Sudden prey ld-8

by John Sandford

  ''That's what the beer's for,'' he said.

  ''As your doctor, I'm saying the beer's not enough,'' she said, snuggling in his lap.

  ''Yeah? What exactly would you prescribe…?''

  THREE

  CRAZY ANSEL BUTTERS WAITED FOR THE RUSH AND when it came, he said, ''Here it comes.''

  Dexter Lamb was lying on the couch, one arm trailing on the floor: he was looking up at the spiderweb pattern of cracks on the pink plaster ceiling, and he said, ''I told you, dude.''

  Lamb's old lady was in the kitchen, staring at the top of the plastic table, her voice low, slow, clogged, coming down: ''Wish I was going… Goddamnit,

  Dexter, where'd you put the bag? I know you got some.''

  Ansel didn't hear her, didn't hear the complaints, the whining. Ansel was flying over a cocaine landscape, all the potentialities in his head-green hills, pretty women, red Mustangs, Labrador retrievers-were compressed into a ball of pleasure. His head lay on his shoulder, his long hair falling to the side, like lines of rain outside a window. Twenty minutes later, the dream was all gone, except for the crack afterburn that would arrive like a sack of Christmas coal.

  But he had a few minutes yet, and he mumbled, ''Dex, I got something to talk about.'' Lamb was working up anotherpipe, stopped, his eyes hazy from too many hits, too many days without sleep. ''What chu want?''

  His wife came out of the back into the kitchen, scratched her crotch through her thin cotton underpants and said, ''Where'd you put the bag, Dex?''

  ''I need to find a guy,'' Ansel said, talking over her. ''It's worth real money.

  A month's worth of smoke. And I need a crib somewhere close. TV, couple beds, like that.''

  ''I can get you the crib,'' Lamb said. He jerked a thumb at his wife. ''My brother-in-law's got some houses, sorta shitty, but you can live in one of them.

  You'd have to buy your own furniture, though. I know where you could get some, real cheap.''

  ''That'd be okay, I guess.''

  Dex finished with the pipe and flicked his Bic, and just before hitting on the mouthpiece, asked, ''Who's this guy you're lookin' for?''

  ''A cop. I'm looking for a cop.''

  Lamb's old lady, eyes big and black, cheeks sunken, a pale white scar, scratched her crotch again and asked, ''What's his name?''

  Butters looked at her. ''That's what I need to know,'' he said.

  BILL MARTIN CAMEDOWN FROM THE UPPER PENINSULA, driving a Ford extended cab with rusted-out fenders and a fat V-8 tuned to perfection. He took the country roads across Wisconsin, stopped at a roadhouse for a beer and a couple of boiled eggs, stopped again for gasoline, talked to a gun dealer in Ashland.

  The countryside was still iced in. Old snow showed the sheen of hard crust through the inky-green pines and bare gray broadleafs. Martin stopped often to get out and tramp around, to peer down from bridges, to check tracks in thesnow.

  He didn't like this winter: there'd been good snow, followed by a sleet storm that covered everything with a quarter-inch of ice. The ice could kill off the grouse, just when the population was finally turning back up.

  He looked for grouse sign, didn't find any. The season was too new for bear sign, but in another six weeks or eight weeks they'd be out, he thought, sleek and quick and powerful. A young male black bear could run down a horse from a standing start. Nothing quite cleared the sinuses like bumping into a big old hungry bear when you were out on snowshoes, armed with nothing but a plastic canteen and a plug of Copenhagen.

  At two o'clock in the afternoon, heading south, he saw a coyote ripping at something in the foot-high yellow grass that broke through the snow beside a creek. Voles, maybe. He pulled the truck over, got out a Bausch and Lomb laser rangefinder and the AR-15. The rangefinder said 305 yards. He figured a nine-inch drop, maybe two inches of right-toleft drift. Using the front fender as a rest, he held a couple of inches over the coyote's shoulder and let go. The . 223 caught the mutt a little low, and it jumped straight up into the air and then came down in a heap, unmoving.

  ''Gotcha,'' Martin muttered, baring his teeth. The shot felt good.

  Martin crossed the St. Croix at Grantsburg, stopped to look at the river-the surface was beaten down with snowmobile trails-then made his way reluctantly out to I-35. The interstate highways were scars across the country, he thought: you couldn't get close enough to see anything. But they were good when you had to move. He paused a final time at an I-35 rest stop just north of the Cities, made a call and then drove the rest of the way in.

  • • •

  BUTTERS WAS WAITING OUTSIDE AN AMOCO STATION off I-94, an olive-drab duffel at his feet. Martin eased to the curb and Butters climbed in and said, ''Straight ahead, back down the ramp.''

  Martin caught the traffic light and said, ''How you been?''

  ''Tired,'' Butters said. His small eyes looked sleepy.

  ''You was tired last fall,'' said Martin. Martin had passed through Tennessee on one of his gun-selling trips, stopped and done some squirrel-hunting with

  Butters.

  ''I'm more tired now,'' Butters said. He looked into the back of the truck.

  ''What'd you bring?''

  ''Three cold pistols, three Chinese AK semis, two modified AR-15s, a bow, a couple dozen arrows and my knife,'' Martin said.

  ''I don't think you'll need the bow,'' Butters said dryly.

  ''It's a comfort to me,'' Martin said. He was a roughmuscled, knob-headed outdoorsman with a dark reddish beard over a red-pocked face. ''Where's this guy we gotta see?''

  ''Over in Minneapolis. Just outa downtown. By the dome.''

  Martin grinned his thin coyote-killing smile: ''You been studying up on him?''

  ''Yeah, I have been.''

  They took I-94 to Minneapolis, got off at the Fifth Street exit, got a pizza downtown, then went back to Eleventh Avenue. Butters directed Martin to a stand-alone two-story brick building with a laundromat on the ground level and apartment above. The building was old, but well-kept: probably a neighborhood mom-and-pop grocery in the forties. Lights showed in the apartment windows.

  ''He owns the laundromat,'' Butters said. ''The upstairs is one big apartment.

  He lives up there with his girlfriend.'' Butters looked up at the lights. ''She must be there now, 'cause he's downtown. He runs his boys right to closingtime.

  He got back here last night about two, and he brought a pizza with him.''

  Martin looked at his watch, a black military-style Chronosport with luminescent hands. ''Got us about an hour, then.'' He looked back out the window at the building. There was just one door going up to the apartments. ''Where's the garage you were talking about?''

  '' 'Round the side. There's a fire escape on the back, one of them drop-down ones, too high to get to. What he did last night was, he pulled into the garage-he's got a garage-door opener in his car-and the door come down. Then, a minute later, this light went on in the back of the apartment, so there must be an inside stairs. Then he come down through the back again, out through the garage, around the corner and into the laundromat. He was in the back, probably countin' out the machines.''

  Martin nodded. ''Huh. Didn't use them front stairs?''

  ''Nope. Could be something goin' on there, so I didn't look.''

  ''All right. We take him at the garage?''

  ''Yeah. And we might as well eat the pizza. We only need the box, and Harp ain't gonna want any.''

  They chatted easily, comfortable in the pickup smells of gasoline, straw, rust and oil. Then Martin, dabbing at his beard with a paper napkin, asked, ''What do you hear from Dick?''

  ''Ain't heard dick from Dick,'' Butters said. He didn't wait for Martin to laugh, because he wouldn't, although Butters had a sense that Martin sometimes enjoyed a little joshing. He said, ''Last time I talked to him direct, he sounded like he was… getting out there.''

  Martin chewed, swallowed and said, ''Nothing wrong with being out there.''

  ''No, there ain't,'' Butters agreed. He was as
far out thereas anyone. ''But if we're gonna be killing cops, we want the guy to have his feet on the ground.''

  ''Why? You planning to walk away from this thing?''

  Butters thought for a minute, then laughed, almost sadly, and shook his head.

  ''I guess not.''

  ''I thought about goin' up to Alaska, moving out in the woods,'' Martin said, after a moment of silence. ''You know, when I got the call. But they'll get you even in Alaska. They'll track you down anywhere. I'm tired of it. I figure, it's time to do something. So when I heard from Dick, I thought I might as well come on down.''

  ''I don't know about that, the politics,'' Butters said. ''But I owe Dick. And I got to pay him now, 'cause I am gettin' awful tired.''

  Martin looked at him for a moment, then said, ''When you're that kind of tired, there ain't no point of being scared of cops. Or anything else.''

  They chewed for another minute and then Butters said, ''True.'' And a moment later said, ''Did I tell you my dog died?''

  ''That'll make a man tired,'' Martin said.

  LIKE THE SEVEN DWARVES, DAYMON HARP WHISTLED while he worked. And while he collected: unlike Snow White and her pals, Harp sold cocaine and speed at the semiwholesale level, supplying a half-dozen reliable retailers who worked the clubs, bars and bowling alleys in Minneapolis and selected suburbs.

  Harp had seven thousand dollars in his coat pocket and he was whistling a minuet from the Anna Magdelena Notebook when he turned the Lincoln onto Eleventh. A pale-haired kid with a pizza box was standing on the corner outside his laundromat, looking up at the apartments. The pizza box was thething that snared him: Harp never thought to look for the delivery car.

  Daymon turned the corner, pushed the button on the automatic garage door opener, saw the kid look down toward him as he pulled in, then killed the engine and got out. The kid was walking down the sidewalk with the pizza box flat on one hand and Daymon thought, If that fucking Jas has gone and ordered out for a pizza when she's up there by herself…

  He was waiting for the kid, when Martin stepped up behind him and pressed a pistol to his ear: ''Back in the garage.''

  Daymon jumped, but controlled it. He held his hands away from his sides and turned back to the garage. ''Take it easy,'' he said. He didn't want the guy excited. He'd had a pistol in his ear before, and when caught in that condition, you definitely want to avoid excitement. He tried an implied threat: ''You know who I am?''

  ''Daymon Harp, a jigaboo drug dealer,'' Martin said, and Harp thought, Uh-oh.

  The kid with the pizza followed them inside, spotted the lighted button for the garage door opener, and pushed it. The door came down and Martin prodded Harp toward the stairs at the back.

  ''Take the position,'' Martin said.

  Harp leaned against the wall, hands and feet spread wide. ''Got no gun,'' he said. He looked sideways at Martin: ''You're not cops.''

  ''We'd be embarrassed if you was lying about the gun,'' Martin said. The younger guy patted him down, found the wad of cash and pulled it out. ''Ooo,'' he said.

  ''Thanks.''

  Harp kept his mouth shut.

  ''This is the deal,'' Martin said, as Butters tucked the money away. ''We need some information from you. Wedon't want to hurt you. We will, if you get stupid, so it's best for you to go along.''

  ''What do you want?'' Daymon asked.

  ''To go upstairs,'' Butters said, in his soft Tennessee accent. Harp looked at him out of the corner of his eye: Butters had three dark-blue tears tattooed at the inner corner of his left eye, and Daymon Harp thought again, Uh-oh.

  THEY CLIMBED THE STAIRS AS A TRIO, AND NOW THE southern boy had a pistol barrel prodding Daymon's spine, while the other focused on his temple. They all tensed while Daymon unlocked the door. A woman called down an interior hall, ''Day?

  That you?''

  Butters left them, padding silently down the hall, while Martin stayed with

  Harp. The woman came around a corner just as Butters got to it and she jumped, shocked, as Butters grabbed her by a wrist and showed her the gun. ''Shut up,''

  Butters said.

  She shut up.

  Five minutes later, Harp and the woman were duct-taped to kitchen chairs. The woman's hands were flat on her thighs, with loops of tape around her upper arms and body. She had a sock stuffed in her mouth, held in place with two or three more wraps of tape. Her terrified dark eyes flicked between Harp and whichever of the white men was in sight.

  Martin and Butters checked the apartment. The landing outside the front door,

  Martin found when he opened it, was blocked by a pile of brown cardboard appliance boxes. The boxes made a practical burglar alarm and buffer, should the cops come, but still provided an escape route if one were needed.

  Butters checked the two bedrooms and found nothing of interest but a collection of vinyl 33-rpm jazz records.

  ''Clear,'' Butters said, coming back to the front room.

  Martin sat down in a third chair and, knee-to-knee with Harp, said, ''You probably know people like us. Met us in the joint. We don't much care for black folks and we'd be happy to cut your throats and be done with it. But we can't, this time, 'cause we need you to introduce us to a friend of yours.''

  ''Who?'' Daymon Harp asked.

  ''The cop you're working with.''

  Harp tried to look surprised. ''There's no cop.''

  ''We know you gotta go through your routine, but we don't have a lot of time,''

  Martin said. ''So to show you our… mmm… sincerity.. .'' He chose his words carefully, softly: ''We're gonna cut on your girlfriend here.''

  ''Motherfucker,'' Harp said, but it wasn't directed at Martin. It was simply an exclamation and Martin took it that way. The woman's eyes bulged and she rattled around in the chair, and Martin let her. Over his shoulder, he said, ''Ansel?

  See if you can find a knife in the kitchen…''

  There was no one standing in the street outside the laundromat, which was a good thing for Butters and Martin, because Harp wouldn't talk right away, and for one short moment, even with the gag, with the windows shut, in the middle of winter, even with that, you could hear Jasmine screaming.

  THE MICHIGAN STATE PRISON SENT A SINGLE ESCORT with Dick LaChaise. LaChaise was four years into a nineyear sentence, and not considered an escape risk-with good behavior, he'd be out in a couple of years. They put him in leg irons and cuffs and LaChaise and Wayne O. Sand, the escort, flew into Eau Claire as the sun was going down, eight days after the shootings in Minneapolis.

  During the flight, Wayne O. Sand read The Last Mammothby Margaret Allan, because he liked that prehistoric shit and magic and all. If he'd lived back then, he thought, he'd probably be a clan chief, or something. He'd be in shape, anyway.

  LaChaise read a tattoo magazine called Skin Art. LaChaise had full sleeves: tattoos running up and down both arms, a comic-book fantasy of superwomen with football-sized tits and lionish hair tangled around his bunched-up weight-room muscles, interspersed with eagles, tigers, knives, a dragon. His arms carried four names: Candy and Georgie on the right, and Harley and Davidson on the left.

  The sleeves had been done on the outside, by commercial tattoo artists. The work on his back and legs was being done on the inside. Prison work, with a sewing needle and ballpoint ink. Though the figures lacked the finish of the commercial jobs, there was a nasty raw power to them that LaChaise liked. An aesthetic judgment.

  When the plane's wheels came down, LaChaise put the magazine away and looked at

  Sand: ''How about a Mc-Donald's? A couple of Big Macs?''

  ''Maybe, you don't fuck me around,'' Sand said, still in the book. Sand was a flabby man, an authoritarian little prison bureaucrat who'd be nice enough one day, and write you up the next, for doing nothing. He enjoyed his power, but wasn't nearly the worst of them. When they landed, Sand marched LaChaise off the plane, and chained him to the seat post in the back of a rental Ford.

  ''How about them McDonald's?'' LaChai
se asked.

  Sand considered for a second, then said, ''Nah. I wanna get a motel 'fore it's too late. There's a game tonight.''

  ''Hey, c'mon…''

  ''Shut up,'' Sand said, with the casual curtness of a prison guard.

  Sand dropped LaChaise at the Eau Claire County Jail for the night. The next morning, he put LaChaise back in the carand drove him through the frozen landscape to the Logan Funeral Home in Colfax. LaChaise's mother was waiting on the porch of the funeral home, along with Sandy Darling, Candy's sister. A sheriff's car was parked in the street, engine running. A deputy sat inside the car, reading a newspaper.

  AMY LACHAISE WAS A ROUND, OILY-FACED COUNTRY woman with suspicious black eyes, close-cropped black hair and a pencil-thin mustache. She wore a black dress with a white collar under a blue nylon parka. A small hat from the 1930s sat nervously atop her head, with a crow's wing of black lace pulled down over her forehead.

  Sandy Darling was her opposite: a small woman, slender, with a square chin and a thin, windburned face. Crow's-feet showed at the corners of her eyes, though she was only twenty-nine, four years younger than her sister, Candy. Like Candy, she was blond, but her hair was cut short, and she wore simple seed-pearl earrings.

  And while Candy had that pure Wisconsin milkmaid complexion, Sandy showed a scattering of freckles over her windburned nose and forehead. She wore a black wool coat over a long black dress, tight black leather gloves and fancy black cowboy boots with sterling silver toe guards. She carried a white cowboy hat.

  When the rental car pulled up, Amy LaChaise started down the walk. Sandy Darling stayed on the porch, turning the cowboy hat in her hands. Wayne O. Sand popped the padlock on the seat-chain, got out, stood between Amy LaChaise and the car door and opened the door for LaChaise.

  ''That's my ma,'' LaChaise said to Sand, as he got out. LaChaise was a tall man, with heavy shoulders and deep-set black eyes, long hair and a beard over hollowed cheeks. He had fingers that were as thick and tough as hickory sticks.

  With a robe, he might have played the Prophet Jeremiah.

  ''Okay,'' Sand said. To Amy LaChaise: ''I'll have to hold your purse.''