Neon Prey

by John Sandford

  * * *

  —

  AS DEESE FELL, the woman got to the Lexus, which was still running, jammed it into gear, and hit the gas. Lucas said, “Tires.”

  Bob took his time, fired once, and the front tire went expensively flat. Not explosively flat, but with a genteel release of air pressure. Cox kept going, throwing a ton of dust in the air.

  “Run-flats,” Bob said in disgust.

  “Take another one,” Tremanty said.

  Bang! And the rear tire was gone, but the car rolled on. Bang! And an off-side tire went. They were so preoccupied that they never heard the helicopter until it passed overhead, got in front of Cox, and slowly lowered itself until it was hovering fifteen feet above the road and directly in front of her, a menacing dragonfly to her bug. The Lexus stopped and a moment later the driver’s-side window dropped and a hand poked out and waved. She’d quit.

  “What happened to Deese?” Bob asked.

  They all looked back to the trailer. Deese had vanished.

  “I hit him hard. Maybe too hard,” Bob said. “He was stepping down, I was aiming at his knee but hit him in the groin area instead. He’s gonna lose the leg, I think. And if I took out his femoral artery, he’s dead. Shit. He fell right into the slug.”

  “Crawled back inside?” Tremanty suggested.

  “I think he crawled underneath,” Lucas said. He got on the radio to Rae, told her what had happened.

  “He didn’t crawl out here. I can see the whole back of the trailer,” she said. “I could lay a few rounds in there, in the dirt, see if it chases him out.”

  “Hold off,” Lucas said. “We should get this woman out of the way. We know Deese’s hurt, he’s not going anywhere.”

  “Not to say that he couldn’t kill you with that shotgun,” Bob said. He was watching the trailer through the scope, his finger hovering a quarter inch off the trigger.

  * * *

  —

  DEESE WAS under the trailer, which was, in a way, a relief, cooler than inside. On the other hand, somebody—he had no idea who but probably a cop—had shot him, and the pain was blinding him. He knew he was bleeding bad.

  Pretty much a done deal, he thought. He still had a last wish. If only he could get a peek at a cop . . . He still had three shells, he thought, three or four. If he could get a peek at a cop, he’d kill him, a good-bye kiss.

  He pushed himself flat, glanced down at his leg, surprised by the amount of blood beneath it. The pain was bad but seemed to be diminishing. The heat must be getting to him, he thought, because he was getting light-headed. If he was going to get a cop, it had to be soon.

  * * *

  —

  BOB STAYED behind the ridge with the rifle still propped on Lucas’s backpack, waiting for some sign of motion inside or underneath the trailer. Tremanty and Lucas slid sideways along the slope until they were beside and slightly below the Lexus, then Lucas raised his rifle, and Tremanty his handgun, and Lucas shouted, “U.S. Marshal! Come out of there. Come out on this side.”

  The passenger-side window rolled down, and she shouted, “They raped me. They made me fuck all of them. They chained me up . . . That old man raped and killed Mrs. Harrelson. And he was going to kill me.”

  Lucas shouted, “Come out of there.”

  Tremanty half stood, loping toward the back of the Lexus, and when Lucas saw him moving he shouted, “Sandro! Get down. Don’t do that. Get—”

  Boom!

  The shotgun. Tremanty flew away from the car and halfway down the slope. Lucas looked at him in horror. And then Tremanty rolled over, got to his knees, turned to Lucas, and said, “Missed.”

  “Jesus. Don’t do that shit. I already did it enough for both of us.” Lucas looked back at the Lexus. “Come out of there.”

  Up on the hill, Rae had seen the shot and had seen Tremanty go flying, and she sprayed the ground behind the Airstream with a burst from her M4.

  Cox slipped out of the Lexus and down to Lucas and Tremanty. Rae was shouting into her handset, “How’s Sandro? Is he hit?”

  Tremanty said into his handset, “No, but my back is full of cactus stickers.”

  Rae said, “What were you doing? My God, I’m gonna kick your ass when I get back down there.”

  Lucas asked Cox, “How many people in there? In the trailer?”

  “None. Well, two, but they’re both dead. This guy Cole was sorta taking care of me toward the end, he left me a gun to keep Ralph off me. But Ralph went back into the bedroom—” She broke off and began to cry.

  “Where’s Mrs. Harrelson?”

  “Ralph . . . Ralph raped her. And then . . . he had this shotgun—that shotgun, the one Deese has—and after he finished with her, he shot her. Right in the chest. I had that gun, but I was so scared. But I knew he was going to kill me next. So when he came out of the bedroom, I shot him first.”

  She began weeping again, gasping for breath. “I was so scared . . .”

  Lucas wasn’t entirely buying it, but he still had a Deese problem. He left Tremanty to take care of Cox and scuttled across the ridge back to Bob.

  “He’s under there, all right, I saw him. But I didn’t have a shot,” Bob said. “I’ll tell you, he’ll bleed to death if we don’t get him out of there soon.”

  * * *

  —

  ALL DEESE WANTED was one more shot, one more shot. He was sure he’d missed with the first one; he’d pulled around too quickly. The machine gun had scared him. He hadn’t been hurt, but he knew he couldn’t move backwards. He inched sideways, very light-headed now. There was a bunch of crap under the trailer, a pile of four-by-four timbers, each about five or six feet long, that smelled of creosote, an old pot with the bottom rusted out, some baling wire, a pile of narrow boards that might have been a wooden floor.

  He slid one of the boards out of the pile to prop up the gun barrel.

  One more shot, he thought. Was that too much to ask?

  He moved another board to get it out of his line of sight and looked straight into the cold black eyes of a Crotalus scutulatus, the Mojave green rattlesnake, North America’s most poisonous rattler. It struck him in the face and he panicked, jerked away, slapped at it, missed, and it struck him again, in the nose, and again in the cheek, and he screamed and rolled away, crawling blindly out into the sun, his fear of the snake greater than the fear of a bullet.

  Bob and Lucas saw him crawl out, and Lucas said, “Wait! No gun. I don’t see the shotgun.”

  Lucas yelled at Tremanty, who was still talking to Cox. When Tremanty looked up, Lucas pointed, and Tremanty looked that way, and Lucas said to Bob, “Let’s go. But let’s be careful.”

  “He screamed,” Bob said. “What was that?”

  “Dunno,” Lucas said. He shouted, “Rae. Rae. Come down, be careful. He’s out in front.” To their right, Tremanty and Cox were walking carefully toward the body in the dirt but were still fifty yards way. As Bob and Lucas got close, Rae turned the corner of the trailer and put her machine gun on Deese.

  Bob called, “Is he dead?”

  Lucas moved up, Bob now pointing his handgun at Deese’s body, Rae her rifle. Lucas knelt and said, “Still breathing. A little anyway.”

  Deese twitched, or shuddered. He tried to push up, failed, got his face turned out of the dirt, looked at Lucas with sightless eyes and said, “Sssnna . . . Sssnna . . .”

  “What?”

  Bob backed a couple of feet away. “I think he was trying to say ‘snake.’ Jesus, look at his face.”

  Lucas looked, six holes pocking Deese’s face, around his nose, already turning blue. “Oh, shit!” Lucas lurched away from the trailer, stood well back to try to look under it. Saw nothing but a pile of dusty lumber and an old rusted pot.

  Rae waved Tremanty and Cox up. The helicopter had landed on a piece of desert hardpan and sat there, waiting for c
ustomers.

  “Is he dead?” Cox asked.

  “No, he . . .” Bob began. He looked again. “Well. Maybe now.”

  Cox said, “Good,” and spit on the body.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  They left all the bodies where they lay and called in an FBI crime scene team. The team arrived, by helicopter, with generators and lights, at three o’clock. Backup ground crews arrived two hours later, along with a couple of cars from the local sheriff’s office.

  Cox at first seemed willing to talk. Rae went up the hill and turned the generator back on, and when the air-conditioning came up they sat in the trailer in one end, trying to ignore the bodies at the other end, and she gave a partial statement.

  She had originally gone with Beauchamps, not knowing exactly what he did for a living, she said, knowing only that he liked to dance and spend money.

  When she found out what he did, she said she wanted to leave but they wouldn’t let her. When Beauchamps and the others left on a job, they chained her to a bed but left her with a TV remote and a pile of magazines.

  She pulled up her blouse to show off her bruises. “See? You can see the chain links, like, right here.”

  The gang wasn’t cruel, but she couldn’t leave. Later, she said, Beauchamps told her that Cole also wanted sexual privileges and she’d begun sleeping with both of them. She’d refused to sleep with Nast, but wouldn’t say why. When Rae asked if it was because Nast was black, she said, “Well, yeah, I guess . . . No offense.”

  She also said that Vincent hadn’t wanted to sleep with her because he was “different.”

  “Not gay. He just, I dunno . . . Sex didn’t do anything for him.”

  She refused to sleep with Deese because he smelled bad and ate people and was evil and called her a whore, which she insisted she most certainly wasn’t. When Tremanty and Lucas began picking apart her story, she began to cry, said, “You’re being mean.” And then she said, “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything except I wanted to party. They picked me up and kept me.”

  Crying her bright blue eyes out, she asked for an attorney.

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS, Bob, Rae, and Tremanty made recorded statements at the scene for an assistant U.S. attorney; the entire scene was comprehensively photographed. Just before dark, they rode the helicopter back to Las Vegas; Cox was transferred by ground to a federal holding facility.

  The next day was spent with paperwork, and the Vegas AIC held a press conference with Tremanty and Lucas, in which they gave credit to the hard work of the Metro cops, the Ney County Sheriff’s Department, and, of course, without saying so—they had behind-the-scenes spokespeople to do that—themselves.

  The cannibal was dead. Good riddance.

  When it was all signed, sealed, and delivered, Lucas, Bob, Rae, and Tremanty agreed to rendezvous at the Cheesecake Factory at seven o’clock to eat and talk about the case, before flying out the next day. Bob and Lucas arrived right at seven, Rae and Tremanty were late.

  “I think they’re, uh-mmm, you know . . .” Bob said.

  “Good for them,” Lucas said. “Everybody oughta uh-mmm. Not enough of that going on, in my opinion.”

  “Tremanty’s gonna wind up in Washington, sooner or later,” Bob said, over a cherry shake and cheeseburger. “I hope she doesn’t go with him. I mean, I wish them the best.”

  “But you don’t want to break up the team.”

  “She’s my best friend,” Bob said.

  “Are you uh-mmming anybody at the moment?” Lucas asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I am. There’s a high school gym coach . . . Anyway, she’s divorced, friendly, and likes to work out. Don’t know what will happen there . . . Maybe something.”

  * * *

  —

  RAE WANDERED IN a few minutes later. Her hair was damp, but neither Lucas nor Bob mentioned it, until she said, “That’s right. Don’t say a fuckin’ thing.”

  “We’re trying not to,” Lucas said.

  Tremanty ambled up a moment later. His hair was damp as well, but they didn’t say a fuckin’ thing.

  Cheeseburgers, fries, shakes.

  “You got Santos anyway,” Lucas said. “That’s gotta be some kind of wedge you can use to get at Smith.”

  Tremanty shrugged. “Don’t know. Cox is a witness to the Beauchamps shooting, but she somehow wound up with the most expensive defense attorney in Las Vegas, where defense attorneys don’t come cheap. She says he’s doing it pro bono for an indigent client, but that would be like the first time forever.”

  Bob: “You think Smith . . . ?”

  Tremanty nodded. “Of course. If she testifies that Beauchamps shot first—that Santos was acting in self-defense—we can still get Santos, maybe, on the attempted money transfer, aiding a federal fugitive. But you know, Deese was never convicted of anything. Now he can’t be because he’s dead.”

  “Sorry,” Bob said.

  “Not your fault,” Tremanty said. “You were trying not to kill him and he stepped right into the slug. So . . . it all gets complicated. Whatever happens, it’ll cost Smith a lot of money. A bundle.”

  “And the cannibal is dead,” Rae said. They raised their milk shake glasses and clinked them together. “The cannibal is dead.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY ALL FLEW the next day, Bob, Rae, and Tremanty to New Orleans, Bob and Rae in business class, Tremanty in the back. Rae suggested that Bob give up his seat so Tremanty could sit next to her.

  Bob laughed. That wasn’t going to happen.

  Then Rae suggested that she give up her seat so the two men could have the leg and hip room, but Tremanty said, “Rae, you’re taller than me.”

  Bob and Rae flew business into New Orleans, as did Lucas into Minneapolis, on the Marshals Service tab.

  * * *

  —

  HARRELSON didn’t flinch when told of his wife’s death. He nodded and walked away, turned at the door of the FBI office and said, “Thanks for tryin’.” When he got home, he sat on the bed and looked at his wife’s clothes in the closet and sat there and cried and couldn’t stop. That went on for a while.

  * * *

  —

  COX’S excellent defense attorney proved valuable: in the end, she wasn’t charged with anything because all the government could prove was that she’d stayed with the gang. In her favor, there were those chain bruises, carefully photographed by the defense attorney’s excellent photographer, and the fact that she’d called Lucas to tip him off about the meeting between Deese and Santos.

  She was required to testify against Santos as part of her no-prosecution deal.

  Santos was in the hospital for three weeks, then transferred to the federal holding facility in Las Vegas. He’d lost a kidney and suffered nerve damage near his spine that affected control of his left foot. He could walk with the help a small brace that kept his foot pointed forward, but not run well.

  He also had an excellent defense attorney. And when it was all over with—it took nearly a year—he pled guilty to handgun violations and attempting to aid a federal fugitive. He told the court that the money he was delivering actually was Deese’s own money, not Roger Smith’s. “A hidden stash,” he said.

  He was unaware of any illegal activity by Smith; he worked in Smith’s law office as a consultant on drug violations by Smith clients, of which there were many. With no prior convictions, he was given three years in prison.

  His three years—he’d actually serve thirty months—cost Roger Smith three million dollars in cash; money well spent, in Smith’s view.

  Thinking about it drove Tremanty into an occasional frenzy.

  * * *

  —

  KERRY BLACK, the college girl who’d rented Beauchamps’s trailer in Vegas, kept sending off rent chec
ks that were never cashed, and because Beauchamps owned the trailer under a false name, nobody ever picked up on it. She got two whole years out of the place, before graduating and moving on. The checks went to a mail drop store. When the rent on the mailbox ran out, the store bundled up the envelopes and returned them to the post office, who forwarded them on to Black’s new address. She really wasn’t sure that she should spend the uncollected money, but life is life and she eventually did.

  * * *

  —

  TREMANTY AND RAE remained an item. Their relationship caused a two-day breach in Rae’s relationship with Bob. They had desks facing each other, and Rae came in one morning, humming to herself, and Bob stared at her until she asked, “What?”

  Bob blurted, “You look like the most thoroughly fucked woman in the continental United States.”

  That was on a Monday. She forgave him on Wednesday afternoon.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WAS one lonely body at the cannibal’s place that was never found and molders there still beneath the tangled brush and among the slithering snakes.

  * * *

  —

  COX and her excellent attorney remained tangled in the court proceedings until Santos pled out. Then she walked. But not far. She rented a Jeep, drove to the site of Ralph Deese’s Airstream, which had been hauled away as evidence and eventually junked. She dug up the money and jewelry she’d hidden there. Altogether, a bit over sixty thousand dollars, enough to be a star—at least for a while.

  At a dance club in Santa Monica called Lancer’s, she met a smart guy who didn’t want to talk about himself because, it turned out, when he eventually did talk, in her bed, he revealed he was on parole for an armed robbery conviction. When she pressed him about what he was planning to do in his post-prison life, he confessed that it’d probably be more armed robbery. It was his only real skill set.