Sudden Prey

by John Sandford

  Jen headed for the phone, and Lucas turned to Small: ``If we can get you guys in the hotel tonight, we'd like to put a few guys in here... I'd be with them...''

  ``Use the house as a trap,'' Small said.

  ``Yeah.''

  Small nodded: ``All right. So let's get the kids out.''

  Jennifer came back: ``She says she'll be glad to take them.''

  Small said, ``Pack a suitcase. You go with the kids for tonight. Lucas is gonna set up an ambush here... and I'm going to stick around. Make sure the cops don't steal anything.''

  Del looked him over. ``You gotta gun someplace?''

  Small nodded: ``Yeah. I do. I don't like people fucking with my kids.''

  My kids...

  Lucas never flinched, but as he stepped over to a telephone, he caught Jennifer's reflection in a windowpane. Behind his back, she'd brought a finger to her lips, and Small nodded. Lucas picked up the phone and called downtown: ``Sherrill and Franklin are around somewhere,'' he said. ``Get them on the line.''

  A high-pitched voice said something from back in the house, and Jennifer hurried that way. Lucas stepped into the hall, and saw Sarah standing halfway down the stairs in her fuzzy pink pajamas, rubbing her sleepy eyes. Lucas cleared his voice and said into the phone, ``We're making some changes down here.''

  SARAH WOULDGROW UP TO BE TALL ANDWILLOWYAND blond like her mother-like Lucas's mother-but with her father's tough smile and deep eyes. Jennifer let her go and she wandered over to Lucas and took his index finger in her hand, and when he dropped the phone back on the hook, said, ``What's going on?''

  Lucas squatted, so he could look straight into her eyes. ``We have some problems. You have to stay at a hotel tonight.With Mom. And Mrs. Sloan will be there.''

  ``What kind of problems?''

  ``There are some really bad men...'' he was explaining when the phone rang. Small picked it up, then handed it to Lucas: ``It's Chief Roux. I'll take Sarah,'' he said.

  Lucas nodded. ``Yeah,'' he said into the phone. ``

  Nightline 's coming on: watch it,'' Roux said. Her words came in a spate. ``We picked up a thumbprint off that door in Roseville and damned if the FBI didn't come up with a name that fits. A man named Ansel Butters, from Tennessee, an old friend of LaChaise's. We've got a photo from Washington and we've released it, and it oughta be on Nightline in about a minute.''

  ``Anything on Butters? Local contacts?''

  ``Not as far as I know, but Anderson's working the computers,'' Roux said. ``Nothing happening down there?''

  ``Not yet,'' he said. ``I'll go turn on the TV.''

  ``The word's out about the money you put on the street, the ten thousand,'' Roux said. ``Channel Three has it, and if they've got it, everybody else will in an hour. I'm not sure it's a good precedent.''

  ``There aren't any precedents for this,'' Lucas said.

  ``All right. I hope it dredges something up,'' Roux said. ``By the way, this Butters-his nickname is `Crazy.' Crazy Ansel Butters.''

  ``That's what I want to hear,'' Lucas said.

  LUCAS, DELANDSMALLSTOODAROUNDTHETELEVISION while Jennifer packed the kids: The regular Nightline host was on vacation, and an anonymous ABC newsman fronted the show. He started with ``a significant bit of breaking news,'' and a black-and-white photograph of Ansel Butters filled the screen.

  ``If you have seen this man...''

  A moment later, he launched into his prepared introduction, and said, ``Minneapolis, a city crouched in shock and terror this wintry night,'' and all three of them-Lucas, Del and Small-said ``Jesus'' at the same time.

  JENNIFER LEFT WITH THE KIDS IN A THREE-CAR CONVOY. Neighbors were wakened, and cops installed in corner houses. The snow stopped at midnight, and Lucas, Small and Del, trying to keep the house looking awake, watched on the weather radar as the snow squalls drifted off to the northeast and into Wisconsin.

  At 12:30, which Small said was their usual time, they began turning off lights and killed the television. Moving cars were scarce. They sat behind the darkened windows and grew sleepy.

  ``Maybe it was just a bullshit call,'' Small said.

  ``Maybe, but we've got nothing else working,'' Lucas said. ``Whoever it was had my card and my direct line. That says something.''

  ``Maybe somebody's jerking you around,'' Del said.

  Lucas yawned. ``I don't think so. The guy knew something.''

  ``I hope they come in,'' Del said fervently, in the dark. ``I hope they come.''

  TEN

  WHILE LUCAS DASHED TO SMALL'S HOME, STADIC crossed the St. Croix at Taylors Falls and headed into the Wisconsin night on Highway 8. The going was slow: there were no lights, and at times, as he passed through the intermittent snow squalls, the highway virtually disappeared. A green sign-Turtle Lake 17-flicked past; and much later a John Deere sign, and then lights.

  He was running on adrenaline now: only five hours since the attacks, and it seemed like a lifetime.

  At Turtle Lake, he passed a hotel with a No Vacancy sign, and then the casino loomed out of the snow like an alcoholic hallucination. He turned into the lot and had to drive halfway to the back to find a parking space. The casinos were always full, even at midnight, even in a blizzard.

  A uniformed security officer stood just inside the doors, eyes watchful. Stadic asked, ``Where's the phone?'' and the security man pointed down the length of the casino. ``Outside any of the rest rooms,'' he said.

  The first phone, mounted on the wall between the men'sand women's rest rooms, was occupied by a woman who appeared to be in crisis: she had a handkerchief in her hand and she twisted it and untwisted it as she cried into the phone. Stadic moved on, found another one. The noise from the slots might be a problem, he thought, but he needed the phone. He cupped his hand around the receiver and dialed the fire station.

  A sleepy man answered. Stadic, watching the casino traffic, said, ``This is Sergeant Manfred Hamm with the Minnesota Highway Patrol out of Taylors Falls, Minnesota. To whom am I speaking?''

  The sleepy man said, ``Uh, this is Jack, uh, Lane.''

  ``Mr. Lane, you're with the Turtle Lake Fire Department?''

  ``Uh, yeah?''

  ``Would you by any chance cover a rural fire route, Mr. and Mrs. Elmore Darling?''

  ``Uh, yeah.'' Lane was waking up.

  ``Mr. Lane, we've got a problem here. Mrs. Darling has been involved in an automobile accident outside of Taylors Falls, and we need to send a man to speak to Mr. Darling. We don't know exactly where his house is, as all we have is a rural route address. Would you have a location on the Darling house?''

  ``Well, uh... Just a minute there.''

  Stadic heard the fireman talking to somebody, and a moment later he came back: ``Sergeant Baker?''

  ``Sergeant Hamm,'' Stadic said.

  ``Oh, yeah, Hamm, sorry. The Darlings live at fire number twelve-eighty-nine. You stay on Highway 8, and you go a little more than a mile past the Highway 63 turnoff, and you'll see Kk going to the south. They're about a mile down that road... You'll see a red sign by the driveway, says, Township Almena and the number. Twelve-eighty-nine. Got that?''

  ``Yes, thank you,'' Stadic said, scribbling it down. ``We'll send a man.''

  ``Was, uh, the accident... ?''

  ``We're not allowed to say more until the next of kin are located,'' Stadic said formally. Then: ``Thank you again.''

  THE SNOWFALL HAD EASED AS HE CREPT OUT KK, TRYING to stay in the middle of the road. Although the air was clear, the fresh snow flattened everything: he couldn't see the edge of the road, or where the ditches started. He crawled along, past the big rural mailboxes, hunting for the fire signs in the beam of a six-cell flashlight.

  And he found it, just like the fireman had said he would.

  The Darling house sat back from the road, and showed a sodium vapor yard light at the side of a three-car pole barn. The inverted mushroom shape of a satellite TV antenna sprouted at the side of the pole barn, pointing south. The house was two stories tall, white and neat. A
white board fence led off into the dark and snow.

  A fresh set of tire tracks led to the garage: with the snow coming down as it had been, there must have been a recent arrival. Stadic continued a half-mile down Kk to the next driveway, turned around and headed back.

  LaChaise had given him a local phone number in the Cities, and another man had answered when he called. So at least two of them were down there-and after the fight, they were probably all three hanging together.

  He wasn't sure what he'd find at this place: but if they were friends of LaChaise, they might know where he was... and they might know Stadic's name.

  Just short of the Darlings' driveway, he turned off his headlights and eased along the road with the parking lights. He turned into the end of the driveway and, keeping his foot off the brake, killed the engine and rolled to a stop.

  He had a shotgun in the back, on the floor. He picked it up, jacked a shell into the chamber, zipped his parka, put on his gloves and cracked the door. He'd forgotten the dome light: it flickered, and he quickly pulled the door shut. Watched. Nothing. He reached up, pushed the dome light switch all the way to the left, and tried the door again. No light. He got out, and headed down the drive, the shotgun in his hand.

  A shaft of light fell on the snow outside the kitchen. Stadic did a quick-peek, one eye, just a half-second, past the edge of a yellowed pull-down shade. A gray-faced man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, with a bare-neck farmer haircut, sat alone at a kitchen table. He was eating macaroni out of a Tupperware bowl, washing it down with a can of beer. He was watching CNN.

  Stadic ducked under the window and, walking light-footed, testing the snow for crunch, continued past the house to a detached garage, and down the side of the garage to a window. He flicked his pocket flash just long enough to see the truck inside. He checked the plates: Q-HORSE2. So they had two vehicles. There were probably no more than two people inside the house, because that was the nominal capacity of the truck. And there was probably only one person inside, the one he could see, because the other truck was gone.

  He stepped back to the house, checked the window again. The man-Elmore Darling?-was still there, eating. Stadic moved to the back door. The door opened onto a small threeseason porch. He pulled open the aluminum storm door a half-inch at a time. Tried the inner door: the knob turned under his hand. Nobody locked anything in the country. Assholes. He opened the inner door as carefully as he had the storm door, a half-inch at a time, taking care not to let the shotgun rattle against the door frame.

  Inside, on the porch, he was breathing hard from the tension, his breath curling like smoke in the dimly lit air. He could hear the TV, not the words, but the mutter. The porch smelled of grain and maybe, a bit, of horse shit: not unpleasant. Farm smells. The porch was almost as cold as the outside. He eased the storm door shut.

  The door between the porch and the house had a window, covered with a pink curtain. He peeked, quickly: still eating. He'd have to move before Darling sensed him here, Stadic thought. He took a breath, reached out and tried the doorknob. Stiff.

  All right. He backed away a step, lifted the shotgun to the present-arms position, cocked his leg.

  Took a breath and kicked the doorknob.

  The door flew open, the screws of the lock housing ripping out of the wood on the inside. Darling, a soup-spoon of macaroni halfway to his face, fell out of his chair and onto the linoleum floor, and tried to scramble to his feet.

  Stadic, moving: ``Freeze... Freeze.'' Stadic was on top of Darling, leaning toward him, the barrel of the shotgun following his face. Stadic shouted, ``Police,'' and ``Down on the floor, down on the floor...''

  With his dark coat blowing around his ankles, the cold wind behind him, and the black gun, he looked like the figure of death. Darling flattened himself on the floor, his hands arched behind his head, shouting, ``Don't, don't, don't.''

  SANDY SPENT AN HOUR WATCHING THE TV NEWS, THE crisis building in the newsrooms. Murder and terrorism experts arriving at the networks like boatloads of war refugees, looking for life on television. You could tell they liked it: liked the murder, liked the guns, liked having the expertise.

  ``Bunch of vultures,'' Butters said.

  LaChaise and Butters and Martin were drunk. Martin simply got quieter and meaner: he'd stare at Sandy, drinking,stare some more. Butters tended to laugh and lurch around the house, and want to dance. LaChaise talked incessantly about the old days when they rode together with the Seed, and all the things the cops had done to him and his daddy.

  ``Nothing like what they did to my daddy,'' Butters said once. ``He used to write some bad checks when me and momma got hungry, and they'd be all over him. Used to beat him up and make him cry. The goddamn sheriff there liked to see a man cry. I was gonna kill him when I got big enough, but somebody else did it first.''

  ``So what finally happened?'' Sandy asked. ``To your old man?''

  ``Hung himself down the basement one day, right next to this big old rack of empty Ball jars. I come home from school and found him there, just twisting around. Did it with one of them pieces of plastic electric cable, had a hell of a time getting it unwrapped off his neck...''

  The story angered LaChaise-topped him-and he walked around the house kicking doors down. Then he came back and said, ``I don't want to hear no more about your daddy,'' and dropped into the one big chair and into himself, glowering at them, his disapproval rank in the air.

  ``Well, fuck you,'' Butters said, and Sandy felt like something could happen between them. But LaChaise grinned and said, ``You, too,'' and that defused it.

  Then Nightline came on, with the story about Butters, and they listened to the Nightline reporter list his life record.

  ``How'd they get that?'' LaChaise roared, and he glared around the room, as though one of them had given Butters up. ``Who'n the fuck is the traitor?''

  And then it occurred to him. He swung, the bottle of Jim Beam still in his hand, to Sandy: ``That fuckin' Elmore.''

  Sandy backed away, shook her head. ``No. Not Elmore. I warned him to keep his mouth shut, and he said he would.''But she thought, Maybe he did. Maybe he got on a phone and gave them up to Old John.

  ``I might have touched something,'' Butters said calmly, and LaChaise swung around toward him.

  ``You had gloves,'' he said.

  ``Couldn't get the pistol out of my pocket with gloves, so I took them off. Tried to stay away from things, but... maybe I touched something. My fingerprints would ring bells with the cops.''

  LaChaise considered, then said, ``Nah, it's that fuckin' Elmore, that's who it is.''

  ``If it was Elmore, he would've given them Martin, too,'' Butters said. He was holding a bourbon bottle, and took a swig.

  ``He's right, Dick...'' Sandy started, but LaChaise pointed at her, a thick forefinger in her face: ``Shut up.''

  And he dropped back into his chair. After a moment he said, ``I just fell apart. I saw the guy and I came apart.''

  Three people had gone out to kill, and only LaChaise had failed. He'd been brooding about it.

  ``There was no way you could know,'' Martin said finally. He was as drunk as Butters. ``It would have happened to me or Ansel, too. You call, you make the check, who's to know that he's gonna walk in one second later?''

  ``No, it's my fault,'' LaChaise said. ``I wasn't steady. I coulda took her. I coulda took them both. I coulda shot her, then shot him, let 'em watch each other die. She was right there, but I was gettin' fancy, then this cop pops up behind her. He was fast...''

  ``Lucky that shot caught you in the side, instead of square in the back,'' Butters said. They knew what he meant, but the word ``back'' seemed to hang in the air. LaChaise had been running when he was hit.

  ``I gotta get out of here,'' Sandy said. She stood up, butLaChaise pushed himself out of the chair and said, ``I told you to fuckin' shut up.'' And quick-quick as a whip-he caught her with an openhanded roundhouse, and knocked her to the floor, as Martin had earlier in the evening. Butters and Mar
tin sat impassively, watching, as she struggled to her hands and knees.

  She could taste blood in her mouth. She looked up at him and thought about getting a gun. She should have killed him the night she found out that he'd murdered the cop. She couldn't do it then. She could do it now.

  ``You gonna shut up?'' LaChaise asked.

  ``Let me go home, Dick,'' she said. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.

  ``Fuck that. You're staying here,'' he said.

  But he didn't mention Elmore again that night.

  ELMORE TOLD STADIC EVERYTHING HE KNEW, AND only lied in a few spots. ``Sandy's not in it at all,'' he said. ``They showed up, and there wasn't anything we could do. They got all the guns in the world.''