Free Silent Prey by John Sandford

ever see him?”
    “His name’s Dick Kennett.” In the half-light of the bedroom he could see a tiny, rueful smile lift the corner of her mouth again. “He’s running the Bekker case,” she said.

CHAPTER
5
    Early morning.
    Lucas strolled along Thirty-fifth Street, sucking on half of an orange, taking in the city: looking at faces and display windows, at sleeping bums wrapped in blankets like thrown-away cigars, at the men hustling racks of newly made clothing through the streets.
    The citric acid was sharp on his tongue, an antidote for the staleness of a poor night’s sleep. Halfway down the block, he stopped in front of a parking garage, stripped out the last of the pulp with his teeth, and dropped the rind into a battered trash barrel.
    Midtown South squatted across the street, looking vaguely like a midwestern schoolhouse from the 1950s: blocky, functional, a little tired. Six squad cars were parked diagonally in front of the building, along with a Cushman scooter. Four more squads were double-parked farther up the street. As Lucas paused at the trash basket, disposing of the orange, a gray Plymouth stopped in the street. A lanky white-haired man climbed out ofthe passenger side, said something to the driver, laughed and pushed the door shut.
    He didn’t slam the door, Lucas noticed: he gave it a careful push. His eyes came up, checked Lucas, checked him again, and then he turned carefully toward the station. The fingers of his left hand slipped under a brilliant-colored tie, and he unconsciously scratched himself over his heart.
    Lucas, dodging traffic, crossed the street and followed the man toward the front doors. Lily had said Kennett was tall and white-haired, and the hand over the heart, the unconscious gesture . . . .
    “Are you Dick Kennett?” Lucas asked.
    The man turned, eyes cool and watchful. “Yes?” He looked more closely. “Davenport? I thought it might be you . . . . Yeah, Kennett,” he said, sticking out his hand.
    Kennett was two inches taller than Lucas, but twenty pounds lighter. His hair was slightly long for a cop’s, and his beige cotton summer suit fit too well. With his blue eyes, brilliant white teeth against what looked like a lifetime tan, crisp blue-striped oxford-cloth shirt and the outrageous necktie, he looked like a doctor who played scratch golf or good club tennis: thin, intent, serious. But a gray pallor lay beneath the tan, and his eye sockets, normally deep, showed bony knife ridges under paper-thin skin. There were scars below the eyes, the remnants of the short painful cuts a boxer gets in the ring, or a cop picks up in the street—a cop who likes to fight.
    “Lily’s been telling me about you,” Lucas said, as they shook hands.
    “All lies,” Kennett said, grinning.
    “Christ, I hope so,” Lucas said. Lucas took in Kennett’s tie, a bare-breasted Polynesian woman with another woman in the background. “Nice tie.”
    “Gauguin,” Kennett said, looking down at it, pleased.
    “What?”
    “Paul Gauguin, the French painter?”
    “I didn’t know he did neckties,” Lucas said uncertainly.
    “Yeah, him and Christian Dior, they’re like brothers,” Kennett said, flashing the grin. Lucas nodded and they went on toward the door, Lucas holding it open. “I fuckin’ hate this, people holding doors,” Kennett grumbled as he went through.
    “Yeah, but when you croak, how’d you like it to say on the stone, ‘Died opening a door’?” Lucas asked. Kennett laughed, an easy extroverted laugh, and Lucas liked him for it, and thought: Watch it. Some people could make you like them. It was a talent.
    “I could die pulling the tab on a beer can, if they let me drink beer, which they don’t,” Kennett was saying, suddenly sober. “Hope the fuck it never happens to you. Eat aspirin. Stop eating steak and eggs. Pray for a brain hemorrhage. This heart shit—it turns you into a coward. You walk around listening to it tick, waiting for it to stop. And