Eyes of Prey

to your right . . .” The receptionist pointed like a real estate man giving directions to the third bedroom, the one that was a little too small.
    “Thank you.”
    The funeral home was quiet, all sounds smothered by plush drapes and heavy carpets. To quiet the weeping, Bekker guessed. As he stepped into the Rose Chapel, he glanced back at the receptionist. The man had turned away and seemed about to go down to the next room, when a phone rang in the entry. The receptionist stopped, picked up the receiver and launched into a conversation. Good. Bekker stepped into the chapel.
     
    Lucas stood out of sight, heard the Intelligence guy ask the question, heard Bekker say, “No . . . ah, Mr. Druze?” A moment later the phone rang. Worried that Bekker might arrive and yet develop cold feet, they’d worked out the diversion of the telephone, with Sloan calling from a back room. If Bekker could hear the receptionist talking, he’d be encouraged to act.
     
    The Rose Chapel was small, with fifteen dark wooden chairs facing the coffin. The plaster walls were a pale shade of rose; the woodwork an antique cream. A closed pair of double doors was straight ahead of Bekker, apparently leading to the depths of the funeral home; they were sized to take a coffin on a gurney.
    The coffin itself was to Bekker’s right, on a dais within a plaster alcove. Roses were molded into the plaster, and individually hand-painted. The dais was covered with a rose-colored drape, a deeper shade than the walls. Bekker could see the side of Druze’s head and his heavy shoulders under a dark suit.
    Beauty was pushing through now, anxious for the celebration, moving him. He could hear the receptionist talking, faintly, far away, and he moved to the front. His hand went to his pocket, found the scalpel. He pulled the tube off the end and moved next to the coffin.
    Druze’s head was large, he thought. Not just a pumpkin, but a big pumpkin. His face had been liberally worked with makeup, so the patchwork of skin grafts was barely visible. The nose, of course . . . not much you could do about that. He frowned. Too bad. Druze actually had been something of a friend. A man you could talk to. But he had to go; Bekker had known that from the beginning. Murder was something you didn’t share, except with the dead.
     
    Lucas pressed his eye to the hole in the double doors. He couldn’t see Bekker as he came in, couldn’t see his beautiful face as he went by. Bekker paused, just for a moment, in front of the coffin, looking down. Lucas could hear the receptionist muttering in the hall, and then, suddenly, Bekker was on Druze, bending over, the hand out of sight, but working over him . . . .
     
    Bekker glanced back over his shoulder, then reached across Druze’s face with his left hand and lifted his eyelid. The eye beneath was intact, but dull, dry, a piece of leather, staring sightlessly and unflinchingly at the ceiling. His heart pounding, the pressure in his veins, the murmur of the receptionist’s conversation providing him with the necessary security, Bekker plunged the point of the scalpel into Druze’s eyeball, and then turned the handle, like a corkscrew. He felt some of the weight leave him, a pressure gone from his shoulders.
    Quickly, quickly, his mouth open, panting, he did the second eye, looking over his shoulder, twisting the knife . . . .
    And he was free. He felt it, almost as if he were being liftedfrom the floor. He did a little step, Beauty coming on, and looked back at Druze.
    The eyelids were open, wrinkled and pulled up, like fragments of dead leaves. His heart beating hard and with joy, Beauty reached out to smooth them down, round them carefully, the scalpel still in his hand. He stepped back.
    “Cut his eyes, Mike?”
    The voice broke on him like a bucket of ice water, crashing down, snatching his breath away, each word hurting, a sharp stone: CUT HIS EYES, MIKE?
    Bekker whirled, the scalpel still in his right hand.
     
    Davenport was there, leaning in the double doors, wearing a dark leather jacket, a pistol in his hands, pointed not at Bekker but to one side. He looked wired, his eyes wide, his hair dirty, his face unshaven. A thug. Another man came in from the left, and then a third, Stephanie’s dope-addict cousin, Del. The receptionist was behind them.
    “ . . . ’Cause if you cut his eyes, Mike, we got you for the kids, too. We just dug them up today and the medical examiner says they were