Wicked Prey

by John Sandford

  Lucas, Shrake, and Larkin jogged toward the white limestone structure at the other end of the block, Larkin and Shrake chatting now, Lucas feeling that they just didn't believe, but he felt the impatience pushing him, a hand in his back, and halfway up the block he stepped up the pace. The St. Andrews was a new hotel, less than four years old, but modeled on the St. Paul, with a similar rose garden in the front. A Toyota Sienna was parked in the drive. Lucas detoured around the garden, leading the other two by fifteen feet as he came up to the double front doors.

  The lights were down in the hotel lobby; he could see lots of marble, plush red carpet, wood paneling, and gold paint. To one side, a single woman stood behind the check-in desk, doing nothing, and Lucas felt a tingle.

  Shrake and Larkin came up and Lucas said, "She looks like a fuckin' cigar store Indian. Get your hands on your guns ' ready…"

  They went in all at once, Lucas at the point, and six feet inside the doors, Lucas saw a second woman, this one in a gray suit with an odd face, something wrong here, and he dropped his gun hand to his side and suddenly the woman behind the desk dropped out of sight and the suit-woman lifted her hand and at the same time screamed, "Cops," and opened fire, flashes like firecrackers on the Fourth of July, and Lucas went down and rolled right and windows shattered and furniture exploded; he heard somebody screaming and he kept rolling and rolling and then somebody opened up with a machine gun '

  Chapter 25

  Cruz recognized the big dark-haired cop as soon as he came through the door-recognized him from the press conference. Didn't know how they'd broken it down, but here they were. She saw Ann hit the floor and she screamed, "Cops," and pulled the little pistol and opened fire. She wasn't a good shot, and hardly knew what she was doing, but bullets are bullets and she put as many as she had in the air, the cops scattered and then Lane was there, his mask still up his face, with the Uzi, and he burned through a clip and then Cohn was there, shouting at them, and they broke toward the back of the building, and Cruz registered the fact that Lane was carrying the tool bag: now the jewel bag.

  They turned a corner in the hallway and at the far end of the hall, a cop was crouching in the doorway, and hesitated, and Lane fired a one-handed burst at him and the cop went backward-Cruz had the impression that he was scrambling, not hurt-into the street, and they ran down the hall and now Cohn was firing backward, back where the original cops were from, and they reached the stairway to the skyway.

  ***

  Lucas rolled and rolled and the couches and the chairs in the big reception area were useless as cover and so he kept scrambling and the bullets coming in were way too high. Then stopped. In the sudden silence, he heard Shrake screaming at him, "They're moving, they're moving."

  The only place they could move to would be down the hall behind them and Lucas had rolled far enough to the side that he was out of their line of fire, and he rolled to his feet and let his.45 lead him toward the hallway. From the mouth of the hallway he peeked down its length, saw nothing, and then Shrake was coming up from the side and Lucas shouted, "How bad are you hit?" and Shrake shouted, "I'm okay," and Lucas shouted, "You've got blood running down your face," and Shrake brushed at it and said, "I'm okay, it's glass, a glass cut." Lucas shouted, "What about Larkin?" and Shrake shouted back, "He's okay, he's got some glass cuts, he's okay, he's trying to get people into the skyway."

  Lucas shouted, "I'm going down the hall," and Shrake shouted, "Go," and Lucas went, saw the stunned face of the clerk behind the reception desk, saw the shambles of the strong room through the door, passed it, did a peek at the corner and saw a tall man in a dark suit all the way at the end of a long hall, at the foot of a red-carpeted stairs, and the man saw him and fired three or four shots that zinged off the wall, and Lucas was about to peek again when a man called to him from a side room, "Help us, we've got a dead man here," and

  Lucas saw a dry country face close to the floor, a man on his hands and knees under a gold plaque that said "Nondenominational Chapel," and he said, "Help's coming," and he did another peek, saw a clear hallway, and launched himself into it.

  Shrake came up and shouted, "Where'd they go?" and Lucas shouted back, "Up the stairs." He stepped into the hallway and there were two quick gunshots from the open ground-level door and two bullets smashed plaster off a pilaster next to his head and he went down and somebody from the doorway shouted, "Police!" and Shrake screamed, "Hey-hey-hey-hey we're police, police here, for Christ's sakes," and then Larkin came up and waved his hat around the corner, and then out with his hands up, and they heard more shouting outside.

  A uniformed cop came in, his face white and scared, clutching his gun like a hammer, and he shouted, "You got them?"

  Lucas shouted back, "They went up, they're in the skyway," and they heard another gust of shots from up above, and Lucas and Shrake ran up the stairs, following their pistols.

  ***

  Cohn, Cruz, and Lane made the top of the stairs, breathing hard, paused in a niche of a wall. Lane slapped another magazine into his Uzi and Cohn asked Cruz, "Where'd they come from?" and she said, "I don't know-but it's the same guy we saw on television. The big dark-haired guy."

  "Okay." Cohn looked both ways. "We got a fifty-yard run to the parking garage. If they're in the garage, we go down the side stairs and out the side and go for the street car."

  "They won't let any cars out of the garage," Cruz said. "I think we gotta go for the street car. Right into the ramp, then down the stairs. That'll bring us out on…"

  "We know. Let's go."

  They ran then, sprinting, Lane still carrying the bag, but he heard clinking sounds as he went, and looked back and saw a trail of gold bars, like Hansel's bread crumbs '

  They ran through the glass tunnel of the skyway, across a street; as they were coming to the entrance, a cop opened the door and stepped into the skyway, saw them, ducked back as Lane let loose another volley with the Uzi, and then they were at the entrance and they could hear the cop running down the stairs that led to the street-the stairs they were going to take.

  "We go down the entrance ramp, the car ramp," Cruz gasped out.

  They were at the ramp when the big dark-haired cop popped through the door behind them, fired a shot, and Cruz felt it hit her in the small of the back, felt a ripping wound at her stomach, and she went down and gurgled, "I'm hit'"

  Lane fired a burst from the Uzi over her head, and then ran on down the ramp. Cohn was ahead of her, fifteen feet away and lower, already going down the ramp, and she saw him lift his gun, thought he was shooting at the cop. She never saw the muzzle flash.

  Cohn shot her in the forehead and followed Lane down the ramp.

  ***

  Wherever they were, they'd left the skyway-Lucas and Shrake could see sixty or seventy yards of it, and it was empty. "Parking garage," Lucas said. Shrake shouted at Larkin, who was coming up behind with his radio: "They're in the parking garage, the Clayton Ramp, get your guys outside…"

  "There's gold bars," Larkin gasped. "There's little gold bars all over the place…"

  Lucas ran toward the door, waited until Shrake caught him, then Shrake yanked the door and Lucas, ready to fire, saw the three of them just disappearing down the parking ramp and fired once, twice, and saw one of them go down. Another one opened with the Uzi and they both dodged back into the hall, behind the concrete blocks, and the slugs banged off the door and went God-knows-where, but neither one of them was hurt.

  "I think I hit one," Lucas grunted. "They're running down the entrance ramp."

  Shrake nodded and peeked around the door. "They're gone. You ready?"

  "Let's go."

  Using cars as cover, they made it to the mouth of the down-spiral as quickly as they could, found the woman lying on her back, dead, blank-eyed, a long brown wig lying beside her head, and a pistol lying by her hands. She'd been hit twice, once in the midsection, once in the forehead. "I only hit her once," Lucas said. "They're killing their own."

  "Not
leaving anybody behind to make a deal," Shrake said. "You ready?"

  ***

  At the bottom of the ramp, Cohn and Lane could see two exits- one said "Monthly Parking" and the other "Daily Parking," going in opposite directions. "Which way?" Lane asked.

  "I don't know. We weren't supposed to come this way," Cohn said.

  Lane said, "I'm down to my last clip. I'm going that way." He gestured at the monthly parking exit.

  "I don't think that's right," Cohn said. "Ah, Jesus. I don't think that's right. I think it's out the other side."

  "Well, I'm going this way," Lane said.

  Cohn nodded. "I'm going the other way. If you make it, if I make it, I'll see you at the farm."

  "See you there," Lane said, and he ran off toward the monthly parking with the jewel bag over his shoulder. The thought crossed Cohn's mind that he should shoot him, and take the bag; but he was too tired. Instead, he pushed himself up, shook his head, and headed toward the daily parking exit. There, he came up to a concrete pillar and looked out on the street; parked cars, but he didn't see the street car. Could he have been wrong? They'd come down the spiral'

  He looked back, and heard footfalls coming down the ramp. Had to make a move.

  He sprinted across the street, heard somebody shouting, saw two cops running after him, forty yards back, and he turned and fired two quick shots and broke out on the open street and looked around.

  Wrong place. He was going the wrong way. Lane had been right. Almost made him laugh.

  Instead of laughing, he sprinted hopelessly toward an ornate old building across the street that showed the mouth of an alley or intersecting street. One of the cops shot at him and he heard the round go by, close, but no cigar.

  He turned down the street and up ahead, saw two more cops, fat guys, big fat guys. They were looking at him, bracing themselves, but didn't seem to have their guns out. He waved at them, shouted, "Help, help, gun, gun," and the cops looked past him for a moment and he closed to thirty feet and then one of them shouted, "Stop right there, stop…"

  He realized then that they were not fat, they were armored. He lifted his gun and fired three times, fast, as he closed on them, the last from only a few feet, aiming low, at their exposed legs, and one of them screamed and went down and then he was past them.

  The other cop fired at him and missed, and fired again and missed, and he was almost at the mouth of the street and a third shot missed and he turned the corner and forty feet away, two more cops, large guys, the guys from the hotel, he thought, and he said to them, "Shit!" and fired and the last thing he saw was the flash from the muzzle of one of their guns.

  ***

  Lucas crouched over him. "He's gone. Was there another one?"

  "I think so. I don't know where."

  Shrake had fired the shot that killed Cohn; now he looked at the body and said, "Piece of shit."

  "I better go back; you stay with this guy," Lucas said. An armored cop came around and shouted, "Police officer," and Lucas shouted back, "We're cops, we're police. You okay?"

  "Got a guy hit bad, hit bad," the cop shouted. "He's hit bad…"

  Lucas told Shrake, "Go see, get an ambulance started if this guy hasn't, I'm going back ' You okay?"

  "I'm good," Shrake said.

  "Hang in there," Lucas said.

  He turned and ran back the way they'd come, heading for the parking ramp. They'd come out on a diagonal street, and had gotten ahead of Cohn that way. Now he ran back on the same diagonal, into a cluster of cops spread around the ramp. They saw him coming, some turned toward him, but he could hear people shouting his name and he shouted back.

  Larkin, the St. Paul sergeant, was there, and asked, "What happened?"

  "We got two dead, the woman and Cohn," Lucas said; he reloaded. "We got one cop shot, I don't know who or what department, he was one of the control guys for the convention, got an ambulance started; what about here? Anybody hurt?"

  Larkin's face was covered with blood from his facial and scalp cuts. "Not except for me getting nicked up. One guy got the shit scared out of him, he almost ran right into that fuckin' machine gun, but he made it out."

  "That's the guy we're looking for. I'm not absolutely sure there were three, but I'm almost sure."

  Larkin said, "There were. The clerk in the hotel says one guy held people in the chapel, as they came in. That was Cohn, I think. One guy drilled boxes and the woman watched the desk. They killed a guy in the hotel. Cold blood. Did it to prove that they'd do it."

  "Ah, Jesus."

  "Yeah."

  "So what've we got around this garage?" Lucas asked.

  "We're sealing it off now, for two blocks in every direction. Skyways, alleys, streets. We're checking everything that moves, getting ready for a sweep. We can have five hundred cops here in two hours. If we can make him hide, we'll get him."

  "If he exists," Lucas said. "Let's start with the parking garage. Look under every car, don't let anybody out. Remember, the guy's got a machine gun."

  ***

  Lane had grown up in the countryside, had followed twisted-up creeks for miles down to the river, had navigated mile-long cornfields with the corn so high that you couldn't see beyond your hands. He didn't get turned around easily, and he'd been pretty sure he was right about the exit; and hadn't been unhappy that Cohn had disagreed. If Cohn ran into the cops '

  Lane made it out of the garage, looked around, and dashed up the street, beginning to hope, now, that he might again see his wife and daughters. He spotted the street car, groped and found the emergency key under the bumper, opened the car, threw the jewel bag in, slid into the seat, jabbed the key at the ignition a couple of times before getting it in, and he was rolling.

  He turned at the first block, saw no cops, accelerated, turned again, saw a couple of cops standing on a street corner, cruised by them without looking, turned again, and was now on a major street.

  In fact, he knew exactly where he was. He'd both walked and driven it, when he was scouting the hotel. He peeled off his gloves, let himself relax just a notch. If he went straight, he'd go down in a valley, then up a bridge above some railroad tracks, and if he made a right turn at the end of the bridge '

  He wouldn't hit another streetlight until he got to Chicago.

  That was almost halfway home.

  Chapter 26

  On Sunday, Weather slept in, until 7:30. Lucas usually got up with her, but this day, after the long week, he groaned and sat up, and Weather looked at him and patted him on the head and said, "Go back to sleep. You deserve it."

  He dropped back on his pillow and was gone. When he finally did get up, a few minutes before nine o'clock, the house was unnaturally silent. He showered and shaved, put on fresh jeans-ironed, he thought, but not dry-cleaned-and wandered out to the kitchen in his stocking feet, carrying his shoes.

  The place was empty, but a note dangled from the middle of the kitchen doorway, on the end of a strip of Scotch tape.

  8:45. Gone to bakery wst Ellen@ingSam. Letty still asleep. Back in hour -W.

  ***

  He yawned, stretched, put a teaspoon of instant coffee in a cup, filled it with water and stuck it in the microwave, got a box of Honey Nut Cheerios from the cupboard and a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, carried it to the breakfast nook and went back to get the coffee when the microwave beeped.

  As he took it out, Letty appeared, clutching her bathrobe, her hair a blond tangle, her eyes still sleepy; she was wearing bunny-rabbit slippers.

  "Got more coffee?"

  "This is instant."

  "Okay…" She shuffled over to the counter and got down a cup, and repeated Lucas's ritual with the Folgers, complete with the yawn and stretch.

  "Finish that Mockingbird essay?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah."

  She carried the coffee over to the table. "Is it any good?" he asked.

  "I don't want to talk about that," she said. "I need to talk to you about something when Mom isn't here."


  Lucas looked at her for a second, then said, "I don't keep much from your mom."

  "You might keep this," she said. "It's for her own good."

  "So ' what?"

  She took a sip of coffee and then said, "I didn't tell you the truth about the other night, with Juliet."

  Lucas looked at her over his cup. "So what's the truth?"

  "I was there-I just got there-when they came out of the house. Randy was yelling at Juliet and Ranch to "get me." Juliet didn't push him, and he slashed her with that stick, and then she took him over the edge. I heard the cop car coming, freaked out, and took off on my bike. I didn't want Mom to know, because it might scare her."

  Lucas sighed. "Ah, jeez ' But Briar said she hadn't seen you."

  "I taught her how to lie," Letty said. "So she could deal with Randy."

  "Letty'"

  "That's not all'"

  She told him about setting up Briar to get beaten. "I knew it'd happen sooner or later-probably lots of times. I thought if I could get it to happen while I was there, I could call the cops, and they could get there, and Randy'd go back to prison. I didn't know they'd rape her."

  Lucas looked at her for a bit, shook his head, poured some Cheerios.

  Letty said, "I thought I better say something before, you know, tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow?" He was confused.

  "You know-the court thing."

  "What does that have to do with this?"

  She took another sip, then said, "You know-in case you wanted to change your mind."

  "Aw, for Christ's sake, Letty. We're not going to change our minds. What're you thinking about?"

  He actually saw her come unknotted: "I was a little worried," she said.

  "I'm a little worried, too," he said. "If you called nine-one-one, that means your voice is on tape and there's no way to get it off. If Briar talks to somebody…"