Rhymes With Prey by Jeffery Deaver Read Free Book Online Page A

block, where she could watch the back of the building. Lucas sat on Verlaine’s stoop; he was too well fed to be a street person, but from a distance, with the pack by his feet, he could pass. They’d put a few bronze flakes in the bags with the sampling pads before they left, and now he took them out, one at a time, trying to look like he was shaking cigarettes out of a pack, and pressed them into the stoop. When he had five samples in place, he put them in the pack and zipped it up.
    That done, he stood and ambled up the block, took out his cell phone, and called Lily, Lincoln, and Amelia, and said the same thing to all of them: “We’re good to go.”
    Lily said, “Forty minutes.”
    â€œWhat’s taking so long?”
    â€œNothing. You just got there quicker than you should have. I’ve got the application, I’m seeing the judge in about two minutes, and the entry team is gearing up. So, easy, boy.”
    Lucas continued up the block, and on to the next block, and then walked back, and finally, with nothing at all going on atVerlaine’s building, he turned the corner and walked around the block, where he found Amelia’s car, parked, with Lincoln’s Chrysler van right behind it. Amelia climbed out of the passenger’s side: “Want to leave the pack?”
    â€œYeah.” He looked at his watch. “Half an hour, yet. I’ll find another place to sit.”
    â€œStay in touch,” Lincoln said, from the back.
    Lincoln’s aide, Thom, who was driving, said, “I brought some sandwiches along. These two can spend hours at a crime scene. If you want a ham-and-cheese—”
    â€œI not only want one, it’ll give me something to do while I’m watching,” Lucas said. “Some reason to be sitting there.”
    Lucas ambled back around the block, carrying his brown-paper sandwich bag, and found a stoop fifty yards down the block from the entrance to Verlaine’s studio. He sat down, took Thom’s ham-and-cheese out of the sack, took a bite, and said, aloud, “That’s a great ham-and-cheese.”
    He was thinking about the fact that you almost couldn’t buy a great ham-and-cheese in the Twin Cities, and why that might be, but that you could get a great one in Des Moines or Chicago, and then thought about Chicago being the “hog butcher to the world,” when a man stuck his head out of the door behind him and said, “This look like a fuckin’ cafeteria? Hit the road, asshole.”
    Lucas chewed and swallowed, then shook his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Lily, ostentatiously pushed the speakerphone button, and, when she answered, said, “I’m being hassled by a guy across the street from the target, at 219—how long would it take to get, say, a half dozen building inspectors here? The place doesn’t look so sturdy.”
    â€œI could have them there in an hour,” Lily said.
    Lucas looked at the guy in the doorway. “An hour good for you?”
    â€œStay as long as you want,” the guy said, and eased the door shut.
    Five minutes after that, a white van drove by Verlaine’s building, and the guy in the passenger’s seat took a close look at Lucas, and then nodded to him. Lucas nodded back. The van reappeared another five minutes later, going in the opposite direction, and this time the driver nodded to him.
    Ten minutes after that, Amelia called: “We got the blocking squad here. Lincoln and I are coming around.”
    And Lily: “One minute.”
    The entry team arrived in two white, unmarked vans, closely followed by Lily in an unmarked car, another unmarked car, Amelia’s car, and two patrol cars. Behind them all, Lincoln’s van turned the corner. Lucas jogged down the street toward them as the vans stopped directly in front of Verlaine’s stoop and two guys carrying an entry ram hustled up to the door; four cops in armor were right