Buried Prey

by John Sandford

  Still, she wasn’t much interested in being somebody’s trophy. She’d gone out with an artist for a while, a guy who reminded her of a crazier version of Davenport—in fact, he’d been a wrestler at the U at the same time Davenport had been playing hockey, and they knew each other, part of the band of jock-o brothers.

  Huh. The artist had been . . . hot. Crazy, maybe, but hot. After they’d split up, he’d gone and married some chick he’d known forever, and Davenport had told her that he and the chick even went and had a kid.

  Had a kid.

  She’d like a kid . . . but, it’d have to be soon. Rick wasn’t the best daddy material in the world. He had the attention span of a banana slug, and didn’t seem like the kind who’d be interested in the poop-and-midnight-bottle routine.

  There was another guy, too, an orthopedic surgeon who wore cowboy boots and rode cutting horses on the weekends, out of a ranch north of the Cities. He was divorced but getting ripe, looking at her, from time to time, and she felt a little buzz in his presence. And she liked horses.

  Possibilities.

  She smiled to herself and turned on the satellite radio. Lucinda Williams came up with “Joy,” quite the apposite little tune, given her contemplation of the boys in her life. . . .

  WHILE SHE WAS HEADING SOUTH, the killer was roaming around Bloomington, going back again and again to Kelly Barker’s house, not knowing exactly what he planned to do; whatever it was, he had to wait until she got home, and she’d already kept him waiting so long that he felt the rage starting to burn under his belt buckle.

  He was one morose and angry motherfucker, he admitted to himself, and things weren’t getting any better. He had no life, had never had one. He had a crappy house, a crappy van, a crappy income, and no prospects. He collected and resold junk. He was a junk dealer. He had a bald spot at the top of his head, growing like a forest fire at Yellowstone. He was so overweight he could barely see his own dick. He had recurrent outbreaks of acne, despite his age, and the cardiologist said that if he didn’t lose seventyfive pounds, he was going to die. And he had dandruff. Bad.

  Dumb and doomed: even in Thailand, he could see the disregard, the contempt, in the eyes of the little girls he used. They weren’t even frightened of him.

  Might just want to stick a gun in his mouth . . . some other time.

  Some other time, because right now he was in an ugly mood, and the mood was feeding on itself, and he had that gun, and he had the address of the only woman who could identify him for sure.

  He went around the block and this time, there were lights on in the window, and he saw a shadow cross a drape. They were home.

  All right, he thought; time for tactics.

  He did a few more laps, took a long look at the neighbors. The Barkers’ street was quiet enough, but there were lights in almost every house. On the street behind the Barkers’, though, two dark houses sat side by side. If he parked on that street, he could cut between the two houses, walk down the side of the Barkers’ place, and around to the front door.

  Ring the bell, kill the bitch, and wheel. If her husband answered, knock him down with a couple of shots, go in after the woman, put her down, and go out the back.

  He pulled into a parking lot and parked, getting his guts up; sat and thought and then reached out to the glove box, opened it, and lifted out the fake black beard. Wouldn’t fool anyone from two feet, but it’d be good enough from eight or ten or fifty. It had little pull-off tabs that uncovered sticky tape. He pulled them off, threw them on the floor of the car, and stuck the beard on his face using the rearview mirror to get the position right. When he was satisfied, he pressed the tapes hard, ten seconds each, then smacked his lips to make sure it was on tight.

  Ready to go.

  Careful not to leave any DNA, not to touch anything. Let the bullets do the talking.

  Speaking of which . . .

  He checked around again to make sure he wasn’t being observed, took the shells out of the pistol’s magazine, and polished each one with a Kleenex, taking care not to touch them again as he pushed them back into the magazine, one by one.

  Thirteen rounds.

  Barker’s unlucky number.

  BUSTER HILL SAID, as they crossed the street, after parking, “When you see her on TV, you gotta think she’s having a good time. I mean, she’s been doing this for what, almost twenty years?”

  “She likes it,” Marcy agreed. “If you’re a victim, at least you’re something. You’re not just another nonentity.”

  “Got some drama in your life,” Hill said.

  “Exactly,” Marcy said. They got to the door and Marcy rang, and Kelly Barker answered, a puppy-like eagerness on her face.

  “Officer Sherrill? Come on in—you have to excuse the house, we’ve been running around like mad dogs since this started.”

  Her husband was smiling in the background, as eager as his wife. Marcy could smell coffee and coffee cake, and smiled, and led Buster inside.

  She could use some coffee cake.

  THE KILLER COULDN’T BELIEVE that he was going to do it, but he was. He just . . . did it. He parked on the street behind the Barkers’ house, got out, looked up and down the street—lots of lights, no people, all inside eating dinner, or watching TV, though it was a beautiful evening.

  Started walking. When he got around the block, there was a new car parked on the street across from the Barkers’ but nobody in sight. That was the last moment that he might have turned around.

  Instead, he put his hand on the Glock, in his jacket pocket, made sure the safety was off, and walked quickly across the yard and down between the two dark houses, pushed through a sickly hedge, and continued through the Barkers’ backyard, down the side of their house, and around to the front.

  Looked up and down the street, saw nobody watching, rang the doorbell. Heard the faint cadences of people talking, and footfalls on the floor inside. The knob turned, and he was looking at a thirty-something guy, a guy with an eager white face over a JCPenney suit. . . .

  The killer shot the guy three times, bap-bap-bap, and he went down, and the killer took a step forward, following the muzzle of his gun, saw three people frozen on the living room couch and then a dark-haired woman was moving and a big fat guy, and they seemed to have guns and the killer ripped out ten shots without stopping, just pointed the gun and let it rip, fast as he could move his finger, and saw people falling and then something tore at his side and he was running . . .

  Didn’t think, didn’t hear, didn’t do anything but run.

  MARCY HAD A SWEET ROLL in one hand—tasted good, she hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch—when the doorbell rang. Todd Barker got up and said, “I’ll get it, it’s probably Jim,” and went to the door. Kelly Barker said, “Jim’s from just down the street. He was going to record all the TV—”

  And Todd Barker opened the door and there were three shots and he went down, and a black-bearded fat man was there with a gun and Marcy made a move for her pistol and could feel Buster making a move . . .

  Then it all went away for Marcy Sherrill, as swiftly and surely as the light fleeing a shattered bulb; gone into darkness.

  No more Davenport and his suits, no more Rick or the hot artist, no more lunches with pals at the police force, no more fistfights, no more surgeons on cutting horses, no more politics, no more anything.

  The killer’s fifth wild shot, sprayed across the room, caught Marcy Sherrill under the chin, blew through her throat and spinal cord, and she died without even knowing it, without being able to say goodbye or feel any regret, with the taste of a sweet roll on her tongue. . . .

  Nothing, again, forever.

  16

  Lucas dropped the hammer on the Lexus, burning down Rice Street, blowing through a red light at Arlington, with barely a hesitation. Berg, cuffed in the backseat, called, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” and Del, holding on to an overhead hand grip, said, “I wonder what those crazy fucks have done this time?”

  “I don�
�t know. I don’t know why they wouldn’t tell me,” Lucas said. “Why wouldn’t they tell me?”

  Maryland wasn’t far. “Maryland? What’s at Maryland?” Del asked. “Was there something going on there?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Lucas said. “They were working those home invasions down in South St. Paul. . . .”

  Shrake and Jenkins had many sterling qualities, but discretion wasn’t one of them: to hear them freaked and screaming for lights and sirens meant something bad was happening or about to happen. “Something bad, man, something really bad,” Lucas said.

  Del put his feet on the dash and dug his pistol out and checked it. From the back, Berg cried, “What’s happening? What’s happening?” and Del said, “Shut up, asshole.”

  Three blocks ahead, they saw Jenkins’s personal Crown Vic slew across the intersection and then disappear into what must be the parking lot.

  They were there in ten seconds, saw Jenkins and Shrake standing outside the Crown Vic looking up the street at them, and Del said, “They’re just standing there,” and he reholstered his pistol, and then Lucas put the truck into the parking lot, bouncing to a stop next to the two big agents.

  He and Del were out, and Jenkins pointed at Berg through the back window of the Lexus and asked, “Who’s he?”

  Lucas asked, “Jesus, what’s going on? What’s going on?”

  “Who’s the guy?” Jenkins asked again.

  His voice carried a peculiar intensity that made Lucas stop, and answer: “We’re transporting him down to Ramsey on assault.”

  Jenkins said to Shrake, “Get him out of there,” and to Lucas: “We’ll take him.”

  Shrake went around and jerked open the back door. Lucas said, “Jenkins, goddamnit—”

  “Marcy Sherrill’s been shot,” Jenkins said. “She was over at that Barker chick’s house, and somebody came crashing in and shot the place up. Three people hit, the shooter’s maybe hit, it’s all confused, it’s all fucked up.”

  Lucas grabbed Jenkins’s arm: “How bad? Where’re they taking her? Where’re they taking her?”

  Jenkins shook his head: “They’re not transporting her.”

  Lucas’s mind froze for a minute, then: “What?”

  “They’re not transporting, man.” Jenkins moved up and threw an arm around Lucas’s shoulder. “She’s gone, man. That’s what they’re telling us.”

  LUCAS STARED AT HIM for a moment, and then Del said, his voice shaking, “We’re going. Get that fucker out of there . . .” gesturing at Berg. Shrake yanked the thin man out of the back of the truck and slammed the door.

  Del ran around to the driver’s side, and Lucas said, “No, I got it,” and Del said, “Bullshit, I’m driving. Get in. Get the fuck in the car.”

  Del drove fast, but not crazy, as Lucas would have, all the way across town, with Lucas yelling suggestions at him, onto I-94, off I-94 at Cretin Avenue, south down Cretin at sixty miles an hour, then across the bridge and past the airport and the Mall of America and down into Bloomington’s suburban maze.

  And all the way, with the sick feeling of doom in his gut, Lucas was yelling out reasons why it couldn’t be right: one of the best hospitals in the metro area was five minutes from the Barkers’ house; they would have transported her no matter what, there was a lot of confusion, that fuckin’ Jenkins had it wrong.

  Del just drove and once in a while, shook his head. Jenkins, he believed, wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. He was a thug, but a smart one, and not insensitive. He didn’t say it, kept his foot down and shook his head as Lucas shouted out possibilities.

  THERE WERE BLOOMINGTON COPS all over the place, and the street down to Barker’s house was blocked off. Del rolled the Lexus past the blocking black-and-white, hanging his BCA credentials out the window, and put the truck in a vacant spot a halfblock from the Barker house.

  They climbed down and jogged past a half-dozen uniformed Bloomington cops coming and going, cutting across a couple of yards, swerving around a loop of crime-scene tape to a detective standing out in the yard. He looked up as Lucas and Del came up and said, “I know you—”

  “Davenport and Capslock, with the BCA,” Lucas said. “We heard that Marcy Sherrill was down. Is she . . . ?”

  The cop shook his head: “You were with Minneapolis, right?”

  “Yeah, we both were. We’re close friends of hers.”

  “I’m John Rimes, I’m running the scene right now. I’ll let you go in,” he said. “But you might not want to . . . have to go around to the side door.”

  “Man, she’s . . .” Lucas held his hands out, palms up, pleading.

  Rimes nodded. “She’s gone. We got two more down, another cop named Buster Hill, and Todd Barker, the husband here—”

  “Aw, man.” Lucas stopped, put his hand to his forehead. Del put a hand on his shoulder. “Aw . . . can’t be right.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rimes said.

  “I interviewed them a couple days ago; this is part of the Jones investigation,” Lucas said, as they walked around to the side of the house. A kind of black dread was enveloping his brain. “I talked to Marcy a couple times today.”

  Del said, “Easy . . .”

  Lucas shook him off. “I’m okay.”

  Rimes said, “Hill got off a couple of shots and it looks like he hit the guy—we’ve got a blood trail going around the side of the house over to the next street. Not much, but it’s a trail.”

  Del asked, as they went through the side door, “Anybody get the tags?”

  “No, but a guy down the street said it was a white cargo van. . . . Of course, there are only about thirty thousand of those.”

  Lucas said to Del, “It’s him. It’s the van. It’s the guy.”

  Rimes asked, “Who?” but Lucas shook his head.

  Then they were crossing a kitchen toward a crowd of people in the living room, and Rimes said, “Make a hole,” and people stepped back and Lucas looked down and suddenly, shockingly, saw Marcy, eyes still open, faceup on the living room rug, only a small hole under her chin, but a big puddle of blood under her neck. She was wearing a white silky blouse with bloody handprints down the front, where somebody had tried to tend to her. Her eyes were blank as the sky.

  “Aw, Christ,” he said, and he began to shake.

  Around her, the house was a shambles, overturned chairs and blood tracks on the carpet, telling the story.

  “This Hill guy was hit in the leg. He started screaming for an ambulance, but she was gone,” Rimes said. “He said he knew she was gone the minute he looked at the wound. Hill’s gonna be okay, the husband’s hurt bad, but he’ll make it. He took two in the chest and one in the shoulder. . . . Sherrill was hit right under the chin.”

  “Took out her spinal cord,” said a crime-scene guy. “Instantaneous. Like she was decapitated.”

  Rimes shook his head at the guy and said, “Thank you,” and the guy looked at Lucas’s face and went away.

  Rimes said, “The woman, this Kelly Barker, she wasn’t hurt. She said the shooter was a big fat guy with a black beard. We’re gonna get DNA on him, so he’s toast if we can put our hands on him.”

  Rimes’s voice was quiet, but intense, a recitation of what he’d learned since he took over the scene. He asked Lucas, “You need to sit down?”

  Lucas turned toward Del but he couldn’t find his voice, couldn’t even find any spit in his mouth, not enough moisture to force out a word, and he shook his head and went back through the kitchen and out to the backyard and sat down on the grass.

  Del was on his cell phone when he came out a minute later. He clicked off, squatted next to Lucas, and said, “Come on, these guys are pros. They’ll get it done. Let’s get you home.”

  “Got to tell her folks,” Lucas said, finding a few words. Tears started streaming down his face. “Somebody’s—”

  “Somebody does, but not you,” Del said. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

  LUCAS DIDN’T FIGHT HIM. He sat in the passen
ger seat, couldn’t stop the tears. Del said, “This is the worst goddamn thing. It’s the worst goddamn thing.”

  WEATHER CALLED on Lucas’s cell and asked, “Where are you?”

  “Coming home. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said.

  “Are you driving?”

  “No. Del is.”

  “Ten minutes,” she said.

  WEATHER AND LETTY were in the driveway when they got to Lucas’s home. Del pulled in, and said, “I’ll go downtown and take care of the paper on Berg—I wish we’d never talked to that fool.”

  Lucas nodded and climbed out of the truck, and Weather came and took him around the waist and said, “Shrake called, and Del. Lucas, I’m so sorry.”

  Lucas nodded and Letty asked, “What’re you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got to think about it. I’m so freaked out I can’t think right now. This was like a freak shot, the guy was spraying the house. He shot the husband three times from four feet and didn’t kill him, but he hits Marcy once from forty feet and she’s gone. Ah, Jesus . . .”

  Letty said, “You’ve got to find the guy who did it and take care of him. Personally.”

  Weather said, “Letty, let it go.”

  Letty said to Weather, “I’m not letting it go.” And to Lucas: “If you don’t settle this, get a hand in it, you’re going to be screwed up for a long time. First the Jones girls and now Marcy. Dad—”

  Weather said, “Letty, shut up. Look: just shut up for now. We can talk about it later. Lucas, let’s go sit down.”

  “I need to talk to the guys at Minneapolis,” Lucas said. “I need to talk to her partner, find out what happened. I’ve got enough to find this guy, and now we’ve got DNA on him.”

  “You’re not going to do any of that tonight,” Weather said. “Come on. I’ve got some hot dogs hidden away. We’ll get something to eat . . . you need to think.”