Prey 25 - Gathering Prey

by John Sandford

  “Shut up,” Pilate said.

  She tried to talk, but nothing came out but a low gurgling laugh, until finally she gasped, “Leon . . . Redbone. Where’s your fuckin’ banjo, Leon?” She bit into her arm again as they walked back to the car.

  That night, in a motel on the airport strip in south Minneapolis, they watched the interview with Davenport and his daughter, on Channel Three.

  “That motherfucker,” Pilate said. Coward? Only fights women? Ran out on his friends? “He’s smearing me, he’s ruining my whole fucking reputation.”

  Kristen said, “Keep your voice down, for Christ’s sakes. They can hear you three rooms down. And what difference does it make? You can never be you again . . . ever.”

  “Fuckin’ coward? Fuckin’ coward?”

  “Keep your voice down.” She’d seen him like this, when he’d pick up an insult and turn it into a cataclysm. That’s how they wound up killing Kitty Place: because another woman had insulted Pilate.

  Late that night, three o’clock, Kristen woke up and heard Pilate rattling something. She turned her head and opened her eyes. He was pointing his .45 at the darkened television. He said, aloud, “Coward?” Pulled the trigger and the hammer fell with a metallic smack and he racked the slide again.

  • • •

  LETTY CAME DOWN the stairs wearing dark slacks, low heels, and a dark blue silk blouse: dressed up to talk to the cops. Lucas looked at her and thought that she’d never work undercover as a cop, unless it was a very classy assignment. With her dark hair, she gave off a little too much of a private school vibe. Of course, if she focused on economics at Stanford, she could be a real undercover weapon if she investigated economic crime, where the criminals wore five-thousand-dollar suits.

  She looked at Lucas and said, “You look like a rich cop.” Lucas was wearing a navy blue suit, English loafers, and a very pale blue shirt made in France.

  “Why not a banker?”

  “Bankers don’t have noses that are crooked from being broken or scars like yours. But cops do. I mean . . . look at Jenkins. Or Shrake.”

  “Please,” Lucas said. And, “You ready to go?”

  “We need to stop at a Caribou for some iced coffee.”

  “Not a problem.”

  • • •

  THE DAY WAS PERFECT: low eighties, bluebird sky, the slightest touch of a breeze. If the Minnesota August lasted all year, nobody would live anywhere else. That hadn’t always been true, he told Letty, as they went out to the Porsche. There had been the whole era of the infamous St. Paul Smell, but that was gone now. Forever, he hoped, because it had been nasty.

  They made it to the BCA in twenty-five minutes, with a stop at Caribou Coffee so that Letty could get a Cold Press iced coffee and a Diet Coke and scone for Lucas, and they dropped the top on the car and took their time.

  Sands was waiting in an adjoining office, talking to an agent, but jumped up the instant he saw Lucas and Letty. “Lucas, we gotta talk.” He looked at Letty, recognized her, and said, “Your daughter can wait in your office.”

  • • •

  THE MINUTE THEY GOT in his office, Sands turned around and poked a finger at Lucas, raised his voice and said, “What the hell have you been doing out there? You had responsibilities here, and instead, you go tearing around the countryside, not even in Minnesota, you get five cops shot and one of them killed.”

  “Don’t shout at me, Henry,” Lucas said. He said it calmly enough, but Henry took a quick step backward.

  “You don’t fuckin’ threaten me, Davenport. I’ve had enough of this shit, your goddamn gang operating however they want, that fuckin’ Flowers pisses off a state senator, who’s still calling me—”

  “I didn’t threaten you, Henry. In fact, I’m in the process of reevaluating my position at the BCA. I don’t think I’m up high enough in the food chain to avoid the bullshit. I’m gonna talk to the governor about moving me up another step or two, so I can do some actual investigation, instead of sending my men out to blow moronic state senators.”

  Sands put up both hands, said, “Okay. Okay. You talk to whoever you want. But the first thing you do is, you figure out how you’re going to pay for this little excursion to Michigan. What are you gonna do when we get sued by some—”

  “I’ll pay for it,” Lucas said. “If we get sued and lose, I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay for my own mileage, my own hotels, won’t put in for any overtime. Henry, we wiped out a gang that butchered at least ten innocent people, and quite possibly more, including a crucifixion. You want me to go on television and tell people that Henry Sands disallowed my travel expenses for killing off a gang that slashed an actress to death and crucified a young boy from Texas? You want to be famous, I think I can manage it,” Lucas said.

  “You’re threatening me again,” Sands said.

  “I’d never threaten you,” Lucas said. “If I got to that point, I’d just bust your fuckin’ nose. In the meantime . . .” Lucas gave him the finger. “Fuck you.”

  “Hey! Hey!”

  Sands’s voice cut off when Lucas pulled the door shut.

  • • •

  LUCAS AND LETTY gave their statements about the Wisconsin part of the investigation, sticking close to the statement they’d given the Sawyer County Sheriff’s Department. Lucas expanded into the conflict in the Upper Peninsula. Everybody called them depositions, but they weren’t really, because there was no swearing in, or an opposition attorney to monitor them. Real depositions would come later, if somebody decided to sue. Given the viciousness of Pilate and the disciples, Lucas thought that successful suits would be thin on the ground.

  The statements took an hour and a half, then they shook hands all around, and Lucas and Letty stopped at Lucas’s office on the way out. Del was sitting there, reading a hippie newspaper, and when he saw them coming, he shook his head.

  “I understand you got harsh with Henry.”

  “I let it out a little,” Lucas agreed. “Why?”

  “There’s a hot rumor going around that he’s going to bring you up on a bunch of charges, try to get you fired, or at least, suspended for, you know, months. Demoted, probably.”

  Lucas smiled and said, “Well, as some great philosopher should have once said, it is what it is. Don’t worry about it, Del. Though you might want to keep your head down: avoid as much of the stink as possible.”

  “Lucas, the whole group is talking about ways to back you up. We’re all with you—”

  “Easy, man, I got this,” Lucas said.

  Lucas got his briefcase and he and Letty headed out of the building. Crossing the parking lot, Letty said, “Del’s a good friend.”

  “Yes, he is. So are Flowers and Jenkins and Shrake and Elle and Catrin and a half dozen other people. Some of them aren’t really friends, but they’re okay, like Shaffer—I didn’t like him, but he did a good job, and he didn’t like me, but he knew I held my end up, so we were fine with each other. Other people, like Sands, they’re a drag on the system. They’re our biggest problem: there are too many bureaucrats and all they worry about is sucking on the neck of whoever’s paying them. Just the way it goes.”

  Two minutes later, they were out on Maryland Avenue, headed for I-35, neither one of them saying much, comfortable with not talking.

  Letty was driving.

  • • •

  PILATE SAID, “There they are.”

  He was parked on Phalen Boulevard, looking slightly down into the BCA parking lot.

  Kristen whimpered, “Let’s get out of here. Pilate, they’ll kill us.”

  “Shut up. They’re not gonna kill us. We’ll get them away from here, out in the open, and BOOM!”

  “Yeah, BOOM!”

  Davenport and his daughter had gotten out of the slick-looking Porsche, and, leaving the top down, went inside the building.

  “He said on TV he was just going to make a statement. Couldn’t take long. You’re driving, I got the gun,” Pilate said. “If we get down a quiet street whe
re we could pull up beside them . . . All we need is five seconds to get away from the scene, and we’re gone.”

  “This is so fuckin’ crazy. They’re going to kill us.”

  “You think I’m a fuckin’ coward? You think I’m a fuckin’ coward, don’t you?”

  It went on like that, back and forth, with growing silences between outbursts, and they waited, and waited some more, and it was almost two hours before Davenport and his kid came out of the building and got back in the Porsche, the girl in the driver’s seat.

  “We look for a quiet block,” Pilate said. “They’ll be moving slow on the city streets, right out in the open in that little car.”

  • • •

  LETTY TOOK THEM out to I-35 and back toward home, easing onto I-94, then speeding up, slashing through the traffic. Lucas said nothing, because she’d learned from him, and he was enjoying the ride. They got off at Cretin and she took the left at the top of the ramp, got caught by a red light at Marshall.

  Letty asked, “Do you think I’m paranoid?”

  “You mean, like you’re starting to think I might cut off your Amex?”

  She looked at him with cool, serious eyes. “No. Would you believe me if I said I think we’re being followed, by two people in an old car?”

  Lucas smiled and said, “Yeah, I’d believe you.” He looked straight ahead, then glanced into the right wing mirror. “Which one is it?”

  “That old red car, like a station wagon. It’s about six cars back in the left lane. I kind of noticed it when we were coming out of the parking lot. I thought I saw somebody inside, but they like ducked. When we were going down Maryland, I saw them turning behind us. Then we got to I-35, and they got behind us there, too, but stayed back, and they followed us to I-94. When I sped up, they did, too—but they still stayed back. Now they’re still behind us.”

  “Goddamnit, it could be them,” Lucas said. “I’ve been shooting off my mouth on TV about what assholes they are, and they’re crazy. I even told them where we’d be today, when I talked to Jennifer and Annie last night. They couldn’t get out of the UP going south, so if they did get out, going west . . . they could be here.”

  “Now what?” Letty asked.

  “Let me think,” Lucas said.

  • • •

  A MINUTE LATER, he said, “Okay, here’s the deal. Don’t let them catch us. Keep going straight south, all the way to Ford Parkway, then hook over to Cleveland, go all the way down to Highway 5, then over to the Mall of America.”

  “Why the mall?”

  “Because it’s full of cops,” Lucas said. “And the Bloomington chief is a friend of mine and he can have things set up by the time we get there. And it’s a logical destination.”

  • • •

  LUCAS GOT THROUGH to the chief on the chief’s personal cell phone, explained the situation. “Here’s what I want to do. You know when you get off 494 onto Cedar, then you slide over and go up and then down that ramp that curves over in front of Nordstrom’s?”

  “Yeah. Lindau Lane.”

  “That’s it. With all those roads going through there, Lindau is like a concrete chute. If there’s shooting, it shouldn’t be a problem. We won’t kill any bystanders. If you have a couple cars down around the bend, where it turns by Nordstrom’s, he won’t be able to see them until he’s right at the roadblock. And there’s no way out of the chute.”

  “I get the concept,” the chief said. “We’ll put a couple of unmarked cars north of 494, and they’ll fall in behind them, so when he comes around the corner, we’ll have him boxed.”

  “Gonna need some guys who are willing to shoot,” Lucas said. “If these assholes think they’re gonna die, they’ll try to take us with them.”

  “Keep your phone open: I’ll be calling you,” the chief said.

  Letty said to Lucas, “Still back four or five cars.”

  “Try not to clip a light and leave them behind.”

  • • •

  “WHERE IN THE HELL are they going?” Pilate asked.

  “Don’t know. I almost lost her on the freeway. She drives like she’s in L.A., and this piece of shit drives likes it’s still back in Michigan,” Kristen said.

  They got down to Highway 5, followed Lucas and Letty past the airport where it merged with I-494, and then Pilate saw a sign for the mall. “They’re going to that Mall of America. Man, that’s great. We follow them right to their parking space, slow down, I nail the guy, and we go. So many cars out there, so many people, so much noise, we’ll be lost in five seconds.”

  “Ah . . . I don’t know, man, I don’t know.”

  Then they could see the mall south of the highway. Pilate said, “Doesn’t look that big. The malls in L.A. are twice as big.”

  • • •

  LUCAS SAID, “Easy now.”

  “I really love this shit,” Letty said.

  “Letty, goddamnit . . .”

  “Well?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “There’s the off-ramp,” she said.

  • • •

  IT ALMOST WORKED.

  The red Taurus—Lucas had picked it out in the wing mirror—followed them right off I-494 and then down and up again on the Lindau Lane chute. Lucas saw two boring unmarked sedans jostle through traffic and get in behind the Taurus. Cop cars. The Taurus kept coming.

  Lucas said, “We’ve got them boxed. Speed up, fast now, hit it and stay right.”

  Letty dropped two gears and floored it and the Porsche virtually leapt down the chute.

  “Don’t scrape the fenders! Jesus, don’t scrape the fuckin’ fenders.”

  The car’s soft fat tires were squealing their hearts out when Letty went around the curve to the left, and ahead saw four squad cars on the ramp, with a small gap on the right side, big enough for her to get through. She’d gained two hundred yards on the Taurus, and it was now out of sight behind the curve. Letty didn’t slow down as they approached the gap and a couple of Bloomington cops on foot, who had apparently expected her to ease through it, jumped back.

  Lucas said, “Jesus, Jesus,” as the concrete wall flew past a foot from his nose. Through the gap, Letty hit the brakes, hard. Lucas surged forward in his safety belt, and when they were stopped, he looked at her and opened his mouth but nothing came out, and she smiled and said, “Not a scratch.”

  He popped his safety belt and jumped out. “Stay down.”

  As soon as Letty had gone through the gap, one of the waiting Bloomington cop cars moved into it.

  That’s when the glitch developed.

  • • •

  THE PORSCHE SUDDENLY leapt away from them. Kristen screamed, “What is . . . What are they doing, did they see us?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t—”

  Kristen had accelerated, in a futile attempt to keep up, and when she came around the turn, she had barely enough time to stop before hitting the cop cars that were blocking the road. An ugly yellow car was right on her tail, and she yelled, “Cops behind us.”

  As they screeched to a stop, the car fishtailed a little, and Pilate popped the door and disappeared. Where did he go? She didn’t know. She got out of the car and held up her hands, heard cops shouting at her, and she stood still, but twisted her neck around looking for Pilate. He had vanished.

  Then she saw Davenport running away from her, down the ramp, a gun in his hand, and a few cops trailing, running hard.

  • • •

  PILATE KNEW IT WAS OVER: the cops were going to kill him. Before the car had even stopped, he was out, and he took three steps to the concrete railing and looked down. Fifteen feet? He slipped over the railing, hung for a minute, then let go, landing on the grass below.

  Something popped and pain surged through one foot, and he felt like his asshole had kept going when his body stopped. He ran under the ramp for a few seconds, but couldn’t stay there, and he darted across a narrow street, between two oncoming cars and into a bunch of small trees and headed for Nordstrom’s
door.

  He kept thinking, Gonna make it, gonna make it, gonna make it . . .

  He was wearing the blue suit, with the .45 in his pocket, and he took the gun out as he ran. He’d jacked a shell into the chamber when they were tracking Davenport. He came up to Nordstrom’s, expecting to be hit between the shoulder blades at any minute, realized that the cops couldn’t shoot because of the crowd ahead of him: crowds were his friends, now. Off to his left, he got a glimpse of somebody coming after him, and realized that Davenport was only a hundred feet away.

  Pilate blew into Nordstrom’s at a dead run, past a big bearded guy in a Green Bay jersey, knocked a kid down, then another one, like bowling pins, almost went down himself, and somebody yelled, “Hey,” and he went straight on ahead, clothes, shoes, purses, and cosmetics. He could see the exit to the mall proper, and he glanced back, and Davenport had closed the gap. He didn’t have time to turn and shoot, so he lifted the gun straight up and fired into the ceiling.

  Shoppers shrieked and scattered in all directions, which helped a little, but not enough. He risked another look back and Davenport was even closer, and he had a gun.

  Then he was out of the store, looking for any kind of help he could get.

  • • •

  WHEN PILATE FIRED into the ceiling and the crowd exploded into the aisles, Lucas was probably only fifty feet behind. He couldn’t shoot because of all the people milling around him, and in the shooting lanes behind Pilate. Even if he hit Pilate in the middle of the back, the slug could go on through and clip a bystander.

  Pilate went straight out the store exit into the mall, then bent to the right around the escalators. Lucas went wider right, to make sure he wouldn’t be ambushed.

  He wasn’t. Pilate had gone straight ahead and vaulted the counter at the Caribou Coffee, where he had a heavy young woman by her blond hair, his pistol aimed more or less at her face.

  Lucas came around the escalator and Pilate screamed, “Get away from me! I want a—”