Field of Prey

by John Sandford

  • • •

  THE PLANE WAS BIG, white and shiny with comfortable seats and a bathroom twice as large as those on commercial airliners. Twenty minutes after the pilots arrived, the jet powered off the runway and they were gone in the dark.

  A moment after they took off, Lucas’s cell phone rang. The governor again:

  “Are you in the air?”

  “Just left.”

  “Del’s at the University Medical Center of El Paso. It’s a Level 1 trauma center, so that’s where you’d want him. They’re operating on him now. Our information is that he was hit three times, two of the wounds, you know, serious but not life-threatening, but the third one, the third one was bad. That’s all I could get. There’ll be a limo waiting for you at the FBO in El Paso.”

  “Governor, I can’t tell you—”

  “Yeah, don’t. You guys are about half of my entertainment. I’d hate to lose one of you.”

  • • •

  THE COPILOT came back as Lucas was ending the call, to fill him in on the flight plan, and said, “You can use your cell phone, but I gotta tell you, we’re not going to cross any big metro areas going down there. You might get good links when we’re crossing the freeways, but reception is going to be spotty. If you need to make any calls, you better make them now.”

  • • •

  THE FLIGHT took a little less than four hours, Letty and Cheryl sitting across a narrow aisle from each other, talking quietly. Cheryl broke down twice, sobbing, and she told Letty that as a nurse, she’d seen a lot of gunshot wounds, and that none of them were good. “They just tear you up. They tear your insides to pieces. Oh, God, I hope his spine . . . I hope . . .”

  Lucas looked out the window at nothing. The shooters, as far as he could tell, were the same old folks that he and Del had joked about since the investigation had begun. Old, doddering, seventy-plus senior citizens. They’d been laughing about the possibility that they were involved in wife-swapping orgies, about getting their false teeth mixed up in their various glasses in that four-way twist-up, laughing.

  Laughing, because the suspects were old and wrinkled. They’d overlooked the relevant facts. They were old, but they weren’t feeble. They were gunrunners and coke dealers, working with some of the most vicious people in North America. There was more to them than age, and he and Del hadn’t paid proper attention to that.

  At some point, one of the pilots said, “We’re about a third of the way down there, folks. Glen and I grabbed a bunch of sandwiches at a Jimmy John’s, and there’s some water and Pepsi.”

  • • •

  THEY ALL ATE SUBS and drank Pepsi, and then Lucas got another call, this one from an ATF agent named Miguel Colson.

  “We’ve been talking with your governor, and he asked us to call you directly, to fill you in with what we know.”

  “Appreciate it,” Lucas said.

  “We were all over these old guys. We watched them unload two bundles of rifles the day before yesterday, and we were covering those. We’ve got those nailed down. We’d also heard that all the rest were going out in one batch, with the payment in cocaine, so we decided that instead of an early bust, we’d go for the big one. Del agreed.”

  “He would,” Lucas said.

  “Yeah. The meet was out north of El Paso, up in New Mexico. We had precise information on the location, from our bugs, and got out there early. We were all set up, six guys on the ground, eight more trailing in vehicles. Del and Carl were on the ground, on foot, down an arroyo that ran through the meeting site—this was really out in the sticks. Anyway, the buyers showed up, these were a couple of unknowns, but the sellers knew them pretty well, it was all first-name stuff.

  “The buyers were driving a Land Rover, so they were prosperous. Anglos. They pulled in, we were monitoring, and there was some talk, and the buyers were looking at the guns, and the sellers were checking the cocaine, and then they were all, ‘See you next time.’ We pulled the trigger, we were all over them, SWAT gear, helmets, lights, everything, and the old motherfuckers in the RV ran for it. I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it. They left the buyers standing there with their dicks in their hands, and took off down this arroyo, and Del and Carl showed themselves and these guys opened up with M-16s, full auto, mostly missing everything because the RV was falling apart, smashing down that riverbed, but they hit Del and Carl, Del and Carl were right there—”

  Lucas cut him off: “How bad’s Del?”

  “He’s pretty bad, man. Took one in the guts. He was hit in the arm and leg, not so bad. Carl’s dead. Carl’s gone.” Colson sounded frantic with grief and anger. “We had them both down at Thomason in like fifteen minutes, didn’t wait for the ambulance to get there, threw them in a truck and took off.”

  “We heard an ambulance,” Lucas said.

  “Yeah. We met up eight or ten miles south down the road, transferred them. . . . I think Del would have died if we’d waited. Carl did, Carl’s gone, man.”

  “What happened to the shooters?” Lucas asked.

  “They’re dead. All of them. We think we hit two of them right after they opened up, just hosing down the RV, but they got a ways down that arroyo, don’t know where they were trying to get to, but they went over this ledge-like thing and got hung up, and then kept grinding away until the tires caught fire. Then we think one of the old guys went through the RV and shot two of the old people, who were wounded, then shot his wife, and then ate his gun.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “No, he wasn’t there,” Colson said.

  “So what do you think? We’re in the air, with Del’s wife.”

  After a moment, Colson said, “The docs here are supposed to be really good. I don’t know. Fifty-fifty? I don’t know.”

  “We’re coming,” Lucas said.

  After a long silence, Colson said, “They were old people.”

  • • •

  THEY FLEW INTO El Paso International, and the limo was waiting, just as the governor said it would be. The pilots would check in to a local motel, and said they’d be available as long as they were needed, and as long as Lucas would pay them. He said, “No problem,” and got in the car.

  “Please, please don’t let him be dead,” Cheryl said, as they rolled across town. “Don’t let him be crippled.”

  Lucas had been in far too many emergency rooms in his life, and a couple of times, the emergency was him. He’d gotten to dislike the odor of the places, like the back rooms of a butcher shop, with an overlay of alcohol.

  Two big guys were standing inside the door and Lucas read them as federal. When Lucas, Letty, and Cheryl came in, they turned suddenly, like they might need their guns, and Lucas said, “Minnesota—Del’s wife, I’m Davenport, with the BCA.”

  One of the guys was Colson. He was as tall as Lucas and thicker, with brown hair worn longer than most cops’, and a tight bristly mustache; he looked like a Texas rancher on a TV show. He shook Lucas’s hand and introduced the other man, John Sanchez, also ATF.

  With the introductions done, Colson stepped up to Cheryl and put his arm around her shoulders and said, “Del’s gonna make it. You gotta believe that.”

  “Where is he?” She’d been alternately calm and frantic during the plane ride, and in the car, but now, in the familiar zone of a hospital, she pulled it together.

  “He’s still in the OR, but one of the docs came out a while ago and said they’re closing him up.”

  “Let’s go. . . . Where’s the surgical waiting area?”

  “This way . . .”

  • • •

  THEY WAITED for nearly an hour, sitting around looking at old magazines, with Colson and Sanchez filling Lucas in on the firefight. They’d both been there, in vehicles.

  “I’ll tell you,” Sanchez said, at the end, “what Carl and Del did looks stupid, not that I wouldn’t have done the same thing. There was no reason to shoot anyone. There was no way to get away, no point in running. They more or less showed themselves to flag these ol
d people down, you know, let them know that running wasn’t an option. Carl was hit in the head, and was gone. Del got sprayed from the other side of the RV, down lower. He was lucky because he was wearing a vest with heavy plates, we insisted on that. The plates stopped three rounds that would have killed him for sure, but his arms and legs weren’t protected, and when he tried to stop them he had his hand over his head and that apparently pulled the vest up. The slug that did the most damage clipped the bottom edge of the vest, punched through the nylon and into his lower stomach.”

  Colson looked at his watch: “Carl’s wife, Jennie, is coming up from San Antonio by car. There were no commercial planes and it looked like a private deal would take a long time to set up, so we called the state guys and she’s on her way with a bunch of state troopers doing a relay. It’s usually a seven-hour ride, but the troopers say they’ll have her here in five. It’s been five now.”

  “Mmm, where is he? Carl?” Lucas asked.

  “He’s here. They’ve got a temporary morgue in the hospital,” Colson said. “The medical examiner’s right around the corner.”

  “I’d just as soon not be here when Jennie shows up,” Sanchez said. “But I got no choice.”

  • • •

  LUCAS PROMPTED THEM for the rest of the firefight:

  After the people in the RV opened up with the full-auto weaponry, the ATF guys opened up on the RV, and the four people inside were all eventually killed, one way or another, but Del and Carl Lanning were already down.

  Colson and Sanchez kept going back and forth about what had happened and how it had happened and why, and Lucas finally said, “You didn’t do anything wrong: this shit just happens. Just like a couple patrol cops get a call about a possible store robbery, and they roll on it, and it turns out to be three ex-army guys with M-16s, when they were expecting a gangbanger with a piece-of-shit .22.”

  They both said, “Yeah, yeah,” and went right back to who, what, why, and how.

  Lucas knew exactly why they did that, because he’d done the same thing.

  • • •

  AT FOUR-THIRTY, Sanchez got a call, listened for a second, then said to Colson, “Jennie’s here.” They left. Cheryl said, “This is so awful. I feel like I oughta go down and say something, but I can’t, because my man’s still alive, and she’d be thinking, Why’s her man still alive, and mine’s dead? I don’t think I could handle that very well.”

  Letty patted her on the arm: “Maybe later. Maybe we’ll see her after we talk to Del.”

  • • •

  AT FIVE O’CLOCK in the morning, a tall, solemn surgeon came out of the OR and walked down toward them, still in his operating gown, with a small splash of blood at just about the belly button, and said, “I could use a cigarette.”

  Everybody was standing, and he looked at them and said, “He’s closed up, he’s breathing, he’s got no more leaks that we can see, and he’s got blood. There are numerous possibilities on the downside: stroke and blood clots, but the slug didn’t hit much bone, so we’re better off there, not a lot of fat punched into the bloodstream. He lost a chunk of his liver, but he’s got most of it left.”

  “He’s going to make it,” Lucas said.

  The doc said, “I can’t make that promise, but he’s seventy-thirty. Two-to-one he makes it. He’s in good shape, and that helps. They got him here in a hurry, and that not only saved his life up front, but makes the recovery that much more likely.”

  Cheryl, whose hands were clenched in front of her, began sobbing, and Colson said, “This is his wife.”

  The surgeon tipped his head and then said, “I’m sorry. I would have been more diplomatic if I’d known. I was told his wife was in Minnesota.”

  She said, “That’s fine. I’m a surgical nurse, I listen to docs all day. But I just, I just, I just . . .”

  Lucas gave her a squeeze. “Don’t worry, they got it covered. They got it covered.”

  • • •

  LUCAS WILLED HIMSELF to believe. An hour after they talked to the doctor, they briefly saw Del as he was wheeled unconscious to the Critical Care Unit. He would not be awake until mid-morning, they were told; they should get some sleep.

  Lucas got them rooms at a Hyatt near the airport. The limo had gone, so they took a cab over. Cheryl nearly fell asleep in the cab: some of the stress backing off. They checked in, Lucas said good night to the two women, and they all crashed.

  20

  Finding really big spuds is getting harder and harder,” Horn said. “That’s a good one, though.”

  “You know what you can find?” R-A asked, as he carved the baking potato on the kitchen counter. “You got those big red sweet potatoes. The only thing is, they’re harder than regular potatoes. Be like hitting somebody with bare knuckles.”

  “Could try it sometime, if the cops don’t get you first,” Horn said. Horn was looking a lot better, like he’d looked eleven or twelve years earlier, when he was alive. R-A was beginning to regret not getting rid of the body years before.

  R-A finished carving, dried the potato with a paper towel, looked at it, said, “Close enough, I think.” He picked up a thin plastic glove, the kind food handlers wear, pulled it on, and slipped his four fingers into the holes through the potato, with his thumb wrapped around the bottom.

  The fit was too tight, and he pulled the potato off his hand, did a little more whittling between the fourth and fifth finger holes, and tried again. This time, the fit was right: like a pair of brass knuckles, but made out of a big Idaho baking potato.

  “This should put her down,” he said.

  • • •

  WHEN GOING AFTER WOMEN in the past, they’d tried several methods. The postal bag had worked well the first four times, but the fifth, with Heather Jorgenson, had been a disaster. They decided that in the future, the woman’s hands, feet, and mouth had to be securely taped. To do that, they had to be taken down in a hurry.

  Their first thought had been chloroform or ether. Chloroform had been almost impossible to get without leaving a trail. Ether was tough to get, too, according to all the available sources at the time. Then they found out about John Deere diesel starting fluid, which is almost pure ether, and which they carried in the store. They’d turn the can upside down, punch a hole in the bottom with a nail to release the spray propellant, and then pour the ether into a bottle. And there you were.

  One problem: induction was really slow. You could grab a woman, pull a bag over her head, with a rag inside, soaking wet with ether, and it might not knock her out for good for five minutes. She’d be screaming her head off all that time. Then, when she woke up, she’d be puking all over everything. Worse, you stank of ether. If you were pulled over by a cop, you’d be doing the stupid human tricks in one minute—and if the cop looked in the car, you’d either have to kill him, or hang.

  So ether and chloroform were out.

  Then R-A read somewhere about sapping people with potatoes. Usually, it’d be a potato in a sock, but after practicing with it for a bit, the method turned out to be unreliable. Better to fit the potato on your hand, punch them right in the mouth. They’d go down for the count, and by the time they were reoriented, they’d be trussed up like a Christmas turkey.

  Quick, efficient, effective—and the potato would go out the truck window, to be run over by the regular traffic.

  • • •

  THE HARDEST PART of his investigation had been finding out where Mattsson actually lived. R-A could find a name, but not an address, on the Internet. She wasn’t listed in the county property tax records, which meant she was renting somewhere. He mentioned to a clerk at the store that he was looking for an old friend that he’d lost touch with, and the clerk suggested the court records for lawsuits and such.

  That sounded smart, so R-A ran into Red Wing and found her in the court records: a divorce. The papers were being served to a downtown address, and when he went to look at it, found a storefront, with a locked door and a staircase off to one side
. The mailbox said C. Mattsson. He took a look at the lock; he knew locks, because he sold them.

  The lock was old, and not very good. Even better, the door had a glass panel, and if he could cut through the glass, he could slip his hand inside and unlock the door.

  On the way back home, he stopped at Walmart and bought a pay-as-you-go cell phone, for cash. A burner, the dopers called them.

  What else? He’d be climbing that stairs in the dark, and if he was wearing his usual boots, she might hear him coming. He had a cozy pair of moccasins for wearing around the house in winter. They oughta work.

  • • •

  “YOU BETTER MOVE FAST,” Horn said, as sun spun down in a clear blue sky, and the night began coming up. They were sitting in the living room, looking out over the lawn. “You don’t have many days left, before they come in here.”

  “I can get away with it,” R-A said.

  Horn made a farting noise. “You got no chance. Fuck her while you can. Take a gun with you.”

  “If I have to use a gun, I’m probably cooked anyway,” R-A said.

  “The gun’s for you,” Horn said. “Gives you a choice.”

  R-A rattled the ice cubes in his glass, and thought about it.

  • • •

  THERE WAS A BAR in Red Wing called The Blue Ox, two blocks from Mattsson’s place, and that was where R-A set up. He got there at ten-thirty, nervous as a hen in a weasel house, and drank beer. Not too much beer, but some, maybe a six-pack spread over two and a half hours.

  Every half hour or so, he’d tell the bartender to watch his stool, he had to pee. He’d stop at the men’s room, then go out the back door, walk down a block, and check the lights in Mattsson’s apartment.

  An SUV was parked out front, and he assumed it was hers—there weren’t any garages around, and no other cars parked within a couple hundred feet. If she came out the door and he punched her, and then there was a guy behind her, an unknown lover . . . maybe another cop with a gun . . .