Field of Prey

by John Sandford

  WHEN THEY LEFT WEIL, Mattsson said, “Well, that was fun. What’s next?”

  Lucas ran a hand through his hair: he smelled like burnt gunpowder. “You know, I’m running around in circles. All of us BCA guys are running around in circles. What I really need is what I told my boss I was going to do, which is go home and think about it some more. Not talk to anyone, not mow the grass, but sit in a quiet spot and think about it.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I keep trying to do it, and keep getting interrupted,” Lucas said.

  “I’ll call you first thing, if anything happens tonight.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  She leaned back against the door of her truck. “You think it’s a fool’s errand?”

  “Probably,” Lucas said. “The thing is, I could be completely wrong. Having a cop there could keep the Scott family from being murdered. So . . . tell your guy to stay awake.”

  She nodded. “If you think of something, call me.”

  Lucas went home to think.

  14

  Late that same afternoon, R-A was standing behind the counter in the hardware store, while another clerk, Dick, was out in the small engine shop demonstrating a STIHL brushcutter before loading it in the back of a customer’s truck.

  Andy O’Neill, who ran the local carpet store, wandered in, carrying a broken white PVC cap. “Hoped you were still open,” he said. “Run over the goldarn vent pipe for the septic with my lawn mower. You got any caps like this?”

  “Six-inch,” R-A said. “We oughta have a few. You bust the pipe, too?”

  “Just down to ground level. I’m gonna cut the broken part off with a hacksaw, stick the cap on. Never wanted it sticking up like that, anyway.”

  “That oughta work,” R-A said. He took the cap and led O’Neill back to the plumbing section, found the replacement cap. “You need a hacksaw?”

  “Got one,” O’Neill said.

  When he was ringing up the sale, R-A caught O’Neill . . . peering at him.

  “What? I got a hickey on my neck?”

  “No, no,” O’Neill said. He was a tall man, as heavily muscled as R-A. “I been watching that Black Hole investigation thing. This girl over in Zumbrota says some postal clerk did it. They had a picture of him. You look like his brother, or something. You related?”

  “Not unless my mother was doing something I didn’t know about,” R-A chuckled. “They don’t catch that guy, maybe I better grow a beard.”

  “Does look like you,” O’Neill said. He hunted through the candy rack for a moment, found a candy bar. “Give me a Snickers, too. I don’t want it on the same receipt. My old lady looks at receipts.”

  “Know how that goes,” R-A said. Though he didn’t.

  • • •

  R-A WENT HOME IN A STATE: he wheeled Horn out to the living room and said, “Soon’s that sonofabitch thinks about it long enough, he’s gonna mention it to someone. Then it’ll get around town, and the law’s gonna come lookin’ for me.”

  “Not against the law to look like somebody else,” Horn said.

  “But . . . there’s probably other stuff,” R-A said. “Maybe some evidence that we don’t know about, but they’re looking to hang on somebody. Maybe some of that DNA. There was enough of it in Mary Lynn’s pussy, when I put her down the well. If they test me on it, I’m done.”

  “What are you going to do?” Horn asked.

  “Well, I know you got nothing against killing people,” R-A said.

  “Against you killing people. I’m not killing anybody, not in this condition,” Horn said.

  “Well, shit, I don’t exactly have a problem with it, either,” R-A said. “How’m I gonna do it? A gun’s so goddamn loud in the night.”

  “Baseball bat?”

  “Jesus Christ, Horn, this isn’t some drunk blonde,” R-A said. “O’Neill’s a big guy. Carrying rolls of carpet around, he’s probably twice as strong as me. He’d take a baseball bat and stick it up my ass.”

  “Just kiddin’ you,” Horn said. “Think what you got downstairs.”

  R-A thought, then his face brightened. “Your old Ruger.”

  “That’s right. Not a lot of accuracy if you’re shooting more than twenty feet, but if you’re shooting at two inches . . .”

  “Goddamn: I don’t think of you as being a dogcatcher,” R-A said.

  “Neither do I, and I never did. There was a lot more to it—”

  “Okay, okay. I apologize.” R-A rubbed his face. “Even so, they’ll tear the town apart when they find them.”

  “Sure, but what’s worse—them tearing the town apart looking for a gunman, or coming to you directly and asking for a DNA sample?”

  “I dunno, I dunno.”

  “Got away with a .45 right here in town,” Horn said. “O’Neill’s out there on the edge, must have a two-acre lot.”

  “The Ruger. Gotta do it soon,” R-A said. “Tonight. We can’t have him talking to anybody.”

  “Maybe he already has,” Horn said.

  “Nothing we could do about that,” R-A said. “We gotta play it like he hasn’t said anything.”

  There was still light coming through the curtains, and would be for another hour or two. Horn said, “You can’t go out there until after dark. We’ve got time to plan it out.”

  R-A said, “This could be the thing that kills me.”

  “Maybe,” Horn said. “But you had a good run. If you still really don’t want to be caught, I’d think about running up to Alexandria, find yourself a blonde. Maybe even tonight. They won’t believe you’d be in two places in one night.”

  R-A scratched his neck, under his chin, thinking about that. “That’d be one hell of a night,” he said after a few seconds. “I’d have to take O’Neill first, and that’d have to be after dark. Could I get up to Alexandria in time to do any good?”

  “I don’t know. Figure it out.”

  R-A: “Mattsson. Maybe they do get me, but I’m gonna get her first. I swear to God.”

  • • •

  SO THEY PLANNED IT OUT, sitting in the living room. R-A had a few drinks, getting his guts up, and went down to the basement and got Horn’s Ruger Mark II .22 auto. It had a very long barrel, and was poorly balanced. He could live with it.

  “Go up to the door, shoot him, kick the door shut, shoot the old lady,” R-A said, demonstrating the moves to an unnaturally intent Horn. “Gotta remember the part about kicking the door shut. If somebody hears bang! they might let it go. If they hear bang! bang! bang! they’ll be looking out the windows.”

  “There won’t be much of a bang, but there’ll be some,” Horn said. “It won’t sound much like a gun. I never had anybody come out and ask, ‘You shoot something?’”

  “I’ll take it down the basement before I go . . . see what it sounds like.”

  “Don’t go running out the door after you shoot them,” Horn suggested. “If somebody does hear that first bang, and looks around, and they see somebody running, they’ll be looking around for sure.”

  R-A was sitting on the couch and popped the magazine on the Ruger. He was about to push one of the shells out with his thumb and Horn said, “Don’t!”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Those shells are gonna have my prints on them,” Horn said. “I imagine you’d want to keep them on there. And not yours.”

  R-A looked at the magazine. “Yup.” The magazine had a long slot down the side, and R-A counted the shells. “Ten of them. I’m gonna have to shoot one, to make sure it’s still working, that the spring hasn’t gone flat.”

  “You can do that down the basement. There’s another magazine down there, too. It’s not loaded. I’d polish off some shells, then load it up, wearing gloves, of course. Just in case you need to reload.”

  “Good. That’s good,” R-A said. “I’ll do that.” He pointed the gun at Horn’s head, but Horn didn’t bother to flinch. “Gotta remember: jack one in, safety off, one shot, boom, kick the door shut. Jack o
ne in, safety off, one shot, boom, kick the door shut.”

  “Here’s another thing,” Horn said. “Lot of people got those cheap game cameras now. They put them up in trees, set for night hours. You need something to cover your face—a sock or a ski mask, and a hat.”

  “That’s good,” R-A said. “That’s a good idea.”

  “And don’t forget: you need to type up that note.”

  “Getting really fuckin’ complicated,” R-A said.

  “Confusing is what it is,” Horn said. “When it comes to the cops, confusion is your friend.”

  • • •

  BY THE TIME they got it figured out, and R-A had gone down to the basement and fired a round into a hard-foam archery target, and then come back up, and finished typing the note he’d leave by the blonde’s body in Alexandria, red sunlight was streaming in through the low west windows in the parlor. It’d be dark in half an hour.

  “Got to do it,” R-A said.

  • • •

  THE NIGHT was almost always quiet in Holbein. Sometimes the kids would be out in the warm twilight, playing war with apples picked off neighborhood trees, and you’d hear shouting when somebody got ambushed or hit behind the ear with an unripe Haralson; or, if they were a little older, necking in the shadows. Three nights a year, a carnival would be in town, and you could hear it for miles around, and then there was the Fourth of July, which could get loud . . . but otherwise, the nights were slow and quiet, and a banging screen door was as noisy as it got.

  The O’Neill house was right on the edge of town. The house faced neighbors on the other side of the street, but behind it, to the east, it was nothing but corn and soybeans all the way to the Mississippi.

  After thinking it over, and thinking about the long hike he’d made back from Zumbrota, R-A parked almost a mile away, two big cornfields east of the O’Neill house. He’d come up from the back, and if he had to run for it, he could disappear into one of the cornfields and make it back to his truck in ten minutes or so. There was even a place to park, down through a pasture gate behind a screen of ditch weeds.

  At least, that was what he figured out, after driving around for a while. He parked in the pasture and turned his truck lights out, and sat. If the owner of the field came along, he’d have no excuse for being there, so he took along a bottle of bourbon, put it in the backseat. If somebody jumped him, he’d say he’d pulled off where the cops wouldn’t find him, because, well, he was driving drunk.

  Or, he could just kill the guy.

  He’d work that out if it happened.

  He looked out the window, tempted to take a drink. Full dark. He unscrewed the cap on the bourbon, took a hard swallow.

  • • •

  THE FIRST PART of the plan went wrong.

  From the road, R-A could see reasonably well: the moon was probably three-quarters, and the stars were bright. He walked across the narrow pasture to the cornfield—he could see the lights in the back windows of the O’Neills’ house—but as soon as he got in the corn, he couldn’t see anything. Worse, the rows ran in the wrong direction, at right angles to the direction he wanted to walk. After crashing through thirty feet of corn, he made a right turn, walked down the row, climbed the fence at the end of it, crossed the ditch to the road, and started jogging west. The gun was in the game pocket of a hunting shirt, and banged against his butt as he ran.

  He crossed another narrow gravel road, crossed back over the ditch to the cornfield, and in this one, he found, the rows ran in the right direction. He walked along, arms and hands in front of his face so his face wouldn’t get cut by the corn leaves, and after eight or ten minutes, hit the fence behind the O’Neills’ house.

  The trip from the truck had taken almost twenty minutes, far longer than he expected. He’d stick to the road going back, he decided, at least until he saw lights behind him.

  • • •

  THE SECOND PART of the plan went well, at least from R-A’s perspective. The O’Neills didn’t bother to draw a lot of curtains in their house, especially on the sides. After pulling the ski mask over his head, R-A crossed the fence line and moved slowly—he was an experienced hunter—across the backyard, watching especially the house to the left side of the O’Neills’. There were lights over there, but he never saw anybody moving inside.

  The O’Neill kitchen, he decided, was at the back of the house, because Mrs. O’Neill (Lucy? He thought that was right) was standing framed in a small high window. That’d be the window over the kitchen sink, where she was doing dishes. There were lights in the front of the house, and the peculiar blue glow of a television.

  That would be Andy, watching the TV while his wife did dishes. R-A watched and listened; the neighborhood was quiet. More than quiet: it was still. He’d go for the front door, he decided. Take Andy O’Neill first.

  He moved down the side of the house. There was a lit window on the second floor, under a dormer. A bedroom?

  At the corner of the front porch, he knelt, concealed by a clump of arborvitae. Still time to turn back . . . but he couldn’t. Andy was a talker.

  Took a breath. Muttered to himself: jack a shell into the chamber, pistol now cocked, flip the safety off. Check the safety again. Wait some more. Check the safety a third time.

  He took a last look around, and a deep breath, stood up, walked around the corner of the house and up the porch steps. The front entrance had both an inner door and a screen door. He tried the screen door and found it unlocked. He pulled it just slightly open, then rang the doorbell.

  • • •

  O’NEILL CAME to the door with a querulous look, impatient with the interruption, but not quite annoyed. R-A saw him coming and turned away, as though he were looking out across the lawn, but at the same time, kept his left hand on the handle to the screen door. As soon as he heard the door open behind him, and O’Neill saying . . . “Yes . . .” he turned and pulled open the screen door and swung the pistol up. With the muzzle two inches from O’Neill’s forehead he pulled the trigger twice, the gun went whump whump and O’Neill went down.

  Mrs. O’Neill in the kitchen called, “Andy? Andy, what was that? Who’s there?”

  R-A hopped across O’Neill’s body, kicked the door shut, and ran across the living room carpet to the kitchen door and got there just as Mrs. O’Neill stepped into the doorway. He was leading with the muzzle of the gun and whump whump and Mrs. O’Neill went down, but maybe not dead, and he stepped close and fired again, this time with the muzzle one inch from her temple, whump.

  Five shots, four rounds left.

  Then, from upstairs, “Mom? Mom? What was that?”

  R-A turned back to the living room. He’d seen the wide steps going up, over the built-in bookcase, and he ran back through the kitchen door and turned toward the staircase, and saw the girl there, maybe ten years old, staring openmouthed at her father’s body by the door, then she saw him, and quick as a flash, turned and ran back up the stairs.

  R-A was right behind her, slamming up the stairs, around the landing, saw a door closing, locking, kicked it as hard as he could, felt it give, but hold, kicked it again, close to the knob, and it caved, and he kicked it again and was in, but as he went through he heard the window shatter, and inside the door saw the girl at the window about to go out on the porch roof and he fired four times into her back, whump whump whump whump.

  She was terribly hurt, but not dead yet, and rolled over on her back, and looked up at him, her eyes already going hazy, and she asked, “Why?” He leaned forward and tried to fire again, into her forehead, but nothing happened. He looked at the gun: empty magazine. He ejected the empty mag, slapped in a new one, and fired the last shot and the girl’s eyes shuddered and closed.

  She was dead, but the window over the porch was shattered, no way to put that back. He turned off the room light and shut the door, and turned off more lights as he ran back down the stairs.

  He stepped over to Andy O’Neill to make sure he was gone; and he was. And then over
to Mrs. O’Neill. Gone. He turned out all the lights on the first floor, and with the house dark, left by the side entrance. He jogged across the backyard, crossed the fence, catching the crotch of his pants on the top strand of barbed wire. He carefully unhooked it, and ran through the cornfield.

  The night was as silent as ever. Still. He ran on to the far fence line, then out of the field, out to the road, and along the road to the pasture where he’d parked.

  • • •

  BACK AT THE HOUSE, Horn was waiting. “Done?”

  “There were three of them. I didn’t know about the kid, but it wasn’t a problem.”

  “What about the gun?”

  “If they come for me tonight, it’s only because they knew I did it. The gun wouldn’t make much difference . . .”

  “Roger, everything makes a difference,” Horn said. “The gun would be conclusive. You’ve got to get rid of it.”

  “Not yet. Not tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll hide it so they’d never find it,” R-A said. “I’m not going out tonight without it.”

  “If they hang you with it, it’s not my fault,” Horn said.

  They’d worked the whole plan through, but R-A was high on adrenaline and said, “I gotta roll. Gotta roll.”

  “Then roll. But roll slow. You don’t want to get stopped by a cop, with that pistol in the car.” Horn sniffed. “You been drinking?”

  “Not much, a quick jolt.”

  “Go use some mouthwash or toothpaste or whatever you got. You don’t need to get hauled in for drunk driving. You don’t need a cop to remember you.”

  “All right. I’ve got some gum, just for that thing.”

  And Horn said, “Give me one minute before you go. What was it like, up there at the O’Neills’? Had to be good . . .”

  • • •

  R-A HEADED NORTH in his truck. All he had to do was find a blonde out in the open in Alexandria. Choke her out, drop the typewritten note on her chest. If it didn’t work out, it didn’t work out. He had to remember that: if it didn’t work out, it didn’t work out, and he’d turn around and go home. A ten percent risk, that was okay. Maybe a twenty-five percent risk. Anything more than that, turn right around.