Shadow Prey

by John Sandford

  He knocked once, then again.

  A woman’s voice: “Who is it?”

  Before Lucas could answer, Del piped up, in a childish falsetto, “Star Tribune.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation and then the door started to open. As it opened, Lucas realized that it was on a chain. A woman’s eye appeared in the crack. Lucas said, “Police,” and the woman screamed, “No,” and tried to push the door shut. She was small and dark and not young, and Lucas knew for sure. As she tried to push the door shut he rocked back and kicked it; the chain ripped off and they were inside, the woman running awkwardly toward the back. Lucas was on her, punching her between the shoulder blades, and she went down on her face in the hallway. Del was braced in the entrance to the living room, his gun in front of him, scanning.

  “You don’t fuckin’ move,” Lucas snarled at the woman. “You don’t fuckin’ move, you hear?”

  Lucas and Del went through the house in thirty seconds, rotating down the hallway, clearing out the two bedrooms, then taking the stairs, cautiously, ready . . . Nothing.

  At the top, Lucas heard the woman on her feet, and as Del held the stairs, Lucas shouted, “Wait here,” and ran back down. Gow was headed for the front door when Lucas hit her again. She yelped and went down, and he dragged her to a radiator and cuffed her to it. Del was still waiting at the top of the stairs; Lucas came and they cleaned out the second floor. Nobody.

  Downstairs they checked the bedrooms again, this time for any sign of the Crows. It was all there: a stack of unmailed press releases, letters, two different sets of men’s clothing.

  “I’m gonna talk to this woman,” Lucas told Del. “You shut the front door and call Anderson, tell him what we’ve got. Get a warrant down here, maybe we can finesse things later. And tell him we may want an ERU team for when the Crows come back.”

  While Del went to call, Lucas walked back to Barbara Gow, who was lying on her side with her knees up to her face, weeping. Lucas uncuffed her and prodded her back with his foot.

  “Sit up,” he said.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she wailed.

  “Sit the fuck up,” Lucas said. “You’re under arrest. Seven counts of first-degree murder. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You’re an accomplice . . .” Lucas said, squatting next to her, his face two inches from hers. He was not quite shouting, and he deliberately let spittle rain on her face.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Where are the Crows . . . ?”

  “I don’t know any Crows . . . .”

  “Bullshit. All their stuff is in back.” He grabbed her by the blouse and shook her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know where they went. They took my car.”

  “She’s lying,” Del said. Lucas looked up and found Del standing over them. His eyes were dilated and he hadn’t shaved for several days. “Stay with her for just a second. I wanna run down to the bathroom.”

  Lucas waited, watching the woman’s face. A few seconds later, they heard the bath water running.

  “What’re you going to do?” Lucas asked when Del returned. He tried to sound interested—curious—but not worried.

  “She’s got nice hot water,” Del said. “So I thought maybe I’d give the bitch a bath.”

  “Shit, I wish I’d thought of that,” Lucas said happily.

  Gow tried to roll away from him but Del caught the old woman by the hair. “You know how many old women drown in the bathtub? Suck in that scalding hot water and can’t get out?”

  “It’s a tragedy,” Lucas said.

  “Let me go,” Gow screamed, struggling now. Del dragged her toward the hallway by the hair. She flailed at him, but he ignored it.

  “There’s some coffee in the kitchen,” Del called. “Why don’t you go heat up some water, we can have a cup. This’ll only take a minute. She don’t look too strong.”

  “They went to kill Clay,” Gow blurted.

  “Jesus Christ.” Del let her go and the two men crouched over her.

  “They can’t get to him. He’s got round-the-clock bodyguards,” Lucas argued.

  “He sneaks out,” Gow said. “He has sex with little girls, so he sneaks out.”

  Lucas looked at Del: “Motherfucker. They don’t crack the security. They get Clay to come out. Call Anderson and have him get onto the feebs. Find out where Clay is. And get Daniel.”

  Del dashed down the hall toward the telephone and Lucas gripped the old woman’s hair.

  “Tell me the rest. I’ll testify in court for you. I’ll tell them you helped; it might get you off. Where’d they go?”

  Tears ran down her face and she sobbed, unable to talk.

  “Talk to me,” Lucas screamed, shaking the old woman’s head.

  “There’s a man named Christopher Drake. Corky Drake. He lives up in Kenwood somewhere,” Barbara Gow sobbed. “Clay goes to his house for the girls.”

  Lucas let her go and ran into the kitchen, where Del was on the phone. “I gotta go,” he shouted. “Stay with her. Tell Anderson I’ll call in ten seconds, tell him I’ll need those squads.”

  Lucas sprinted to the Porsche, cranked it, picked up the handset and called Dispatch.

  “A Christopher Drake,” he told the dispatcher. “In Kenwood. I need the address now.”

  Twenty seconds later, as he turned onto Franklin Avenue, he had it.

  “I need everything you’ve got. No sirens, but make it fast,” he told Dispatch.

  Anderson came on: “I’m talking to Del, we’re going out to the FBI now. How long before you make this Drake’s place?”

  Lucas ran a red light and calculated. “If I don’t hit anything, about two minutes,” he said. He crossed the center line into the left lane and blew past two cars, the speedometer nudging sixty.

  The squad car came out of the loop road, turned away from them and kept going. Aaron grunted, checked his watch again and said, “Let’s go.”

  Drake’s house was a quarter-mile down the lane. They did a U-turn in front of the house, so the car would be pointed out, and left it on the street. The yards were wooded, and the brush would screen them as they approached the house.

  “Let’s get the tie,” Sam said as they climbed out of the car.

  Aaron looked up at the sky as Sam popped the tailgate. “Good moon for a killing,” Aaron said.

  In the soundproofed privacy of the bedroom, the girl dropped the kimono around her feet and slipped onto the bed. Lawrence Duberville Clay peeled off his underwear and slipped in beside her, and she put her arm over her chest.

  “Smell so good,” she said. He looked over her shoulder at the video camera and the monitor screen. The light was just right. It would be an evening to remember.

  Leo held the cut-down shotgun by his side as they pulled the railroad tie out of the car and held it by the handles. A battering ram. Nearly a hundred pounds, swung hard, focused on a point no bigger than a hammerhead. Better than any sledgehammer made.

  Swinging the tie, they moved swiftly through the dark into Drake’s yard.

  “Go through it one more time,” Leo said.

  Sam recited in a monotone. “Aaron and I swing it. When the door goes down, we drop it and you run right over it, freeze anyone inside. Aaron takes the ground floor, blocking anyone out, and you and I go up the stairs. There are four bedrooms up the stairs, and they’ll be in one of them.”

  “Drop the tie, go in, freeze anyone, then Aaron takes over and we go up the stairs.”

  “Clay carries a gun; you’ve seen the pictures,” Aaron said. He looked up at the moon. “So be careful.”

  They stayed in a screen of trees as they came up the drive, then broke across an open space to a lilac bush, paused to adjust their holds on the railroad tie.

  “You got it?” Aaron asked.

  “Let’s go,” said Sam.

  Running awkwardly, they rushed at the door, then stopped at the last
second and swung the tie as hard as they could. It hit the door two inches from the knob and blew it open as effectively as a stick of dynamite. They let go as the door flew open; the tie fell half inside, and Leo was in the living room. Drake was there, coming off the couch, a pearl-gray suit and pink open-necked shirt, his mouth open. Leo, his face twisted into a mask of hate, shoved the shotgun at him and said in a coarse whisper:

  “Where is he?”

  Integrity had never been one of Drake’s burdens. “Up the stairs,” he blurted. “First door on the left.”

  “If he’s not there, motherfucker, you gonna be sucking on this shotgun,” Leo snarled.

  “He’s there . . . .”

  Aaron held Drake as Leo and Sam took the stairs, struggling with the railroad tie as they went, their footfalls muffled by the thick carpet. At the top, they looked at each other, and Leo held the shotgun over his head. They went at the bedroom door with the tie. The bedroom door was no more match for the ram than the front door had been. It blew open and Leo went through.

  Music was playing from a stereo; the lights were low enough for comfort, bright enough for spectating. A video camera was mounted on a steel tripod, with a television flickering beside it. Clay was there, his flesh obscenely white, sluglike, on the red satin sheet. The girl was beside him, nearly as pale as he was, except for a streak of scarlet lipstick.

  “Get away,” Leo said to the girl, gesturing with the shotgun.

  “Wait,” said Clay. The girl rolled away from him and off the bed.

  “Wait, for Christ’s sakes,” Clay said.

  “On your feet,” Leo said. “This is a citizen’s arrest.”

  “What?”

  “On your feet and turn around, Mr. Clay,” Leo said. “If you don’t, I swear to God I’ll blow you to pieces.”

  Clay, frightened, crawled off the bed and turned. Sam slipped his pistol into his pocket, took out his obsidian knife and stepped behind him.

  “We’re going to handcuff you, Mr. Clay,” Sam said. “Put your hands behind your back . . . .”

  “You’re the Crows . . . .”

  “Yeah. We’re the Crows.”

  “Do I know you? I’ve seen you? Your faces . . .”

  Clay was facing curtains that covered windows overlooking the driveway. A set of headlights swept into the drive, then a set of red flashers.

  “Cops,” said Leo.

  “We met a long time ago,” Sam said. “In Phoenix.”

  Clay started to turn his head, recognition lighting his eyes, and Sam reached up from the other side, grabbed his hair and dragged the knife across his throat. Clay twisted away screaming, and the girl broke for the door. Blood pumped through Clay’s hands and he fell faceup on the bed, trying to hold himself together. Sam shouted, “Let’s go.”

  Leo shouted, “Run,” and as Sam went, he stepped close to the supine Clay and fired the shotgun into his chest.

  Lucas turned into the loop road fifty yards in front of the first cruiser. He had to slow to find the address, then saw Barbara Gow’s wagon in the street and the open door of the white Colonial house. He slid into the circular drive, stood on the brake and piled out, the P7 in his hand. The cruiser was just behind him, and then there were more lights on the lane, more cops coming in. He waited just a second for the first cruiser and heard the shotgun roar . . . .

  “Cops,” Sam screamed from the top of the stairs, his scream punctuated by the shotgun blast. Both he and Aaron favored old-model .45s, and had them in their hands. The girl, nude, ran down the stairs, saw Aaron waiting and stopped. Sam pushed past her, with Leo just behind.

  Drake had his hands on his head and began to back away. “Fucker,” Aaron said, and shot him in the chest. Drake flipped back over a sofa and disappeared.

  “Try the back?” Leo shouted.

  “Fuck it,” said Aaron. “Clean the driveway out with the shotgun, then get out of the way.”

  Leo ran to the door. The car’s headlights were focused on it but he could see figures behind the lights. He fired three quick shots, emptying the gun, and ducked back inside as a hail of bullets tore through the doorway into the living room.

  “Go out the back,” Aaron said to him. He kissed Leo on the cheek, looked at his cousin.

  “Time to die, you flatheaded motherfucker,” Sam shouted.

  The return fire from outside had stopped. There were shouts, and Sam lifted his head, smelling the perfume of the house. Then Aaron was out the door at a dead run, Sam a step behind, the .45s jumping in their hands.

  • • •

  Lucas looked at the cop and said, “Get somebody around back. They’re in there, I just heard . . .”

  He never finished the sentence. There was a shot inside the house, a pause, and then a shotgun opened from the doorway. The muzzle blast flickered like lightning in the dark and the cop who’d started for the back went down. More squads were roaring into the driveway, one sliding sideways as another cop went down.

  Lucas fired a quick three shots at the doorway and started toward it as the gunner ducked inside. Then the Crows were there, coming out the door at a run, their pistols firing wildly. Lucas fired twice at the first one as the other cops opened up. The Crows were down a half-second later, bullets kicking up dirt around them, plucking at their shirts, their jeans, enough lead to kill a half-dozen men.

  And then there was silence.

  Then a few words, like morning birds outside a bedroom window. “Jesus God,” somebody was saying. “Jesus God.”

  Sirens. Static from the radios. More sirens. Lots of them. Lucas crouched behind the car.

  “Where’s the shotgun?” he screamed. “Anybody see the shotgun?”

  A cop was crying for help, the pain on him. Another was a lump in the dirt.

  “Who’s around back?” somebody called.

  “Nobody. Get somebody around back.”

  A uniform dashed into the headlights, stopped next to the cop who was lying still in the dirt, and began tugging him out of the light. Lucas stood, aiming his pistol through the doorway, and squeezed off two suppression shots.

  “He’s gone,” the uniform screamed, holding the dead cop in his arms. “Jesus, where are the paramedics?”

  More lights in the lane, then Sloan coming up the driveway.

  “Heard you on the radio,” he grunted. “What have we got?”

  “Maybe a shotgun inside.”

  There was a figure at the door, and two or three separate voices screamed warnings.

  “Hold it, hold it,” somebody shouted.

  The girl appeared in the doorway, her eyes as wide as a deer’s, shambling out of the wreckage.

  “Who’s in there?” Lucas called as she came across the driveway.

  “Nobody,” she wailed. She half turned to the house as though she couldn’t believe it. “Everybody’s dead.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  “I don’t know what else we could have done,” Lucas said. In his own ears, the words sounded like excuses, quick and chattery as if tumbling out of a teletype, harsh with guilt. “If we hadn’t gone straight in, we’d have lost Clay for sure. We knew they weren’t far in front of us.”

  “You did okay,” Daniel said grimly. “It was that fuckin’ Clay, sneaking out like that. The Crows must have known. They set him up, slicker’n shit. Fuckin’ Wilson is dead, Belloo’s maybe crippled, it’s that fuckin’ Clay’s fault.”

  “It must have been Shadow Love with the shotgun,” Lucas said. He was leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets and his head down. His shirt was covered with blood. He thought it might be Belloo’s. He was missing the heel of one shoe. Shot off? He wasn’t sure. That foot hurt, but there were no wounds. Not a scratch. A uniformed captain, his face pale as the moon, stood down the hall and watched them talk. “He did Clay and Wilson and Belloo, all three. One of the Crows must have shot Drake. But that motherfucker Shadow Love, he caught us with that shotgun . . . .”

  “The whole thing lasted n
o more than eight seconds,” Daniel said. “That’s what they’re getting from the tapes . . . .”

  “Christ . . .”

  “The main thing is Shadow Love,” Daniel said. “He must have gone out the back. We’ve got the neighborhood blocked off. We’ll get him in the morning; I just hope he didn’t get out before we set up the line.”

  “What if he’s in somebody’s house? What if he went in somewhere and he’s got somebody’s family on the wall?”

  “We’ll be going door to door.”

  “Motherfucker’s a fruitcake and he’s carrying a shotgun and we just killed his fathers . . . .”

  They were standing in the antiseptic hallways of Hennepin Medical Center, outside the surgical suite, one set of doors closer to the operating rooms than was usually permitted. Two dozen family members, friends and cops were corralled one set of doors farther out, waiting for news.

  And beyond the next set, a hundred newsmen, maybe more. Doctors and nurses shuttled in and out of the operating suite, half of them with no business there, but officiously correct in demeanor. They wanted to see what was going on.

  Clay had been taken in, but he was gone; so was Drake, shot in the heart. The first cop shot was brain dead, but they had him on a respirator; the hospital was talking to his family about organ donations. The second cop was still on the table. A nurse had pointed out the doc working on Belloo, the same redheaded surgeon who’d done Lily. Two more surgeons joined her, and an hour after Belloo went on the table, she came through the doors into the waiting area.

  “You guys are giving me more business than I need,” she said grimly.

  “What’s the story?”

  “It’ll be a while before we know. We’ve got a neurosurgeon looking at some crap around his spinal cord. There’s some bone splinters in there but he’s still got function . . . .”

  “He can walk?”

  The surgeon shrugged. “He’s going to lose something but not all of it. And we had to get a urologist down. A couple pellets went through a testicle.”