can get a full bio on Beauchamps from Luanne Rocha, who’s a sergeant in the Robbery Special Section of the LA cops. I’ve got her number for you.”
Harvey wrote down Rocha’s information. Another plainclothes guy, this one in a baby blue golf shirt over lightweight chinos, had come up to listen in and now said, “Shit, Tom, you already cleared the case. There’s nothing left to do. Go down to Caesars and grab the guy.”
Rae: “Let me tell you something. If you start running this thing down and you stumble over Deese, you can’t go in with a sissy baby blue golf shirt. Deese killed a lot of people and ate some of them. He’s got nothing to lose by shooting a few cops in baby blue shirts.”
“I’ll pass the word,” Harvey said. “When I first looked at this boy, I had the feeling it’d get ugly.” He nodded at the body on the floor and the puddle of now purple blood that had seeped out from beneath it.
Bob said, “Lucas here”—he tipped his thumb at Lucas—“was shot by this bunch back in May. Pretty much in the heart. Luckily, he doesn’t have a heart. The thing you need to ask him about is the second house.”
Lucas told Harvey about the double house arrangement in LA and the gunfight that followed.
“You think they got another house around here? And they shot you?”
“A second house wouldn’t surprise us, and it’s probably close by,” Rae said. “These guys are assholes, but not dumb assholes. And they did shoot Lucas. He used to be a lot taller and better-looking.”
Harvey shook his head. “All right. You know anything about a blond woman?”
“They may have a woman with them. Three guys and a woman. Now two guys. We don’t know her exact status,” Lucas said. “Beauchamps liked to chase women, but he didn’t want to have to chase them too hard. Some of the women were okay, but some might have been more than available. They’ve got the blonde’s prints down in LA . . .”
Lucas told him the rest of it—about Deese, Smith, and Santos, about Deese’s brother Beauchamps, and Cole and the home invasions.
“I gotta make some phone calls,” Harvey said, heading for the door. “A lotta phone calls.” To the cop in the baby blue shirt he said, over his shoulder, “You got it, don’t fuck it up. And change that shirt. You look like a target.”
* * *
—
THE GOLF-SHIRTED COP introduced himself as Chuck Armie, and he walked them through the scene, staying away from a couple of technicians who were working through the bedroom. Harvey and Armie, with the head crime scene tech, had worked out the probable sequence of the shooting and laid it out for the marshals.
“Any of the shooter’s blood anywhere?” Lucas asked.
“Nope. But there are all kinds of bullet holes in the living room wall, behind where he was probably standing. It’s like the dead guy missed him six or seven times.”
“That can happen,” Bob said. “The unknown shooter didn’t pick up his brass?”
“No. It’s still here.”
“Prints?” Rae said.
The cop nodded. “Of course.”
“You know how he got out of here?” Lucas asked. “Anyone see a car? How about the woman?”
Armie bobbed his head. “The shooting got some attention, even with all the neighbors’ windows closed and the air-conditioning on. Two cars left after the shooting: a small sedan, maybe a Corolla or a Civic or a Passat, silver in color, and then an SUV. In that order. We got no plates. Your friend Santos is probably in the sedan, the woman in the SUV.”
* * *
—
HARVEY CAME BACK. “We’ve got a fleet of uniforms coming in. We’ll walk through the neighborhood, talking to everybody we can about newcomers. We’ve got guys on the way to Caesars.”
Lucas handed him a card and said, “Call us if anything happens. We’re really scratching around here.” He looked at Bob and Rae and tipped his head toward the door. “We gotta make some calls ourselves.”
On the way back to the cars, Lucas told Rae to call Tremanty. “We need to register the phone calls going to Smith. I’ve gotta believe that Deese will call him. And Santos, probably, too. You gotta get Tremanty to set it up.”
Rae nodded.
Bob: “What else?”
They talked about it. The Las Vegas cops would be all over Caesars, but they didn’t know Santos’s face as well as Lucas did. They needed to find out where he’d gotten a second car and where he might be staying,