Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(33)

“Would have taken a lot of research to see the alarms,” Lucas said.

“Even with lots of research, we might not have seen them,” Rae said. “The things were the size of your finger, attached to trees, hooked up wirelessly. We might not have seen that hedge, either. I mean, you really can’t see it, even in the daylight, from the next yard. It looks like one thick hedge. You can’t see that it’s two, with a path between.”

There had been hundreds of shots fired during the fight: three empty thirty-round magazines had been found scattered around the windows from where Nast had been firing the full auto, and another magazine in the gun itself, which was mostly empty when he went down. Vincent had gone through one seventeen-round magazine and had been working through another when killed.

Lucas never found out how many rounds the cops had fired, but it was probably several times the number fired by Nast and Vincent.

Deese, Beauchamps, and Cole had driven away during the fight, and they weren’t alone. Several neighbors on both streets had also fled, and a man across the street had seen the occupants of the back house driving away in a SUV and a white pickup. They’d never been seen again. One of the neighbors thought there was a woman with them, a blonde. The LA cops had found a fourth set of prints in the back house, small, like a woman’s, but they’d gotten no hits from the feds.


“THERE WERE SWAT guys who were supposed to stay up on the street, by that back house, in case there were runners, but when the shooting started and people started screaming about cops going down they ran around the house and left nobody back in the street,” Rae said. “There was nobody in the street for twenty minutes. We think Beauchamps and the others just got in their vehicles and drove away. The garage door was open, but the overhead door lights had been broken out.”

“Seems like bad discipline by the SWATs,” Bob said. “But when you got cops down, everything tends to go up in smoke. I don’t blame those guys for leaving the street. They were risking their necks trying to help.”


ONLY ONE SWAT team member had been injured, which was nothing short of a miracle given all the gunfire. He’d taken a single round in what the press releases called his hip, but Rae said was his butt. “I’m not saying he’s a half-assed cop, but he’s a half-assed cop.”

The wound was actually more serious than Lucas’s. The cop was hospitalized for almost six weeks, and he still hadn’t returned to duty in August.

The LA cops and the LA County Sheriff’s Department had launched an all-out search for Beauchamps, Cole, and Deese and had found exactly none of them. “LA has their mug shots all over California and up in Vegas and Portland and Seattle, and down in New Orleans, but we never got a hint,” Rae said. “We believe that all four of them were ready to run at the drop of a hat. Both Nast and Vincent each had two fake IDs, including real California driver’s licenses with paid-up auto insurance. Wherever those three guys went, nobody’s found them. And nobody knows where to look, either.”

“It’s possible that they’re still around,” Lucas said. “How many people in Southern California? More than twenty million. These guys have already got California driver’s licenses, and car tags, and they’re familiar with the territory.”

“Rocha doesn’t think so,” Bob said. “She says it’s too hot down here—too many chances they’ll run into an acquaintance who’ll know who they are and who needs a favor from the cops. You could get one big favor for turning in a gang that shot a couple cops in a gunfight even if they didn’tdo the shooting. To say nothing of a cannibal.”

“Could be right,” Lucas said. “But could be wrong,”

During the gunfight, Nast had managed to hit a house across the street with a dozen bullets. It was made of concrete blocks and none of the bullets had penetrated all the way through. Nobody got hurt, but the owner had sued LA County for reckless endangerment, and Lucas, Bob, and Rae would probably be called to testify if it ever went to trial.


NOW LUCAS, on this hot August night, stood in his driveway, dripping sweat, fighting the nausea. He knew he’d heal sooner or later, but what bothered him most was the persistent weakness.

He’d started playing hockey in elementary school, and back then, in the bad old days, there’d been a lot of emphasis on gutting it out and hanging tough. He’d never felt weak, even as a kid. He knew, in theory, that if he managed to survive to old age, at some point he’d probably start feeling weak.

But when you got old, you’d adapt, and you’d have time to adapt. He hadn’t had any time. At the hospital, when he could walk again, the nurses had to help him get out of bed, to use the bathroom. They’d led him down the hall to the imaging department, pushing a pole with a saline bag on it, shuffling along in a robe like an old man. They’d flown home on a private jet, and he’d had to walk down a set of stairs to the tarmac and had held on to the handrail for dear life, afraid his legs wouldn’t hold him upright.

Unlike any of his other injuries—he’d been shot twice before—this one had gotten to his head.

As he stood there, catching his breath, Weather walked out and put a hand on his back and asked, “Have you thrown up?”

“Not quite.”

“Goddamnit, Lucas, you’re pushing too hard,” she said.