls, sprinkled powder across his chest, under his arms, between his buttocks.
    When he was done, he looked into the mirror again. His nose seemed raw. He considered just a touch of makeup but decided against it. He really shouldn’t look his best. He was burying Stephanie, and the police would be there. The police investigators were touchy: Stephanie’s goddamned father and her cop cousin were whispering in their ears.
    An investigation didn’t much worry him. He’d hated Stephanie, and some of her friends would know that. But he’d been in San Francisco.
    He smiled at himself in the mirror, was dissatisfied with the smile, wiped it away. Tried a half-dozen new expressions, more appropriate for the funeral. Scowl as he might, none of them detracted from his beauty.
    He cocked his head at himself and let the smile return. All done? Not quite. He added a hair dressing with a light odor of spring lilacs and touched his hair with a brush. Satisfied, he went to the closet and looked at his suits. The blue one, he thought.
    • • •
    Quentin Daniel looked like a butcher in good clothes.
    A good German butcher at a First Communion. With his lined red face and incipient jowls, the stark white collar pinching into his throat, the folds of flesh on the back of his neck, he would look fine behind a stainless-steel meat scale, one thumb on the tray, the other on your lambchops . . . .
    Until you saw his eyes.
    He had the eyes of an Irish Jesuit, pale blue, imperious. He was a cop, if he was one at all, with his brain: he’d stopped carrying a gun years before, when he’d bought his first tailored suits. Instead, he had spectacles. He wore simple military-style gold-rimmed bifocals for dealing with the troops, tortoise-shell single-vision glasses for reading his computer screen, and blue-tinted contact lenses for television appearances.
    No gun.
     
    Lucas pushed through the heavy oak door and slouched into Daniel’s office. He was wearing the leather bomber jacket from the night before but had shaved and changed into a fresh houndstooth shirt, khaki slacks and loafers.
    “You called?”
    Daniel was wearing his computer glasses. He looked up, squinted as though he didn’t recognize his visitor, took the computer glasses off, put on the gold-rimmed glasses and waved Lucas toward a chair. His face, Lucas thought, was redder than usual.
    “Do you know Marty McKenzie?” Daniel asked quietly, his hands flat, palms down, on his green baize blotter.
    “Yeah.” Lucas nodded as he sat down. He crossed his legs. “He’s got a practice in the Claymore Building. A sleaze.”
    “A sleaze,” Daniel agreed. He folded his hands over his stomach and peered up at the ceiling. “The very first thing this morning, I sat here smiling for half an hour while the sleaze lectured me. Can you guess why?”
    “Randy . . .”
    “ . . . Because the sleaze had a client over in the locked ward at Hennepin General who had the shit beat out of him last night by one of my cops. After the sleaze left, I called the hospital and talked to a doc.” Daniel pulled open a desk drawer and took out a notepad. “Broken ribs. Broken nose. Broken teeth. Possible cracked sternum. Monitored for blunt trauma.” He slapped the pad on the desktop with a crack like a .22 short. “Jesus Christ, Davenport . . .”
    “Pulled a knife on me,” Lucas said. “Tried to cut me. Like this.” He turned the front panel of the jacket, showed the deep slice in the leather.
    “Don’t bullshit me,” Daniel said, ignoring the coat. “The Intelligence guys knew a week ago that you were looking for him. You and your pals. You’ve been looking for him ever since that hooker got cut. You found him last night

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