Extreme Prey

by John Sandford

  “What about Joe Likely?” Cole asked.

  “I told him I needed to talk to him, face-to-face. Tonight,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Then Marlys asked, “Did you take your pistol with you?”

  “Couple of them.”

  “Meet me in Mount Pleasant. You’ll get there first, call me and tell me where to hook up.”

  —

  ANOTHER STORM FRONT had come through, but it was a thin one, a hundred miles long and ten wide. Marlys tried calling Jesse but got no answer. He’d said he’d be late, and might not make it home at all: he was going drinking with friends. With Caralee trailing behind, Marlys collected the baby bag from the parlor, and noticed that a misty rain was whispering off the windows.

  She went out on the Internet to the National Weather Service in Des Moines and checked the radar. The storm would be short-lived and would probably miss Joe Likely’s home completely.

  She tried Jesse one last time, got no answer, and headed out to her truck, carrying her granddaughter and the baby bag. The girl was wearing footsie pajamas and Marlys left her in them. The night was chilly and dark and her headlights didn’t seem to go anywhere, so she took it slow: this was no time to hit a deer. The windshield wipers seemed to sync with her heartbeat. Somebody was going to die tonight, and he was an old friend.

  —

  COLE ROLLED ON through the night, thinking about killing Joe Likely. He’d met Likely a few times, at the party meetings, but had quit going when it became obvious that the party was useless. Cole had never killed anyone, but the prospect didn’t bother him. He would have killed some Iraqis, given the chance, but he’d never had the opportunity. The fact is, he’d never had much of a life, and he didn’t know why. He simply knew that was a fact, and he saw people all around who did have interesting lives, who did seem to cruise through the world with women and money and friends, and he’d never had that.

  He’d thought that might change when he joined the Guard; it hadn’t. He was a truck driver, and truck drivers in the Guard had about the same status as truck drivers in civilian life: that is, not much. Infantrymen get dinged up, and the Army couldn’t do enough for them: choppers would come in and fly them off to a hospital, the congressmen come through and shake their hands and give them medals and all. A truck driver gets hurt, and nobody gives a rat’s ass; they even bitch at you about being lazy, and in the meantime, your brain feels like it’s been turned to Jell-O.

  And it wasn’t going to get any better, not in this life, not with the way the system worked against people like his mom and himself. They’d be out peddling corn and cutting golf-course grass for the rest of their lives; couldn’t even afford to play golf on the grass he cut every day . . .

  Things had to change, some way, somehow. Killing Likely might be necessary . . . though he was unsure of that. There was more to it than pulling a trigger.

  —

  MARLYS AND CARALEE made it to Mount Pleasant, driving slow through the rain, in an hour and a half. Cole was waiting for her in the white pickup, parked outside a closed café. Marlys stopped behind him, left Caralee alone in the back, noted the clean license plates as she walked past Cole’s truck to the passenger side and got in.

  “Here’s the thing,” Cole said, when she’d shut the door. “Maybe we shouldn’t do anything until we do everything. If Likely turns us in, we’re just farmers and it’s all bullshit and lies. If he doesn’t, then we go ahead—hit Bowden without any warning. If we kill Likely now, after he’s talked to this Davenport dude, the cops will be all over the place.”

  “If they were chasing you in the streets tonight, they’ve already been warned,” Marlys said. “They’ll already be all over the place.”

  “Yeah, but if we kill somebody, then they’ll know for sure how serious we are,” Cole said. “Right now, we might be a bunch of goofballs like Joe and his friends.”

  “I’m one of them,” Marlys snapped.

  “No, you’re not, and you know it,” Cole said. “We’re serious, they’re not. They’re a bunch of bullshitters and that’s all they ever were.”

  “Doesn’t do us any good to kill Bowden and have Joe pick up the phone one minute later and tell Davenport who we are,” Marlys said.

  Cole thought about that for a moment, then said, “That’s true . . . I wish we had a plan for this.”

  “We don’t need a plan. Joe called me from a pay phone. I told him I wanted to come by and talk to him late tonight after I got Jesse back home and the baby to bed,” Marlys said. “We go in, find out what Davenport knows, what he told him, do it, and get out. If you can do it.”

  “Oh, I can do it,” Cole said. He fished around between his feet, brought out a plastic box, popped it, and took out a pistol. “Loaded with CCI Long Rifle Quiets. No louder than clapping your hands and plenty of penetration. I get behind him and bang! One in the head, no muss, no fuss.”

  “You sure? You never done it before,” Marlys said.

  “No, but I read all about it and I got no problem doing it,” Cole said. He rolled his eyes up, and checked his heart and his gut. Yes. He could do it. Sniper. Could have been a sniper, instead of a truck driver.

  “Then let’s go,” Marlys said.

  —

  THEY DECIDED AGAINST taking Cole’s truck because it had been seen by Davenport earlier in the evening. If anybody saw it around Likely’s place, and then Likely was found dead, that would only confirm what they thought about Cole and the truck.

  They took Marlys’s dark blue SuperCrew Ford. Caralee had slept between Pella and Mount Pleasant, and now was stirring around as Marlys and Cole talked sporadically and nervously about how they’d do this and that.

  “I brought some kitchen gloves so we won’t have to worry about fingerprints, but I don’t know about this DNA stuff. Didn’t have time to research it,” Marlys said.

  “We won’t touch anything, won’t leave anything behind. I’ll be ejecting some brass, but we’ll pick it up—and anyway, all my guns are loaded with clean rounds. I clean them off with Windex before I load them, just in case.”

  “So . . . not touch anything.”

  “Might want to take his wallet so it’ll look like a robbery,” Cole suggested.

  “That’s good, but we gotta be sure to be using the kitchen gloves,” Marlys said. They were making it up as they went along. She added, “He’s a cheap old man and he hates the banks and he’s always had some money—I bet if we looked around his house for a few minutes, we could find some cash.”

  “We can always use the cash,” Cole said.

  Three blocks from Likely’s house, a familiar stench filled the truck cab and Marlys said, “Oh, boy, I think Caralee just pooped.”

  “I know she did,” Cole said.

  “We better find a place to turn off and clean her up,” Marlys said. “We might not get another chance.”

  They backtracked and wound up all the way out on the edge of town, on the side of the road, Marlys working on the tailgate, out of the baby bag; and Cole walked up and down the road, arranging and rearranging the pistol under his shirt, practicing his move, pulling the gun without hanging it up.

  As Marlys was finishing with Caralee, the girl said, “Star,” and pointed up, and sure enough, the clouds were moving off to the north, and the stars were lighting up. Marlys threw the disposable dirty diaper in the ditch, and they got back on the road, the windows open for the first few miles, and then Marlys said, “We might need another diaper.”

  “Already?” Cole asked.

  “For me,” Marlys said. “I’m about to pee my pants.”

  —

  LIKELY’S STREET WAS DARK and quiet, but his house showed lights behind the drapes. They parked in his side yard and looked around and then got out, and Cole said, “What about Caralee?”

  Marlys hesitated and the
n said, “I guess we better take her.”

  They bundled Caralee out of her seat and trooped up to the porch; they could smell rain and sidewalk worms as they knocked on the door, and a fresh baby-powder odor from the girl.

  Likely let them in, said, “Hello . . . Cole? You’re Cole, right? Where’s Jesse? Isn’t that Jesse’s baby?”

  “Jesse’s off on a toot,” Marlys said.

  —

  INSIDE THE HOUSE, Marlys, with Caralee in her arms, dropped onto a couch. She sighed and said, “I’m tired. Long day,” while Cole prowled around, looking at the old prints and photographs on the wall around the fireplace.

  “’Cause we’re old. When we first met up, you could go two days and a night and not think anything of it,” Likely said.

  “Thirty years ago,” Marlys said. Then with honest anxiety, “What did this guy want, Joe? This Davenport. I mean, did you tell them you thought it was us?”

  “Of course not,” Likely said. “I put him off, but then I got to thinking—it better not be you. Sounded like you, though. They’re looking for an older woman with curly white hair and rimless glasses and a young man with distinctive gray eyes who might be her son, and they’ve got a political line that sounds like the party’s. I thought of you and your boys, first thing. A few other people might do that, too, if anybody asks.”

  “Did you tell them that we’re not up to anything?” Marlys asked.

  “No, because then I’d be admitting that I knew who you were,” Likely said. “You’re not up to anything, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Marlys said.

  Cole stopped prowling for a moment, looked at Likely. “Is there somebody else here? A dog? I thought I heard . . . There was a noise.”

  Likely shook his head. “Nope. Nobody else.”

  Cole said, “Huh,” and then, waving a hand at the photographs, asked Likely, “Are these folks your ancestors?”

  “Yup. All the way back to my great-great-grandfather. He came over from Aberdeenshire in Scotland,” Likely said, turning to look at the photos. When he turned back, Marlys nodded at Cole.

  “Long time ago,” Marlys said. “Did he come right straight to Iowa?”

  Likely opened his mouth to reply, as Cole pulled the gun and in a single movement, shot Likely in the back of the head. The gunshot was as loud as a hard hand clap, nothing that could be heard outside the house. They all flinched, including Caralee and Likely, who said, “Wut?” and struggled to get to his feet. Cole shot him again, Whap! and Likely sat down again and said, “No! No!” Cole shot him a third time, Whap! and Likely rolled forward out of his chair and landed facedown on the carpet.

  “That got him,” Cole said.

  “You sure?” Marlys asked. Caralee looked down at the body and whimpered.

  “I can make sure,” Cole said. He stepped over to Likely’s body and Whap! shot him in the temple.

  “Put on the gloves,” Marlys said. She was holding Caralee over her shoulder and half-turned so the girl couldn’t see the body. Cole took the kitchen gloves from his hip pocket and was pulling them on when they heard a distinct clunk from the kitchen area.

  “There it is again,” Cole said. “I knew it—there’s somebody in there.”

  Cole had his gloves most of the way on and made a fist and punched open the door between the living room and the kitchen, where they found an elderly woman trying to work the bolt on the back door. She turned and looked at them in fear and said, “No, no, no.”

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Marlys asked.

  The woman shrank away from Cole, her back against the door, and she said, “I’m a friend of Joe’s. Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, for God’s sake, I gotta take care of Pam.”

  “What are you doing here?” Marlys asked again.

  “Joe asked me to listen in . . . He said he might want a witness,” the woman said.

  “A witness for what?” Marlys asked.

  “He was afraid that you were planning to shoot Mike Bowden, he thought you might tell him that. He wanted a witness . . .”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” Marlys said, and, “I’m so sorry.”

  She nodded at Cole and Cole snapped the gun up and shot the woman twice in the forehead, Whap! Whap! the shots spaced so closely together they sounded like one.

  The woman said “Oh!” and slid down the door, then toppled over on her side.

  “Make sure,” Marlys said.

  Cole shot her twice more in the head. Then he and Marlys turned to the living room, at the sound of movement. Cole led the way back to the door, where they found Likely crawling toward them, his head up, streams of blood running through his hair and down his face and neck, his face like a grotesque Halloween mask.

  “Well, Jesus,” Cole said, and he stepped over to Likely and shot him three more times in the top of the head, and then the gun locked open, out of ammo. Likely went flat on the floor. They stood around looking at the body, to see if he’d move again, but he was finished.

  Marlys went back to the kitchen to check on the woman; she was dead as well.

  “Didn’t exactly go the way you said it would,” she said, giving Cole a look.

  “They’re dead now,” Cole said, as he reloaded with a fresh magazine. He couldn’t stop looking at Likely. He’d learned something valuable here: the .22s were quiet, but they might not get the job done.

  —

  COLE STARTED PICKING UP the brass from the pistol. Marlys put Caralee down in a corner of the living room, pushed a couple of wooden chairs over to corral her there, went back to Likely’s body and pulled the wallet out of his back pocket with her gloved hands. Forty-two dollars. The old woman had an additional thirty dollars in her purse. Marlys went into the home office and took Likely’s laptop computer, which he’d used for party business, and all the associated electronic equipment, including a printer.

  “He keeps party stuff on this, and maybe membership lists,” she told Cole. “We don’t want them to know that we took the computer, so we need to trash the place.”

  Cole tore the office apart, found nothing more, then went through Likely’s bedroom, tipping over the bed to look under the mattress. Nothing there. He emptied all the drawers from the bureau, found nothing of value but a gold pocket watch, which they took.

  “Can’t leave it because a crook would take it, but we can’t keep it, because it’s evidence. We’ll get out in the country and toss it,” Marlys said.

  Caralee was trying to get past the legs of the blocking chairs, as Marlys watched Cole tear up the place, so she went and sat in one of the chairs, patted Caralee on the head, and said to Cole, “You know where men hide stuff? Where they keep their tools.”

  She was right. Cole went down into the basement and tossed Likely’s workbench and found a steel box for a socket wrench set at the back of a drawer, where it shouldn’t have been. He popped the lid and found a neat stack of twenties, fifties, and hundreds, twenty-two hundred dollars in all.

  “Got it,” he said, climbing the stairs. He showed the roll to Marlys, who’d moved into the kitchen with Caralee. She took the money and said, “Let’s go.”

  The neighborhood was asleep when they pulled out. Two minutes later they were at Cole’s truck, and as Cole got out of Marlys’s vehicle, she said, “We did good tonight. Now we know we can do Bowden. We got the steel for it.”

  Cole nodded, and got in his truck, and they headed cross-county in their two-truck caravan. Marlys threw Likely’s watch in a cattail swamp halfway back to Pella, and Cole called her to say, “We need to find a place to dump the computer equipment. If they find that on us, we’re screwed.”

  “Bury it out back tomorrow. We have to keep an eye out for that Davenport fella,” Marlys said. “You need to start cutting that pipe and grinding that cap.”

  “I can do that,” Cole said. “Start to
morrow morning. Gotta keep Jesse out of the barn, though. Cutting the pipe’s no problem, but grinding that cap’s gonna take time, and it’s gonna make some noise. He’ll wonder about it.”

  “He’s got a farmers’ market in Oskaloosa tomorrow, if he’s not too drunk to get up.”

  “Don’t care how drunk he is—kick his ass out of bed, Mom,” Cole said. “We need him out of the way—not much time now.”

  “We’ll handle Jesse when we get home,” Marlys said, and she rang off.

  From the backseat, Caralee, hearing her father’s name, said, “Daddy.”

  “That’s right, baby,” Marlys said over her shoulder. “Let’s go talk to Daddy.”

  TEN

  Lucas called Alice Green and told her about the chase and that Bowden would be calling the governor later. “They may ask about whether I’m a psycho,” Lucas said. “Tell them, ‘No.’”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Green said. “At the very least, I’ll tell them that you’re our psycho.”

  “Thanks for that,” Lucas said.

  He made it to Iowa City late, checked into the Sheraton room that the campaign had reserved for him, called room service and Weather, in that order, and talked to her until the food arrived.

  “Off the top of my head,” Weather said, “I’d say that your description—older woman, a son with distinctive gray eyes, with those particular kinds of weird extreme political views—would be enough to give them away, at least if you asked the right people. I wouldn’t be surprised if lots of people knew them, including everybody in those political groups. That Likely man may have been lying to you.”

  “I’ve thought about that, but I don’t know what to do about it,” Lucas said. “This whole chase, tonight, has everybody on edge, so maybe something’ll get done. I’ll talk to Bell Wood tomorrow, see if he can get his Iowa guys moving on it.”

  He told her about Wood and his promise to get a carry permit for Lucas. Weather approved of the gun; she had no illusions about Lucas’s work.