Certain Prey

by John Sandford

'What?'

  'What if he's fated to find me? That's what scares me. I've got this guy I can't shake because it's my time.'

  'Jesus, Pam, you gotta take a couple aspirins or something,' Carmel said. 'Lay down for a while. 'Cause, believe me, it's nothing like that.'

  Rinker sighed, and let her shoulders slump. Carmel actually did make her feel better. She was so sure of herself. 'Okay.'

  'So we still have the question,What do we do?' Carmel said. 'Davenport knows something. He's working off something. What could they have given him atTennex that put him in Wichita? Why is he pushing on me?'

  'I don't know how he got to Wichita. I was a fanatic about being careful.'

  'What about your Mafia friend? Even if he's not deliberately giving you up, is there any way he could have pointed them at Wichita?'

  'Hmph.' Rinker had to think about it for a minute. 'I didn't let him call me there. He always came out to deliver the messages. But he's always on the telephone. If somehow they managed to sort out his calls while he was there... I don't know. It sounds weak. I mean, he goes everywhere. Why would they focus on Wichita?'

  'They've got all kinds of ways of doing those things - statistics,' Carmel said. 'I'd be willing to bet it's something like that, especially if Davenport didn't know who you were.'

  'He didn't. I'm sure of that.'

  They went over it several times, and finally Carmel said, 'You know, we're coming to the crunch, here. If Davenport's mining some kind of line of information, it might lead to you, or it might lead to me, or it might not. It's hard to put a case together. I'd say it's about fifty-fifty whether we should sit tight, or move somehow.'

  'What move?'

  'One possibility is, we could go talk to the kid, and the kid's mother. We could find out what they told the cops. Then we'd know about that angle.'

  'What if it's a trap?'

  'I don't think it is. I don't think any cop would put a kid in play, not when you're talking about professional killers,' Carmel said. 'If any cop would, it'd be Davenport - but I don't think even he would.'

  'And you're saying that after we talk to them, we kill them? The kid and her mom?'

  Carmel shrugged: 'If we have to.'

  'We'd have to find some other way to do it. I'm not going to kill the kid - I've been thinking about it,' Rinker said. For the first time since they started meeting face-to-face, Carmel picked up the warning edge in Rinker's voice that she'd heard when they talked on the phone, when the problems began developing.

  'Okay. But if you really think you're the finger of God... what's the problem?'

  'I'm just not gonna kill that kid. Fuck the finger,' Rinker said.

  'So we find a way not to kill them - not unless we absolutely have to,' Carmel said. 'You didn't kill that Marker woman in Washington. We should be able to figure something out.'

  'You said going after the kid was one possibility. What's the other?'

  'We could do something that would make it impossible for them to prosecute us, even if they

  figured out who we are,' Carmel said.

  'How would we do that?' Rinker asked.

  'I've been thinking about it, ever since you called,' Carmel said. 'I call it Plan B.'

  Plan B took a while to explain; Rinker was not so much appalled as amazed.

  Lucas got back to Minneapolis late the next afternoon, dropped the BMW at the Porsche dealership, sank into his own car with a sigh of relief, and headed downtown. He'd told Sherrill and Black when to expect him, and they were waiting in the Homicide office.

  'Not so good?' Sherrill asked.

  Lucas shook his head: 'He's not the guy. He's a small-time dope dealer.'

  'But they still think he's the guy?'

  'Mallard still thinks there's a chance. He's got a smart assistant named Malone, and Malone was ready to go back to Washington and start over,' Lucas said.

  'Goddamnit,' Black said. 'Did you hear about the sniper?'

  Lucas shook his head: 'What sniper?'

  'Car got hit by rifle fire last night during rush hour. One car, one windshield, nobody hurt. Couldn't find a shooter, and we thought maybe it was an accident. Then this afternoon, right at the start of the rush hour, a little after three, the guy came back. Two cars hit, a woman hit in the neck, she's in surgery. Some guy coming down the road behind her stuffed

  a wad of newspaper in the hole in her neck, probably saved her life. But the media's going batshit - the radio stations, all the drive-time guys. I mean, this is their audience being shot at...'

  'So everybody's out?'

  'Well, you know Sloan's working the Hmong thing and Swanson is still chasing down stuff on the Parker case; so people are making noises like taking us off Allen. They say just a few days, but you know what that might mean...'

  'I'll talk to Rose Marie,' Lucas said. 'But the question is, what've we got to do? What's left that we haven't done?'

  They all looked at each other, and finally, Sherrill shrugged. 'We were waiting for you to tell us.'

  Lucas said, 'What're you doing tonight?'

  'Nothing,' Sherrill said.

  'Why don't you hang around and see if Carmel's going anywhere?' Lucas suggested.

  'If we're gonna start tailing her, we're gonna need more than two guys,' Black said. 'They're gonna be hard to come by. Given the sniper and all that.'

  'So we don't have a fulltime tail - just somebody hanging around. Maybe we get lucky.'

  'Ah, Christ,' Sherrill said. 'I'll do it, but I have a feeling I'm gonna be pulling my weenie.'

  Rinker brought a wig with her: she'd have big hair, Texas hair, when she went in. She'd wear jeans, gym shoes, rubber kitchen gloves, two pistols under a black

  sport jacket, a handkerchief and a nylon rolled up tight as a watch cap.

  Carmel would be wearing a slinky bloody-red dress with spangles, matching red shoes and lipstick. 'How do I look?' she asked.

  'You look terrific,' Rinker said, admiration riding in her voice. 'God, if I could look like that...'

  'You're beautiful,' Carmel said.

  'No, I'm not,' Rinker said. 'I'm cute. I look like I should be in the Playboy college issue, Duke University's Miss Perky Nipples.'

  'Does Miss Perky Nipples carry.22 Colt Woods-mans... would it be Woodsmans, or Woodsmen?'

  'No, she probably wouldn't. I don't know the correct grammar, but I got two of them, and they were stolen fourteen years ago from a gunstore in Butte, Montana, and haven't seen the light of day since. I'm cool,'

  Carmel nodded, 'You are cool.' She took a last look at herself in a full-length mirror, twirled and said, 'When I get that boy home tonight, I am going to fuck him rudely. Rudely.'

  'Good luck,' Rinker said. 'I sorta wish I was... involved with somebody. It's been a while.'

  'Is it hard to meet guys in Wichita?' Carmel asked, screwing on an earring clasp.

  'It's hard for me,' Rinker said. 'You know, a gal who runs a bar? What kind of guys am I going to attract?' She answered her own question: 'Most of them have got a bottle of Jim Beam in the trunk...'

  'Too bad you couldn't hook up with Davenport,' Carmel said, jokingly.

  'He'd be a possibility,' Rinker admitted. 'He could be fun, in a big-galoot way.'

  'Mean big-galoot,' said Carmel.

  'I could see that,' Rinker said. 'I could feel it.' After a second, 'But he sorta... handles you. Moves you around. Touches you. Not feeling you up, or anything, but he's just... I don't know. All over the place.'

  'If he sees you here, we're fucked,' Carmel said.

  'Unlike when I saw him in Wichita,' Rinker said. Then: 'I thought about coming on to him a little, but that would've been... too much. Anyway, I don't expect to see him again the rest of my life.'

  She picked up the first of the pistols, jacked a shell into the chamber, set the safety and slipped it into her gun girdle, under the jacket. Rinker looked at Carmel. 'You ready?'

  Chapter Eighteen

  Black canceled a date and climbed into the b
ack of Sherrill's Mazda with a pepperoni pizza and a bag of hot nacho cheese crackers.

  Sherrill said, 'You're a cruel fuck. If I ate any of that stuff, it'd go right straight to my thighs.'

  'So don't eat it. Concentrate on other things. Flowers. Small children,' Black said.

  'I'm having a hard time concentrating. With my future husband on his way up to...'

  '... slip a little English bacon to Carmel Loan.'

  'You're so crude. And whatever he's got in there, I doubt that it resembles bacon.'

  'You mean, in stripes, or in flatness?'

  She giggled: 'God, I love talking dirty with you. It's so jock-like, so...'

  She couldn't think of a word; through the plate glass doors of Carmel Loan's building, they could see Hale Allen's back as he signed into the building. Then a short redhead came around the corner from the elevators, into the lobby, and Sherrill said, 'Here comes... nope.'

  The redhead walked past Allen, giving him the once-over, pushed through the glass doors, looked

  left and right, put her hands deep in the pockets of her black sport coat, and headed down the block. Inside, Allen walked away from the security desk and around the corner to the elevators.

  As they watched them, a patrol car pulled in behind the Mazda and the red lights began to flash. 'Ah, man,' Sherrill said, looking in her rear-view mirror. The loudspeaker on the cop car blared, 'Drop your car keys out the passenger window. Now.'

  Instead of dropping her keys out of the window, Sherrill held her badge case out. After a minute, the flashing lights stopped, and the driver of the cop car approached from the back, shining a flashlight on the badge case. Sherrill pushed the door open, dropped her feet to the street, looked at the cop and said, 'What the fuck are you doing?'

  'What are you doing?'

  'I'm on a goddamn stakeout. I was on a goddamn stakeout,' Sherrill said. 'Now I'm in a goddamn comedy routine.' People had stopped up and down the street, to watch.

  'Well, jeez, we're sorry.' The cop looked around at the audience and flapped his arms helplessly. 'You shoulda told somebody, instead of just lurking around here. The doorman called. He said you'd been here for hours.'

  Sherrill could see the doorman in Carmel's building peering at them through the lobby window. 'Yeah, well: now I'm gonna drive around the block and park again,' she said. 'And I'm telling you. Stay away from

  me or I swear to Christ, I'll shoot you.'

  The cop peered in the back window and said, 'Hi, Tom.'

  'Hi. Want some nachos?'

  'Nah. Give me heartburn... so you're gonna go around the block?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Well. Be cool.'

  Sherrill started the car, and they rolled away, Black laughing in the back. Then Sherrill started: 'God, I love police work.'

  Two minutes later, they were back on watch, Black still relaxed in the back and even deeper into the nachos. 'How you been?' he asked through a mouthful of chips and cheese. 'Since you and Davenport?'

  'I miss him. A lot,' she said.

  'He's an asshole. Sorta.'

  'I miss him anyway,' she said. 'Besides, while I agree he's an asshole, he's not an asshole like you think he is.'

  'Oh, I think I know.'

  'Just 'cause you're queer doesn't mean you know. You're still a guy.'

  Black contemplated the statement, formulated a reply, ate the chips as he worked at it: carefully formulated replies were necessary in the stakeout business. You could sit for hours, and you didn't want to run out of stuff to talk about - or piss off your partner - too soon.

  'Let me tell you my theory of queerness as relates to the straight male,' Black said. And he did, and after a while - ten minutes - Sherrill said, 'I never would have thought of any of that.'

  'You're not gay.'

  'It's not that. It's just that I couldn't have come up with such an utter crock of shit.'

  Black put a final three nachos in his mouth and settled back to formulate another reply. Before he got a good paragraph together, Sherrill said, 'Here they come - and Jesus Christ. Look at that dress.'

  Black peered over the sill of the back window. Allen and Carmel stepped out through the glass doors, Allen wore a dark jacket that Black suspected was lightweight cashmere; tan, expensive-looking slacks; and loafers. Carmel was in a shocking, low-cut red party dress and red shoes.

  'Nice dress,' Black said.

  'Nice? A little gaudy, don't you think? And her tits are about coming out.'

  'I don't know,' he said. 'Color is always good in clothing. And skin display is nice, in the summer.'

  'Don't give me the fag act. Look at her. She's like a billboard.'

  'All right. She's obviously a tart,' Black said.

  'Thank you. Not nearly fine enough to aspire after the lovely Hale.'

  'And she certainly doesn't have your tits.'

  'You don't think?'

  'Marcy, you've probably got the third-best tits in

  Minneapolis. Davenport says sixth best, and of course, he would know from first-hand observation, while Sloan says second best - I don't know about Sloan's qualifications...'

  'He has none, and shut up, we're going.'

  'Let me get my Big Gulp off the floor... Ah, shit.'

  Rinker missed the foul-up with the squad car; she'd already turned the corner, and was headed back to her hotel to pick up her car. She felt heavy as she went. She might have to kill the two of them, the mother and daughter. Might have to. And that felt wrong. These were people who'd never had a chance; they weren't people who'd screwed up somehow, had gotten too stubbornly close to something that was bad for them... It was like all that gang-banger talk years ago, of mushrooms popping up in the line-of-fire. This mother and daughter were essentially mushrooms, and Rinker had always thought of herself more as a surgeon than as a gang-banger... She'd have to do this right.

  Carmel and Hale Allen went to a club called The Swan, which had a twelve-piece orchestra and a blonde chick singer with a voice like buttermilk, and danced. Old-style dances, cheek to cheek, hand in the middle of the back. Carmel could reach Hale's earlobe with her tongue, which she did every few minutes, and which had a profound effect on him. After the third dance, he growled, 'Let's get out of here.'

  'No,' she said, in her best cat voice. 'You've got to be patient.'

  Sherrill and Black watched from a balcony seat as Allen and Carmel moved around the dance floor, stopping now and then to talk with friends; all of the friends, Sherrill decided, had a certain slickness that she disliked. She mentioned it to Black.

  'I think they teach you that in law school,' Black said.

  'Hey, I know some pretty nice lawyers.'

  'So now we're gonna be sincere?'

  'No, I was just wondering. There's this subset of people who look slick. See? Look at the guy in the white coat, and the woman he's with. Slick.'

  'They spend too much time looking at themselves, without being professionals,' Black said. 'Professionals - actors - can look perfect, and look right at the same time. These guys try to look perfect, and they just look slick.'

  'Much more of this surveillance chit-chat and I'll throw up.'

  Rinker scouted the Davis' neighborhood, saw nothing at all. Of course, if it were a trap of some kind, the cops might be in an apartment across the street or up the stairs and she'd never know until they were kicking down the doors.

  But it didn't feel that way; it didn't have the creepy close feeling of movies, when a guy was in hiding. And somehow, she thought, it would feel that way.

  There'd be that peculiar stillness of the moment when you hide in somebody else's house, and they walk in... and they know. She didn't feel that here.

  Rinker had taken two FedEx boxes from a FedEx stand, and taped them together. She left the car a block from the Davis apartment - she noted the lights under the window shades, so somebody was home -and walked back, carrying the box. A guy was following his dog down the other side of the street, paying no attention to her. />
  Rinker turned in at the house, jogged up the stoop, and stepped inside the entry and stopped. She could hear a stereo from up the stairs, nothing from the back, from the Davis apartment. She moved closer to the Davis door, listened. The rhythm of voices - or one voice, a woman's voice. She glanced around, took the pistol out of her belt and stuck it under her left arm, pinned to her side. She knocked once.

  The rhythm of the voices stopped, and she heard footsteps. The door opened on a chain, and a woman peeked out. 'Yes?'