Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(54)

WHILE LUCAS AND MALLOW waited for the search warrant, Bob and Rae had fought through three separate hospital bureaucracies and had come up empty. One the fourth try, at a northside medical center’s emergency room, they asked the duty nurse if she knew of a man who’d been treated for a leg injury and who’d paid for the treatment with a stack of bills.

Instead of shaking her head and referring them to somebody else, her eyes narrowed and she said, “I’m not supposed to talk about that. You’ll have to talk to one of the people in the director’s office.”

She made a phone call and pointed them at the elevators.

Bob said to Rae, “She said thatlike it was in italics.”

“I noticed.”

A tall carefully coiffed woman in the director’s office looked at their IDs and then said, “We’re not allowed to give out specific patient information without a subpoena. I’m sure you know that. I can confirm that we did treat a man about six weeks ago with a serious leg infection who refused to give us identification and paid us in cash. He said he didn’t have any insurance, and the bill was substantial. Substantial enough that the cash payment was . . . extremely unusual.”

“Can you tell me what kind of injury it was?” Rae asked.

“Yes. He had a large defect in his calf. The actual injury happened some time back, probably months ago, and apparently had been self-treated. A cyst developed under the wound. Our surgeon had to open the healed wound to drain the cyst. And that’s about as much as I can tell you without the subpoena.”

“Can you tell us if the patient was given any medication that required a prescription?” Bob asked.

“Yes. He was given prescriptions for pain pills and also for antibiotics.”

She wouldn’t answer any other questions until Rae asked, “Can you answer a question about non-patients?”

The woman frowned. “Like what?”

“Was he accompanied by anyone?”

“I believe he was accompanied by a woman, perhaps his wife or girlfriend. One of our security guards reported that she brought him to the emergency room in a Cadillac.”

“Do you do video of the cars at the emergency room?” Bob asked.

“Yes, we do. We archive the tapes after thirty days unless there’s an inquiry during that time.”

“So you wouldn’t have the video anymore?”

“We do not,” the woman said.

Bob said, “We’ll be back with the subpoena.”

The woman nodded. “We’re always happy to cooperate with the authorities, but according to law we have to do the correct paperwork. It can be a pain, but it’s the law.”

When Bob and Rae stood to leave, the woman asked, “Can you tell me who the man is? The injured man?”

Rae said, “You heard about the Louisiana cannibal?”

“Oh . . . no . . .”


WHEN THE SEARCH WARRANT arrived at the Eli brothers’ shop, delivered by two robbery cops, Mallow handed it to Tommy Eli, who frowned and said, “I gotta talk to my attorney about this.”

“Talk to him all you want,” Mallow said. “In the meantime, we’re gonna search the place.”

The cabinets along the wall, which looked like the ordinary filing type, were essentially keyed safes. Mallow asked Eli for a key, but Eli shook his head. “Bobby must have it. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“Are those cabinets expensive?” Lucas asked.

“The best,” Eli said.

“Too bad,” Lucas said. To one of the robbery cops: “You got a pickax or a sledgehammer?”

“Yup. We also got a guy with the Jaws of Life. All we need to do is beat in the front of the drawer to bend them so we can get the jaws in the crack and then we can rip them right open, like ripping a door off a car. I’ll go call him.”

As he headed for the door, Eli called out, “Wait. I remembered. There might be a spare key.”


THERE WAS a lot of jewelry. Lucas was no expert, but most of it looked like junk. Much of it was older, like nineteenth-century, with semiprecious moonstones or onyx and probably eight-karat gold. There was one flat-out safe, in which they found fifty-one thousand dollars and several hundred euros. In the velvet-lined bottom drawer of the eighth cabinet, they found five pieces of Charles Loloma jewelry that matched the photos given to them by the Wrights.

Eli said that the jewelry had been brought in by two men. He’d seen one of them before, a big guy who said his name was Richard. The other guy didn’t mention a name, but was, Eli said, “An evil-looking fuck.”

They were pushing him on it when one of the cops said, “There’s another drawer.”

He’d pulled the drawer out, which was shallower than the others, and then reached back into its cavity, where he found another handle. He pulled it, and in a second compartment were nine pistols, ranging from a piece of crap .32 to a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.

Mallow went off on Eli again and was still hassling him about selling guns illegally when a cop brought Bobby Eli into the room. Eli asked, “What the fuck?”

“That’s what the marshal and I were saying,” Mallow said to him. “What the fuck? We look in one drawer and we find guns, and we look in another and we find a buttload of jewelry stolen by the Louisiana cannibal. I never would have believed you guys would have joined up with an animal like that. I thought you were the friendly neighborhood fences. And then we’ve got OxyContin all over the goddamn place . . .”