Sudden Prey

by John Sandford

  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?'' LaChaise 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.''

  The deputy sheriff had gotten out of his car, nodded to Sand, as Amy LaChaise handed over her purse. ``Everything okay?'' he asked.

  ``Yeah, sure.'' Sand drifted over to chat with him; La-Chaise wasn't going anywhere.

  AMY LACHAISE PLANTED A DRY LIZARD'S KISS ON HER son's cheek and said, ``They was shot down like dogs.''

  ``I know, Mama,'' LaChaise said. He looked past her to Sandy Darling on the porch, and nodded curtly. To his mother he said, ``They told me about it.''

  ``They was set up,'' Amy said. She made a pecking motion with her nose, as if to emphasize her words. ``That goddamn Duane Cale had something to do with it, 'cause he's just fine, talking like crazy. He'll tell them anything they want. All kinds of lies.''

  ``Yeah, I know,'' LaChaise said. His mother was worried because Candy had given her money from some of the robberies.

  ``Well, what'cha gonna do?'' Amy LaChaise demanded. ``It was your sister and your wife...'' She clutched at his arm, her fingers sharp and grasping, like buckthorn.

  ``I know, Mama,'' LaChaise said. ``But there ain't much I can do right now.'' He lifted his hands so she could see the heavy cuffs.

  ``That's a fine thing,'' Amy LaChaise moaned, still clutching at him. ``You just let it go and lay around your fat happy cell.''

  ``You go on into the chapel,'' LaChaise said, with a harsh snap in his voice. ``I want to take a look at 'em.''

  Amy LaChaise backed away a step. ``Caskets are closed,'' she ventured.

  ``They can open them,'' LaChaise said, grimly.

  Sandy Darling, still on the porch, watched the unhappy reunion, then turned and went inside.

  LOGAN, THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR, WAS A SMALL, BALDING man, with a mustache that would have been tidy if it hadn't appeared moth-eaten. Although he was gray-faced, he had curiously lively, pink hands, which he dry-washed as he talked. ``In a case like this, Mr. LaChaise,'' he said, looking nervously at LaChaise's handcuffs, ``we can't be responsible for the results.''

  ``Open the boxes,'' LaChaise said.

  Logan, worried, cracked the lids and stepped back. Way back. LaChaise stepped up, raised them.

  Candy, his wife.

  She'd been shot several times through the body, out of sight under her burial dress, but one shot had gone almost straight through her nose. The nose had been rebuilt with some kind of putty. Other than that, she looked as sweet as she had the day he first saw her at the Wal-Mart. He looked at her for a full minute, and thought he might have shed a tear; but he didn't.

  Georgie was worse. Georgie had been hit at least three times in the face. While the funeral home had sewed and patched and made up, there was no doubt that something was massively wrong with Georgie's skull. The body in the box looked no more like the living Georgie than did a plastic baby doll.

  His sister.

  He could remember that one good Christmas when they'd had the tree, he was nine or ten, she was three or four, and somebody had given her pajamas with feet in them. `` Feetsies,'' she called them. ``I'm gonna put on my feetsies.'' Must have been twenty-five years gone by, and here she was, witha head like a football. Again he felt the impulse toward tears; again, nothing happened.

  Logan, the funeral director, his face drained of blood, cleared his throat and said, ``Mr. LaChaise?''

  LaChaise nodded. ``You did okay,'' he said, gruffly. ``Where's the preacher?''

  ``He should be here. Any minute.'' Logan's hands flittered gratefully with the compliment, like sparrows at a bird feeder.

  ``I want to wait back here until the funeral starts,'' La-Chaise said. ``I don't wanna talk to my mama no more'n I have to.''

  ``I understand,'' the funeral director said. He did: he'd been dealing with old lady LaChaise since the bodies had been released by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner. ``We'll move Candy and Georgie into the chapel. When Reverend Pyle arrives, I'll step back and notify you.''

  ``That's good,'' LaChaise said. ``You got a Coke machine here somewhere?''

  ``Well, there is a Coke box in the staff area,'' Logan said.

  ``I could use a Coke. I'd buy it.''

  ``No, no, that's fine...''

  LaChaise looked at the escort. ``How about it, Wayne? I'll buy you one.''

  Sand drank fifteen caffeinated Diet Cokes a day and got headaches if he went without. LaChaise knew that. ``Yeah,'' Sand said. ``A Coke would be good.''

  ``Then I'll make the arrangements,'' the funeral director said. ``The Coke box is back through that door.''

  He pointed back through the Peace Room, as the staging area was called, to a door that said, simply, ``Staff.''

  ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STAFF DOOR WAS A storage room full of broken-down shipping cartons for coffins, eight or ten large green awnings, folded, for funerals onrainy days, a forklift and a tool bench. The Coke box was just inside the door, an old-fashioned red top-opening cooler, with a dozen Coke Classic cans and a couple of white Diet Coke cans bathed in five inches of icy water.

  ``Get one of them Diets,'' Sand said, looking down into the water. He was watching his weight. LaChaise dipped into the cooler and got a regular Coke and a Diet, and when he turned back to the escort, Crazy Ansel Butters had stepped quietly out from behind the pile of awnings. He had a.22 pistol and he put it against Sand's head and said, ``Don't fuckin' move.''

  Sand froze
, then looked at LaChaise and said, ``Don't hurt me, Dick.''

  ``Gimme the keys,'' LaChaise said.

  ``You're making a mistake,'' Sand said. His eyes were rolling, and LaChaise thought he might faint.

  ``Give him the keys or you'll be making a mistake,'' Butters said. Butters had a voice like a bastard file skittering down a copper pipe.

  Sand fumbled the keys out of his pocket and LaChaise stuck his hands out. When the cuffs came off, he rubbed his wrists, took the keys from Sand and opened the leg irons. ``That deputy still out by his car?'' he asked Butters.

  ``He was when I come in,'' Butters said. He slipped a Bulldog.44 out of his coat pocket and handed it to LaChaise. ``Here's your 'dog.''

  ``Thanks.'' LaChaise took the gun and stuck it in his belt. ``What're you driving?''

  ``Bill's truck. Around the side.''

  ``Did Mama see you?''

  ``Shit no. Nobody seen me.''

  LaChaise stepped close to the escort, and turned him a bit, and said, ``All right, Wayne, I'm gonna cuff your hands. Now you keep your mouth shut, 'cause if you start hollering beforewe get out of here, we'll have to come back and do something.''

  ``I won't say a thing,'' Sand said, trembling.

  ``You scared?'' LaChaise asked.

  ``Yeah, I am.''

  ``That's good; keep you from doing anything foolish,'' LaChaise said. He snapped the cuffs over Sand's hands, then said, ``Lay down.''

  Sand got down awkwardly, and Butters stepped up behind him and threw a half-dozen turns of packaging tape around his ankles. When he was finished, LaChaise took the roll of tape, knelt with one knee in the middle of Sand's back, and took three more turns around his mouth. When he was finished, LaChaise looked up at Butters and said, ``Borrow me your knife.''

  Sand squirmed under LaChaise's knee as Butters passed a black lock-back knife to LaChaise.

  LaChaise grabbed a handful of Sand's hair and pried his head back and said, ``Shoulda bought me them Big Macs.''

  He bounced Sand's head off the concrete floor once, twice, then said, ``You asshole.'' He pulled his head straight back, leaned to the side so he could see Sand's bulging eyes. ``You know how they cut a pig's throat?''

  ``We gotta move along,'' Butters said. ``We can't fuck around.'' Sand began thrashing and squealing through the tape.

  LaChaise let him go for a minute, enjoying himself, then he cut Sand's throat from one ear to the other. As the purple blood poured out on the concrete, Sand thrashed, and La-Chaise rode him with the knee. The thrashing stopped and Sand's one visible eye began to go opaque.

  ``Gotta go,'' Butters said.

  ``Fuckhead,'' LaChaise said. He dropped Sand's head,wiped the blade on the back of Sand's coat, folded the knife as he stood up and handed it to Butters.

  ``Gonna be hell cleaning up the mess,'' Butters said, looking down at the body. ``I hate to get blood on concrete.''

  ``We'll send them some Lysol,'' LaChaise said. ``Let's roll.''

  ``Lysol don't work,'' Butters said, as they headed for the doors. ``Nothing works. You always got the stain, and it stinks.''

  THEY WENT OUT THE SERVICE DRIVE ON THE BACK OF the funeral home, Butters with his thin peckerwood face and long sandy hair sitting in the driver's seat, while LaChaise sat on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

  When they turned onto the street, LaChaise unfolded a bit and looked over the backseat, through the cab window, through the topper, and out the topper's rear window, down toward the funeral home. The deputy's car was still sitting in the street, unmoving. Nobody knew yet, but they probably didn't have more than a couple of minutes.

  ``Are we going up to the trailer?'' LaChaise asked.

  ``Yeah.''

  ``You been there?''

  ``Yeah. There's electricity for heat and the pump, and a shitter out back. You'll be okay for a day or two, until we get set in the Cities. Martin's down there today, waiting for some furniture to get there.''

  ``You find a cop?''

  ``Yep. Talked to a guy last night, me and Martin did. We got us a cop the name of Andy Stadic. He's hooked up with a dope dealer named Harp. Harp took some pictures, and now we got the pictures.''

  ``Good one.'' They crossed a river with a frozen waterfall, and were out of town. ``How's Martin?''

  ``Like always. But that Elmore is a hinky sonofabitch. We told him we needed a place to stay, me 'n Bill, and I had to back him up against the wall before he said okay on the trailer.''

  ``Fuck him,'' LaChaise said. ``If he knew I was gonna be out there, he'd be peein' his pants.''

  ``Gonna have to keep an eye on Sandy,'' Butters said.

  LaChaise nodded. ``Yeah. She's the dangerous one. We'll want to get out of the trailer soon as we can.''

  Butters looked sideways at him. ``You and Sandy ever...''

  ``No.'' LaChaise grinned. ``Woulda liked to.''

  ``She's a goddamned wrangler,'' Butters agreed.

  Butters drove them through a web of back roads, never hesitating. He'd driven the route a half-dozen times. Forty minutes after killing Sand, they made the trailer, without seeing another car.

  LaChaise said: ``Free.''

  ``Loose, anyway,'' Butters said.

  ``That's close enough,'' LaChaise said. He unconsciously rubbed his wrists where the manacles had been.

  LOGAN, THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR, RAN INTO THE chapel like a small, drunk tailback, knocked down a halfdozen metal folding chairs, staggered, nearly bowled over Amy LaChaise, struggled briefly with the door handle and was gone out the front door.

  Sandy looked at Amy LaChaise across the closed caskets.

  ``What the hell was that?'' Amy asked.

  ``I don't know,'' she said, but she felt suddenly cold.

  Ten seconds later, the cop who'd been parked out front ran in the door with his pistol in a two-handed grip. He pointed the gun at Sandy, then at Amy, then swiveled around the room: ``Hold it. Everybody hold it.''

  ``What?'' Amy asked. She clutched her purse to her chest. Logan peeked out from behind the deputy. ``Mr. LaChaise is gone.''

  Amy screeched, like a crow killing an owl, a sound both pleased and intolerable. ``Praise the Lord.''

  ``Shut up,'' the deputy screamed, pointing the pistol at her. ``Where's the prison guy? Where's the prison guy?''

  Logan poked a finger toward the back. ``In there...''

  ``What's wrong with him?'' Sandy asked.

  The deputy ran through the door into the back, and Logan said, ``Well, he's dead. LaChaise cut his throat.''

  Sandy closed her eyes: ``Oh, no.''

  A HIGHWAY PATROLMAN ARRIVED FIVE MINUTES LATER. Then two more sheriff's deputies. The deputies split Amy LaChaise and Sandy, made them sit apart.

  ``And keep your mouths shut,'' one of the deputies said, a porky man with a name tag that said Graf.

  LaChaise, Sandy thought, was at Elmore's daddy's trailer, out at the hill place. Had to be. That whole story about Martin and Butters needing a place to stay-it sounded like bullshit as soon as Elmore had told her about it.

  But the problem was, she was Candy's sister, LaChaise's sister-in-law. She'd been present when LaChaise had escaped and murdered a man. And now LaChaise was up at a trailer owned by her senile father-in-law.

  She'd seen LaChaise railroaded by the cops for conspiracy to commit murder: they'd do the same to her, and with a lot more evidence.

  Sandy Darling sat and shivered, but not with the cold; sat and tried to figure a way out.

  THE TRAILER WAS A BROKEN-DOWN AIRSTREAM, SITTING on the cold frozen snow like a shot silver bullet. Buttersand LaChaise crunched through the sparse snow on fourwheel drive, then they got out of the truck into the cold and Butters unlocked the trailer. ``I come by this morning and dropped off some groceries and turned on the heat... Can't nobody see you in here, but you might want to keep the light down at night,'' he said. ``You don't have to worry about smoke. Everything's electric and it works. I turned the pump on and filled up the water heater, so you oughta be okay
that way.''

  ``You done really good, Ansel,'' LaChaise said.

  ``I owe you,'' Butters said. And he turned away from the compliment: ``And there's a TV and a radio, but you can only get one channel-sort of-on the TV, and only two stations on the radio, but they're both country.''