John Sandford

by Shadow Prey

  “I’m giving up, man,” Hood said. His voice came from off to the right, but Lucas still couldn’t see him. He took another step.

  “I want you inside,” Hood said.

  “I can’t do that, Billy,” Lucas said.

  “You’re just setting me up, man. You’re just making me a target. If I come to that window, I’m a dead man, aren’t I?”

  “I swear to God, Billy . . . .”

  “You don’t have to swear to God. Just get up in that window. I’ll be there. I want you to go out right in front of me, man, so those white boys don’t snipe me.”

  Lucas looked around once, muttered “Fuck it” under his breath, put his hands on the window ledge and boosted himself up. As he crawled onto the ledge, Hood was suddenly there, his back to the outer wall. He was looking at Lucas over the shotgun.

  “Step in further,” he said. The muzzle of the shotgun followed Lucas’ head like a steel eye.

  “Come on, man,” Lucas said. There hadn’t been any shells in the closet with the shotgun. Since Hood was using it, he either had found the shells or was bluffing with an empty weapon. Why would he bluff? He’d used a pistol of some kind, anyone would be willing to believe that the pistol was loaded . . . . “This can’t do any good.”

  “Shut up,” Hood said. He was wound tight as a spring, frightened. “Get in here.”

  Lucas hopped down from the window ledge.

  “Did one of you wise-ass cops fuck up my rifle? You did, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know about a rifle,” Lucas said. Hood’s face was bleeding from a long cut over one eye. On the floor near his foot was a .45, the slide locked open. Out of ammo, Lucas decided.

  “Pulled the trigger on that cocksucker rifle and almost blew my face off. There was a rag in it,” Hood said.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Lucas said. He could feel the P7 pushing into his back.

  “Bullshit,” Hood snapped. “But I know you didn’t know about these . . . .”

  He kept the shotgun muzzle on Lucas’ head but opened the hand under the shotgun’s fore-end. He had two shells in his hand.

  “Buckshot, for deer,” Hood said. “I had them stuck in with the thirty-thirty shells. Somebody missed them, huh?”

  “Bill . . .” Lucas started. Inside, he was cursing himself for not taking the .30-.30 shells, or at least checking the box. “You won’t get out of here this way . . . .”

  “Buckshot’s no good when those fuckers out there got M-16s, but this buckshot is going to get me out of here, because I got you, white boy,” he said. He gestured with the muzzle. “Lay down. On the floor.”

  “Billy, I trusted you, man. This is no good.” Lucas felt the sweat start at his temples, felt the heat in his armpits.

  “So I lied, motherfucker,” Hood said. “Get the fuck down.” He dipped the barrel of the shotgun an inch, to indicate down.

  Lucas got down on his knees, thought about going for the P7, but the shotgun muzzle never wavered.

  “Keep your hands away from your body . . . .”

  From outside, the ERU team leader called on a loudspeaker. “You coming out? Everything okay?”

  “Everything fine,” Hood yelled back. “We’re talking. Let us talk.”

  “Nothing you can do is going to help . . .” Lucas started.

  “On your fuckin’ belly,” Hood snapped.

  Lucas let himself down on the floor. It smelled of city grime. Grit cut into his chin.

  “I’ll tell you what we’re doing, so you don’t fuck me up,” Hood said. Sweat was pouring down his face, and Lucas could smell the fear on him. “I’m going to march you out of here with this gun. We’re going to take a car and we’re going down the Mississippi to the res. Someplace along the way I’ll get out and get off in the woods. Once I’m in the woods, I’m gone, man.”

  “They’ll come through with dogs . . . .”

  “Let them. There’ll be Indians all over the place, running them fuckin’ dogs to death, man. They’ll never get me out of them swamps down there.” Lucas felt Hood easing up close to him; then the shotgun muzzle touched the back of his head. “Just to let you know I’m here. I want your face straight down, until I tell you different.”

  Lucas lay facedown, still thinking about the gun on his hip. Hood was doing something behind him, but he couldn’t see what it was. There was a ripping sound and he tried tipping his face, but Hood said, “Hey,” and Lucas tipped it back. “I gotta breathe,” Lucas said.

  “You can breathe, don’t bullshit me . . . . Now you’re going to feel the gun on your head. I ’spect you’ve got a gun and maybe you’re one of them karate experts, but if you so much as jiggle, I’m going to blow your fucking brains out . . . . I got my finger on the trigger and the safety is off, you got it?”

  “I got it,” Lucas said.

  He felt the cold touch of the muzzle on the skin behind his ear. “Now push your head back until you’re looking off the floor. Look out into the kitchen, but don’t move anything else but your head,” Hood said. Lucas lifted his head, and a second later Hood took a quick turn of tape around his forehead, then another. Lucas gritted his teeth.

  “The muzzle of the gun is taped to your head,” Hood said when he had finished. His voice was a notch less tense. “If one of them white boys snipes me, you’re dead. If anything happens, you’re dead. A couple of pounds of pull on the trigger and you’re gone, man. You know what I’m saying? Lights out.” A third and fourth loop of tape overlapped the first two. The last loop partially covered Lucas’ left eye. He could feel the buttons on his shirt pressing into his chest and suddenly found it hard to breathe.

  “Jesus Christ, man, be careful,” he said, struggling to keep a whine out of his voice.

  “You just be cool, man . . . . Now get up.”

  Lucas got to his hands and knees and shakily stood up. The muzzle of the gun stayed with him, behind his right ear.

  “Everything all right?” the ERU team leader called.

  “Everything is great, motherfucker,” Hood yelled back. “We’re coming out in a minute.” He turned back to Lucas. “My car’s about fucked up. I want a cop car and I need some time. We’re going out there and get it.”

  “Tell them what you’re doing,” Lucas said. The weight of the gun pulled his head to the side. The tape over his left eye was sticking to his eyelid, and he struggled with a sudden feeling of claustrophobia. “If they see me with my hands up and you behind me, maybe somebody who can’t see what’s going on will take a shot at you.”

  “You tell them,” Hood said. “They’ll believe you. Over to the window.”

  Lucas stepped over to the window. Hood held onto his shirt collar with his left hand. The shotgun was in his right and he used the end of the barrel to push Lucas to the windowsill.

  “Everybody hold it,” Lucas screamed as he stepped into the opening. He put his arms up over his head, his fingers spread. “Everybody fuckin’ hold it. He’s got a shotgun taped to my head. Everybody fuckin’ hold it.”

  There was movement inside the apartment across the street, just a flicker at the window. Hood pulled him closer, the shotgun cutting into the flesh behind his ear.

  “Billy . . .” said the loudspeaker.

  “I want a car, man,” Hood shouted. He prodded Lucas forward until he was sitting on the windowsill. Carefully, carefully, he climbed up beside him. “You get down first,” he said.

  “Jesus,” said Lucas. “Don’t jar anything.”

  “Get down.”

  Lucas dropped the five feet, flexing his knees, his eyes closed as he landed. The world was still there. Hood landed next to him. Lucas took another breath. “I want a cop car and I want everybody out of my way,” Hood screamed.

  “Billy, this isn’t going to help, man, everything was fine,” the team leader called. The loudspeaker echoed in Lucas’ ears. He looked at the street, the cars blocking it, the people half visible behind them, and he wondered if they would suddenly wink out and
Lucas Davenport would be a shell on the cold ground, with a crowd looking down at him . . . .

  “Just give me the car, man, bring a car down here.” Hood was tensing up again, his voice screeching toward blind panic.

  “Give him the fuckin’ car,” Lucas yelled. The scent of pines came through. There were no pines there; no vegetation at all, but the scent of pines was there, just as though he were at his Wisconsin cabin. A refrain started running through the back of Lucas’ mind, Not yet, please not yet, but the cold circle of the shotgun muzzle pressed into the flesh behind his ear . . . .

  “Okay, okay, okay, we’re calling for a car, take it easy, Billy, we don’t want anybody else hurt . . . .”

  “Where’s the car?” Hood screamed. “Where’s the car?” He jerked on the shotgun and Lucas’ head snapped back.

  “Take it easy, take it easy, man,” Lucas said, his heart in his throat. His neck hurt his head hurt, and Hood pressed against him like an unwanted partner in a three-legged race. “If you fire this thing accidentally, you’re a dead motherfucker just like me.”

  “Shut up,” Hood snapped.

  “You can have a car, Christ, take it easy,” the ERU team leader called. He was directly across the street. “Take the car down to your right, down to your right. See the cop getting out? The keys are in that car.”

  Hood turned to look at it and Lucas looked with him. The car was next to the negotiator’s car. He could see Lily behind it.

  “Okay, we’re walking to the car,” Hood yelled toward the ERU leader. They edged sideways, like crabs, slowly, the shotgun pressing . . . . Twenty feet out from the car.

  “Billy? Billy? I’m the guy on the telephone. We’ve got a doctor here,” the negotiator called. The negotiator took a step away from his car and Lucas noticed that he’d taken off his sidearm. “We got a doctor, a registered psychologist, we want you to talk with her . . . .”

  Lily stepped out from behind the car and stood beside the negotiator, clutching her purse in both hands. She looked like a very scared public-health nurse.

  “We brought her in to see if you were okay. She says she’ll ride with the two of you, in case there’s any trouble, she wants to talk . . . .”

  “I don’t want any talk, man, I just want the car.” Hood prodded Lucas and Lucas sidestepped toward the car, his head twisted by the angle of the shotgun.

  “I can help you,” Lily called. She was fifteen feet away.

  “I don’t want you, man,” Hood said. He was sweating, and the odor of the fear sweat filled the air around him. “Just get the fuck out of my way.”

  “Listen, you’ve got to listen to me, Billy. Please? I’ve worked with a lot of Indian people and this is not the Indian way.” She took a step closer, and another, and with their movement toward the car, she was now less than ten feet away.

  “Just get away from me, will you?” Hood said in exasperation. “I don’t need no fuckin’ shrink, okay?”

  “Billy, please . . .” Lily said, a pleading note in her voice. Six feet. She let the purse drop to her side on its shoulder strap, one hand gesturing while the other plucked at her jacket. “Let me . . .” Her voice suddenly changed from persuasion to urgency. “Billy, you’ve got a problem. Okay? Let me tell you about this, okay? You’ve got a problem that you don’t know about. I mean it. Billy, there’s a wasp on your hair. Above your right ear. If it stings, don’t pull the trigger, it’s just a wasp . . . . We don’t want a tragedy.”

  “A wasp, man . . . where is it?” Hood stopped, his voice suddenly tight. Lucas’ mind flashed to the box of antihistamine tablets in Hood’s medicine cabinet.

  “On your hair just above your right ear, right there, it’s crawling down toward your ear . . . .”

  Hood had his left hand around Lucas’ neck and Lucas felt the stock of the gun come up as Hood tried to brush the nonexistent wasp away with his gun hand. With his finger through the trigger guard, he couldn’t quite reach his ear; for just the barest part of a second, not thinking, he pulled his trigger finger out of the guard, reaching toward his head. As his finger came out of the guard, Lily went into her belly with her right hand, the hand that had been nervously plucking at her jacket button, and came out with the full-cocked .45. She thrust it at Hood’s head almost as if she were throwing a dart, and he saw it just soon enough to flinch. Lucas closed his eyes and started to turn away; the .45 went off and Lucas felt a hot stinging on his face, as though he’d been hit by a handful of beach sand. Hood kicked back onto the ground as Lucas fell to his knees and screamed:

  “Get it off get it off get it off get it off.”

  The negotiator knelt beside him and said, “You’re okay, you’re okay.” A hand grasped the shotgun barrel, held it, and Lucas, his breath ragged, groaned, “Get it off, get it off,” and there was a flat cutting sound and the muzzle was gone.

  Again, everything was sharp, the blacktop beneath his knees, the smell of tar and city garbage, the sound of the radios, an ERU officer running, Lily saying “Jesus, Jesus,” the team leader’s knee next to his face, Billy Hood’s gym shoe twisted in the dirt. Then Lucas’ breakfast came up, and he knelt outside Billy Hood’s apartment and vomited and vomited; and when he couldn’t vomit anymore, dry heaves shook his shoulders and racked his stomach. Members of the ERU team were gathering around the body, and from somewhere he could hear a woman’s wail over the shouting and the chatter. The team leader’s hand was on the back of his neck, warm against his cold skin. He heard somebody crack the shotgun and a green-cased shotgun shell flipped out.

  When the stomach spasms stopped, when he had controlled them, Lucas turned his head and saw Billy Hood’s face. The front of it was caved in, as though somebody had hit him with a claw hammer.

  “One shot in the ten ring,” Lily said. She was standing above him, her face pale as winter, looking down at Hood. “Right on the bridge of his nose.” And although her voice was brave, she sounded ineffably sad. Lucas got to his hands and knees, then to his feet, wobbling.

  The team leader helped him strip the tape off his head, and turned to look at Lily. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m okay,” Lily said.

  “How about you?” the negotiator asked Lucas.

  “Fuck, no.” Lucas took a couple wobbly steps and Lily slipped an arm around his waist. “It could take a couple of minutes. I was a dead man.”

  “Maybe he would have let you go,” Lily said, looking back at Hood’s body.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so. Billy Hood was an angry man,” Lucas said. “He was ready to die and he wasn’t going alone.”

  He stopped and turned and, like Lily, looked back at the body. Hood’s face wasn’t peaceful in death. It was simply dead, and empty, like a beer can crushed on the side of a road. A red-hot anger washed through Lucas.

  “God damn, we needed him. We needed the motherfucker to talk, the stupid shit. The stupid shit, why’d he do this?” He was shouting and the ERU team was looking at him.

  Lily tightened her grip around his waist and gave him a gentle push toward the house across the street.

  “Did I say ‘Thank you’?” Lucas asked, looking down at Lily.

  “Not yet.”

  “You could have blown my fuckin’ brains out, Rothenburg. And I’ve got all kinds of shit buried in my face.”

  “I’m too good a shot to have hit you. And the shit in your face is better than shotgun pellets behind your ear,” she said.

  “So, thanks. You saved my ass.”

  “I accept your abject gratitude, and while it’s not enough . . .”

  “I’ll give you all the gratitude you can handle. You know that,” he said. The hair on the top of her head brushed against his cheek.

  “Fuckin’ men,” she muttered.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Lucas sat on a stack of newspapers.

  “Are you all right?” Daniel asked, squatting beside him. Lily realized that he was trying to be gentle but didn’t know how.

&
nbsp; “In a bit,” Lucas said.

  Larry Hart came in, saw them and stopped. “The whole area is surrounded by media,” he said. “Channel Eight had a camera on a roof down the street. They had the whole thing on the air, live. Everybody’ll be looking for you and Lily.”

  “Fuck that,” said Lucas, his elbows on his legs, his head hung down to his knees. “Has anybody talked to Jennifer?”

  “I gave her a call right after Lily took Hood out,” Daniel said. “She was watching. She sounded pretty calm. She even tried to screw some details out of me, for their newscast.”

  “Sounds like Jennifer,” Lucas said. He thought about the shotgun behind his ear and gripped his knees. “If you can get somebody to take the Porsche back to my place, maybe I could sneak out in a squad . . . .”

  “Sloan’ll take it,” Daniel said. Lucas nodded and dug the keys out of his pocket. “We’ve got more problems. I hate to bother you with them . . . .”

  “Jesus, what?”

  “The St. Paul water patrol took a body off the Ford dam this morning. It got hung up on an abutment. It’s an Indian. He was carrying an ID that said ‘Richard Yellow Hand.’ ”

  “Aw, fuck,” said Lucas.

  “We’d like you to take a look. We’re not sure yet . . . well, we’re pretty sure, but he was your snitch . . . .”

  “All right, all right, all right . . .”

  “I’ll go with you if you want,” Lily offered.

  “Uh, you better not,” Daniel said, looking up at her. “We’ll have some shooting reports to make out. You’ll have to talk to our attorney, you not being a certified police officer in Minnesota . . . .”

  “What . . . ?”

  “No, no, there won’t be any problems,” Daniel said hastily. “But there’s some bureaucratic rigmarole to go through. Jesus, I wish I had a cigar.”

  “So I look at this body . . .” said Lucas.

  “There’s something else,” Daniel said, almost reluctantly. “They did another one.”

  “Another one?” asked Lily. “Where?”

  “Brookings, South Dakota. It’s just coming in now. The fuckin’ state attorney general. They were having some kind of harvest-festival thing and they had these polka dancers. This guy, the attorney general, always went to the polka dances because he knew he’d make the local TV. A gunman was waiting for him.”