Extreme Prey

by John Sandford

  They passed a mailbox that said “Souther,” with a wooden sheep mounted above it, and turned down the long driveway.

  A woman was crossing the drive, carrying a couple of buckets. When she saw them coming, she stopped, looked at them for a second, then hurried to the side of the driveway, put the buckets down, and ran into the house.

  “Wonder what that was about?” Wood asked.

  “Don’t know, but you might want to be ready,” Lucas said.

  Wood slipped his pistol out of its holster, rolled his window down, and sat with the gun in his lap as Lucas pulled into the side yard, Greer behind them.

  Then a man came out of the house, wearing coveralls and a Fender hat, and walked over to them. “Looks friendly enough,” Wood said.

  Lucas got out of the truck and the man nodded and asked, “Who’re you guys?”

  Lucas said, “We’re with the state Division of Criminal Investigation.”

  Wood and Greer got out, Wood’s gun back in its holster, and Wood said, “I hope we didn’t startle your wife.”

  “She’s shy,” Souther said. “I mean, really shy. Anyway, what’s up?”

  Wood told Souther about the investigation, and as he did, the woman eased out of the house, and Souther held a finger up to Wood, stopping him for a moment, and Souther called, “It’s okay, Janette. These folks are police officers.”

  She drifted over, not looking at them, and Souther said, “So go on . . .”

  Wood finished telling him about the investigation, and then Lucas said, “We think we need to talk to the Purdys. Marlys Purdy was described to us as a little heavy with white curly hair, which is right, but I saw her son, and he has blue eyes. The man we’re looking for was described as having very distinctive gray eyes . . . think it might be another son.”

  From behind them, Janette Souther said, “Cole.”

  Souther glanced at her and said, “There are two sons and that sure sounds like him—Cole Purdy. You hardly ever see Cole without his gun, not when he’s walking around on their land over there. You hear him shooting all the time. He’s not a bad guy, not that I’ve seen. All the Purdys work hard. They’re good neighbors.”

  “Have you seen them today?” Greer asked.

  “I haven’t,” Souther said.

  Janette Souther said, looking away from them all, as though she were talking to a pasture, “I saw them go. Cole and Marlys in her truck.”

  “White truck?” Lucas asked.

  “No, it’s blue. Cole has a white truck, though,” Janette Souther said.

  “When did they leave?” Wood asked.

  “An hour ago.” Now she was looking at her feet. Then, “Jesse Purdy is in jail.”

  Souther looked at his wife again and asked, “What? In jail?”

  She nodded. “Amy told me.”

  Souther turned back to Lucas, Wood, and Greer and said, “Amy’s the mail lady. She knows everything.”

  Wood asked, “In jail in Pella? Does Pella have a jail?”

  “A small one,” Souther said. “Mostly for overnights.”

  Lucas said to Janette, “You’re saying they’re not home, Marlys and Cole, and Jesse, the blue-eyed one, is in jail in Pella.”

  She said, “Yes.”

  Wood said to Lucas, “Let’s run back into town, see what he has to say.”

  Lucas nodded and asked Souther, “Do you have a phone? If you see them come back, could you call? We’re a little worried about Cole and his gun.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Souther said, as he slipped his phone out of his pocket. “Cole is . . . not quite right. He was in the National Guard and got sent to Iraq, and as I understand it, he was nearby when a couple of bombs went off—you know, those devices, whatever they call them.”

  “Improvised Explosive Devices—IEDs,” Wood said. Wood was a major in the National Guard and had done a year in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. “I hate to hear that—that he’s hurt.”

  “Yeah, that’s it, IEDs,” Souther said. “Anyway, he’s had some trouble ever since, with”—he waved his fingers at his brain—“his brain, I guess. I don’t know whether it’s physical or psychological, but he’s had his problems. Probably find out more from the VA.”

  “We’ll check,” Wood said.

  Souther and Lucas traded phone numbers and names. Lucas cocked an eyebrow and asked, “David Souther? You’re not the poet, are you?”

  Souther, surprised but pleased, asked, “How’d you know?”

  “I got about three of your books, man,” Lucas said. “I collect poetry books. University of Chicago Press, right?”

  “That’s right. Jeez, I never met anyone before, you know, who wasn’t on the poetry scene, who heard of me.”

  “Well, now you have,” Lucas said. “‘Bobcats.’ That’s a great poem there. That’s probably my favorite. And ‘Winter Water.’”

  —

  AS THEY WERE ROLLING out of the Southers’ driveway, the couple watching them go, Wood said, “You honest to God collect poetry? I didn’t know you were a delicate little rosebud.”

  “I’m pretty delicate,” Lucas admitted. “You know, when I’m not beating somebody senseless.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  They were back in town eight minutes later, and Greer had an idea where the jail was. Lucas followed him, and they did find the jail, which was not much of a jail, more of a closet for people who wouldn’t be there long.

  A cop ushered them in, where blue-eyed Jesse Purdy was stretched out on a cot, looking not at all uncomfortable. He was reading a battered book called Chevrolet: Yesterday and Today.

  “What?”

  Wood identified himself and said, “We need to talk to your mother and brother, in a hurry . . . but they’re not home. You know how we could get in touch?”

  “Well, you could call them and ask,” Jesse said, not getting up. “What’s this all about?”

  “We’re wondering if they might have involved themselves with the Michaela Bowden campaign,” Lucas said, hiding in the weeds of ambiguity.

  Jesse sat up now and said, “Awww . . . shit. What’d they do?”

  “You think they might have done something?” Wood asked.

  “Well, they sure as hell don’t like Bowden,” Jesse said. “Not that it means much, you know.”

  “You don’t think your brother might . . . try to hurt her? Mrs. Bowden?” Greer asked.

  Jesse looked at all of them, then ran his hands through his hair and said, “Look, Cole isn’t exactly right. Not since he got back from the war. But I don’t think, no way . . .”

  Lucas: “Would you be willing to go back out to the house with us, in case they’ve come back home? So we can talk?”

  “Sure, if you could get me out of here. That fuckin’ Cole is the guy who got me here in the first place.”

  “How was that?” Lucas asked.

  Jesse gave him a quick summary of his talk with Cole in the bar and his arrest outside Willie’s house. “I didn’t mean to hurt her, or nothin’, and she knows it. That restraining order was her lawyer’s idea, to give me a hard time when I want to visit with Caralee.”

  “Why would your brother do that? I mean, if it really was bullshit?” Lucas asked.

  Jesse said, “I thought about that last night and this morning and . . . why he didn’t come and get me out of here. Now . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked away from them and said, “I don’t give a shit about Michaela Bowden, no way. Might even vote for her, depending on who the Republicans put up. But Mom and Cole . . . I mean . . .” He turned back to them. “Were they getting me out of the way? Was there something they didn’t want me to see? Get involved in?”

  —

  THE COP DIDN’T HAVE the authority to release Jesse on his own, and when he tried to call the chief, the chief’s wife said he was out runn
ing and didn’t have a phone. He’d be back in fifteen minutes, if he didn’t have a heart attack.

  “I’d like to move before it gets dark,” Lucas said to Wood. And to the cop, “If you can’t release him on his own, could I bail him out?”

  The cop brightened and said, “Yeah, I can do that. Five hundred dollars.”

  “Take a check?” Lucas asked.

  —

  FIVE MINUTES LATER they were on the street, and one minute after that, on the way to the Purdy farm, Jesse and Wood riding in Jesse’s truck, Lucas following, Greer trailing. They turned off again at the Souther place, and when Souther came out, shadowed by his wife, Wood told them, “We need to leave Lucas’s truck for a few minutes.”

  Souther nodded, and said to Jesse, “Hey, Jesse. Hope this is nothing.”

  “Yeah, man.”

  They armored up: SWAT-quality neck-high vests with crotch guards, .223 rifles for all three of the cops.

  Jesse: “I don’t think you need—”

  Wood: “Jesse, you might be an all-right guy, but somebody sniped and almost killed one of my agents last night and tried to shoot Lucas here. We can’t take the chance.”

  Jesse went pale under his farmer tan. “Oh, Jesus . . .”

  —

  JESSE LED THE WAY to the farm in his truck, Wood riding with him, Lucas and Greer in the state car. Lucas’s truck was left behind, because Marlys Purdy had seen it.

  The trip down to the house took only a minute. There was a light on in the kitchen area, but Jesse told Wood that the light was always on. “I don’t think they’re back yet. It’s getting dark and Mom always turns the lights on early.”

  They pulled up to the side of the house, and Jesse got out first, followed by Wood, who left his rifle in the truck and carried a Glock in his hand, while Lucas and Greer carried the long guns, ready to go. Jesse tried the door, found it locked—“If they were here, it wouldn’t be.”

  He unlocked the door and they followed him in, Jesse calling, “Ma? Cole? You here?”

  No answer, and the silence had the kind of thick texture that meant that nobody was around. Lucas relaxed an inch and clicked the safety on the rifle, and then Jesse said, “Come on up here. I wanna check something.”

  He led the way up a narrow stairway to the second floor, and down a short hallway past a bathroom, and pushed a bedroom door open, and looked in. Nobody home. The room was furnished with a bed, a side table, a chest of drawers, and a gun safe. The safe was locked, but Jesse picked up one leg of the side table and scraped out a brass-colored key, and unlocked the safe.

  Inside were a Bushmaster .223 with a thirty-round mag, a Ruger .22, a modern muzzle-loading rifle that looked like it could shoot a brick, and three shotguns. They could see a stack of ammo boxes on the interior shelves, and the butts of two pistols, both automatic, and one empty pistol slot.

  “All his rifles and shotguns are here, I think,” Jesse said, with obvious relief. He touched the empty slot. “This is an old revolver that he keeps in his truck. He’s got a carry permit, but he doesn’t carry it much, says it’s a pain in the ass.”

  “What kind of revolver?” Wood asked. “Make and caliber?”

  “It’s a Smith, a .357. But really old.”

  “That’s not good,” Lucas said, thinking of that moment when Grace Lawrence brought the revolver up, and shot him. A .357 would have scrambled his guts, vest or no vest.

  Wood said, “Jerry was shot with a .223—they recovered a core. I’ve got to get a bag out of the car and wrap that rifle, take it with me.”

  Greer bent toward the safe, then squatted, looking at the trigger guard on the .223. “There’s dust on the action and the trigger—I don’t think it’s been shot in the last couple of days.”

  “Got to take it anyway,” Wood said.

  —

  JESSE LED THEM to his own room. He had guns himself, he said, and they should check them: but they were all there, in his bedroom closet, another muzzle-loading rifle and two shotguns.

  “Don’t have any regular bolt-action deer rifles?” Lucas asked. That was what he most feared: a high-velocity hunting rifle, a .243 or larger.

  “Not legal in Iowa,” Jesse said. “I mean, they’re legal to have, but you can’t shoot deer with them. Gotta use a muzzle-loader or a slug gun.”

  “And Cole doesn’t have one, for target practice or shooting around or out-of-state hunting trips?”

  “Nope. Anything you can do with a big-caliber rifle, you can do with a muzzle-loader,” Jesse said.

  Except long-distance sniping, Lucas thought.

  —

  JESSE OPENED UP the Purdys’ home computer for them. “She doesn’t have a laptop?” Lucas asked.

  “She does, but she carries it around with her,” Jesse said. “This thing’s mostly for me and Cole, messing around on the Internet.”

  “Is the laptop an Apple or PC?” Lucas asked.

  “Apple. MacBook,” Jesse said.

  Lucas glanced at Wood, and gave him a small nod. That fit.

  —

  LUCAS WANTED TO TAKE a look at the barn. They all stripped off their combat gear and stowed it in the trunk of the car, and while Wood got a big evidence bag out of the trunk and went to wrap up the Bushmaster .223, Lucas and Greer got flashlights and walked back to the barn. Jesse turned on the barn lights from inside the house.

  Jesse told them that they hadn’t raised animals and the barn was mostly for machinery, with a workshop for repair work. Inside they found an older compact John Deere utility tractor, along with an older Deere Gator with a towable cart, and a heavy-duty lawn mower, all in the signature dark corn-green-and-yellow John Deere colors. All of it was bathed in the scent of gasoline and oil.

  There was a loft, and they climbed the stairs up to it and found a metal- and woodworking shop. The floor was speckled with sawdust and metal grindings, and marked with a fresh overspray of green and yellow paint. “Looks like they’ve been refinishing one of the Deeres,” Greer said, scuffing up the overspray with the toe of a boot.

  “Yeah.” A band saw and table saw stood on one side of a long workbench, and a drill press on the other side. A router lay on a side bench, next to a welder, and a handful of half-inch-thread hex nuts. Lucas picked up two of them and rattled them like dice.

  A pegboard wall held drills, hammers, pliers, and wrenches, along with a number of tools that Lucas couldn’t identify. “Pretty good shop,” Lucas said.

  “Like a lot of farm shops. Smells good,” Greer said.

  “Yeah, it does.” There was good light over the workbench area, but the corners were dimmer; they shone their flashlights around, probing the edges of the barn.

  “See anything interesting?” Greer asked.

  “Nothing.” Lucas started pulling open drawers in the workbench and found a bunch of paper targets, used; the holes had been punched with a .22. Depending on how they’d been hung, the holes could have been made by a little .22 or a much more powerful .223, the standard American assault-rifle caliber. Cole Purdy had both in his gun safe. The shooting distances weren’t marked on the targets, but whoever was shooting had kept the groups the size of a silver dollar. The groups were consistently tight, which meant that the shooter was good, but the gun might not have been; again, depending on distance.

  Lucas said that, and Greer said, “But they’re old targets. The paper is ready to fall apart.”

  Lucas nodded. “Let’s go.”

  —

  THEY WENT BACK DOWN the stairs and out of the barn, where they found Jesse and Wood in the side yard, talking under the sodium-vapor yard light. Wood said, “Not much in that computer. Cole and Jesse don’t use it much and there was hardly anything in e-mail or documents. Nothing interesting. I did get some pictures of Marlys and Cole, taken in May or June. I sent them on to my office, we can print them ther
e. I’ll get copies out to every cop and security guard at the fair.”

  “Good.” Lucas turned to Jesse. “Do you guys go to the state fair?”

  “Sure, most years.”

  “Then your mom and Cole would be familiar with the fairgrounds.”

  “Sure. We compete in some of the vegetable competitions—you know, best onions, and like that,” Jesse said. “We weren’t planning to go this year. We’ve all been pretty busy.”

  “Think they might have gone anyway?” Greer asked.

  “Why go in the middle of the night?” Jesse asked.

  Lucas shrugged. “I don’t know.” He still had the hex nuts he’d picked up in the barn, and rattled them nervously in his fist. “But that missing .357 makes me nervous.”

  “I’ll tell you something about that gun,” Jesse said. “Cole bought it at an estate sale, some old farmer over by New Sharon. Paid fifteen dollars. It’d been in a drawer for about fifty years, I think. Shells were corroded up inside the cylinder, I was worried Cole was gonna kill himself, prying ’em out of there. But he got them out and polished everything up and oiled it and all. When it was all done, it looked like it was perfect—but you couldn’t put five shots in a dinner plate at ten feet. I saw him try to do it and he couldn’t. That gun shoots about the way Willie fucks. All over the place, and not very good.”

  “Who’s Willie again?” Lucas asked.

  “My wife.”

  —

  THEY TALKED for a while longer and Jesse told them that he thought that Marlys and Cole, if they were doing anything connected to Michaela Bowden, it was probably leafleting or trying to organize a protest by the PPPI, whom he called “a bunch of old farts.”

  They were heading toward Greer’s car when a battered Toyota pulled into the driveway behind it.

  “Ah, shit,” Jesse said. “It’s Willie.”

  A chunky young blond woman got out of the car and half-shouted at Jesse, “I ain’t talking to you.”

  “Goddamn good thing after you screwed me over last night,” he half-shouted back. “What the fuck you want, anyway?”