The Night Crew

by John Sandford

  BAAAAAZZZZZZZZ . . .

  The buzzer sounded like the end of the world, as loud as a jet plane, fifteen feet overhead.

  In a half-second, she knew exactly what had happened: the gate was alarmed, just like the gate at the bottom of the hill. A light beam or movement sensor was probably buried in the gatepost, out beyond the gate itself, so an animal inside the corral couldn’t set it off—but she’d put her leg right through it.

  She’d been so occupied with the thought of closing on the house that she hadn’t thought to look. And she didn’t stop to think when the buzzer went. Instead, she scrambled sideways, across the corral, to the far corner, holding tight to the pistol.

  The buzzing went on for three or four seconds, and then, just as abruptly, stopped. For another twenty seconds, nothing moved inside the house, and Anna, watching the back door, began to relax.

  ‘‘Anna?’’ Jake’s stage whisper cut through the dead silence. She turned her head to answer when the back door banged open, and what looked like a drunk staggered onto the back porch, twisting, turning in the dim light.

  ‘‘Anna?’’ The voice. She knew it this time. ‘‘Anna, I know you’re out there.’’

  Anna, straining toward the turning figure, finally made it out: not one person, but two. A man with his arm around a woman’s neck, the woman struggling against him; and when her struggles became too violent, he would lever her off the ground until she stopped.

  ‘‘Anna . . .’’ Judge was screaming her name. Anna said nothing. Maybe he’d decide that an animal had set off the alarm. Maybe he’d come out where they could get at him: but at the moment, the woman’s body blocked any possibility of a shot.

  ‘‘Are you out there? I know you’re out there.’’ The struggle on the porch started again, and Anna lifted the pistol and aimed it, took it down again: no way.

  ‘‘Anna . . .’’ He was bawling into the night. Then: ‘‘You think I’m fucking around? Think again, huh? Think again, Anna.’’

  He moved back toward the door, reached inside, and clicked on a yellow porch light.

  ‘‘I know you’re out there. You like to make movies? Make a movie of this.’’

  He suddenly kicked the struggling woman’s legs from beneath her and she went down. At the same moment, he let go of his grip on her neck. She landed on one thigh and her hand, twisted, head down: the man pointed his hand at her head and there was a sudden crack, and an arrow of flame, and the woman flattened.

  Shot in the head.

  Anna, not thinking, only reacting, thrust her pistol at the door and fired, and a half-second later Jake opened up: but the man was already back through the door. Anna, though, was rolling under the bottom bar of the corral, on her feet, running at the porch, firing a second time at the dark rectangle of the open door. In the back of her head she could hear Jake screaming, ‘‘Anna! Anna! No, Anna!’’

  But at the same instant, she was through the door. To her left, the back of the man, turning to look at her just as he went through an internal doorway.

  Steve Judge, but strangely different than the animal rights raider she remembered: he seemed older, thinner, harsher, wilder, with a long black pistol in one hand . . . But he was reeling away from the gunfire, and in the half-second he was visible to Anna, she managed to get the gun down and fire another shot, wildly, but in his direction. He screamed, then a second later, fired back, the bullet burying itself in the wall to Anna’s left.

  Belatedly, she went down, now holding the pistol out in front of her. And from behind, Harper was suddenly there with the rifle. He knelt beside her, and she saw that he was feeding fresh shells into the magazine.

  ‘‘He’s through there,’’ Anna said, in a harsh whisper. ‘‘He’s running. Let’s take him.’’

  ‘‘For Christ’s sake, rush him in a dark house? He’d take both of us.’’

  ‘‘We gotta . . .’’

  ‘‘No. What we gotta do, is look at the woman on the porch.’’

  Anna turned her head: ‘‘Jeez—I thought she was dead. He shot her in the head.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t have time to look, but lots of times, people don’t die.’’

  ‘‘Keep the gun on the door,’’ Anna said. ‘‘I’ll go look.’’

  ‘‘Is he still inside?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t hear the front door go. I think so.’’

  Harper braced the rifle against the wall as Anna slithered toward the door. Just before she got to the doorstep, Judge screamed from the front: ‘‘Anna. I’m gonna cut your friend’s belly open. You wanna hear it?’’

  Anna stopped, glanced at Harper.

  Harper shrugged, got halfway to his feet and whispered, ‘‘Yell something at him. A threat, anything.’’

  Anna screamed, ‘‘You motherfucker, if you hurt Pam, I’ll cut your balls off. I promise, I’ll cut your balls.’’

  As she screamed, Harper pushed to his feet, did a quick tiptoe across the door, hesitated just an instant at the far door where Anna had last seen Judge. He looked back, then burst through the door, out of sight: Anna was four steps behind him, but the dark room ahead was suddenly lit by a half dozen muzzle blasts, the crashing of furniture, Harper screaming, another shot, and the banging of the front door.

  Then Anna was through into the dark chaos of the office, pushing the gun in front of her, moving . . . and stumbling over a body.

  ‘‘Christ . . .’’ Harper.

  ‘‘You hurt?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I’m shot in the hip,’’ he groaned. ‘‘Not bad, but it hurts like a sonofabitch.’’

  ‘‘Where is he? Outside?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I heard the door. He’s gone.’’

  ‘‘How about Pam?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know. I don’t know if he had her.’’

  ‘‘I believed him.’’

  ‘‘Well, if he had her, he didn’t take her with him, because he went out of here in a hurry. Christ, we were six feet apart, I just couldn’t get the gun around.’’

  There was light coming into the room from the back, from the room they’d just rushed through. Anna said, ‘‘Move around into the light, stay behind the desk, I gotta look and see how bad it is.’’

  And at that moment, someone groaned from the other side of the room. The groan was hurt enough, harsh enough, that the hair stood up on Anna’s.

  Harper whispered, ‘‘Pam.’’

  Anna groped in her pocket, and found the flashlight had stayed with her through the wild scramble across the yard and into the house. She wrapped her fist around it, and shot the needle of light across the room. She passed over Glass’s body the first time, then wondered about the shadow in the corner, and came back to it.

  Yes. A body, not a shadow. Anna left Harper, creeping across the office carpet, got to Glass, rolled her. Couldn’t see; put her head close to the other woman’s ear and said, ‘‘Pam—this is Anna. How bad are you?’’

  Glass muttered something unintelligible. Anna looked around, trying to think what to do. Had to get her to some light. Finally, afraid that she might be hurting her worse, she tugged and pulled Glass across the carpet. Glass remained inert, sometimes mumbling to herself.

  ‘‘How bad?’’ Harper whispered.

  ‘‘I don’t know. We need light.’’

  ‘‘Pull that desk around . . .’’

  Anna managed to move one of the desks enough to provide cover from the only window that Judge could see through: and turned on a light.

  Pam Glass had been terribly beaten: her nose was broken, her teeth were broken, one cheekbone was wrong, her lips were twice as big as they should be, and the color of fresh liver.

  ‘‘Aw, Jesus,’’ Anna said. But she could do nothing about it. ‘‘Let me look at your hip,’’ she said to Harper. Harper rolled, showed her a bullet hole passing through his jeans in his thigh just below his butt. There was no exit wound.

  ‘‘Not much blood,’’ she whispered.

  ‘‘Yeah, I don’t thi
nk it’s too bad, but Jesus, my leg just doesn’t want to work,’’ he said.

  ‘‘I’m gonna go look at Daly. Can you cover me?’’ And for just a tiny sliver of a second she thought how odd it was to be using the language of television cop shows: cover me. What did she know about cover? ‘‘I’ll go out on the porch.’’

  ‘‘Yeah. Turn off the light, first. And we gotta try the phones.’’

  ‘‘Daly first.’’

  Anna hit the light, waited for a second, then went through the door on her stomach while Harper sat in the door, scanning the dark, ready to fire at any sign of a muzzle blast.

  But the woman was dead: Anna knew it the moment that she touched her. She was already going cold, and had the peculiar stillness of those who’d gone on. But she grabbed the woman’s shirt, and pulled her back through the door.

  ‘‘Alive?’’ Harper whispered, as they pulled back.

  ‘‘No. I don’t think so.’’

  Anna slumped against a wall, and Harper touched the woman. ‘‘No, she’s gone.’’

  ‘‘Let’s get back to Pam.’’

  ‘‘Let’s get the phone . . .’’

  Glass’s breath was short, harsh, irregular. As Anna knelt over her, she blew a blood bubble, which burst on her bloodcrusted lips. Anna said, ‘‘She’s in trouble, Jake. We’ve got to get her to a hospital.’’

  Harper was already crawling across the office. He groped on top of the desk, found a phone, pulled it down, listened, said ‘‘Shit.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Dead. He must’ve pulled wires somewhere. Probably outside the house.’’

  ‘‘We’ve got to get her out of here,’’ Anna said urgently. ‘‘We can’t wait. Jake—I think she’s dying.’’

  thirty

  They sat for a moment, huddled over Glass, watching her breathe. Thinking. Anna asked, finally, ‘‘Can you walk?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know.’’ Harper looked around, found a blind spot where he couldn’t be seen, pushed himself up on the wall, tested the leg and nearly collapsed.

  ‘‘Maybe—but not very far. I could hop pretty fast.’’

  ‘‘Forget it,’’ Anna said. Then: ‘‘Here’s what we do. We’ve got to get him talking to us. Anything. Just get him talking. Then we’ll know about where he is, which side of the house. Then I’ll sneak out the other side, with your car keys. Once I’m away from the house, in the dark, he’ll never find me. And he doesn’t know where your car is. Once I’m in the car, I’ll come crashing up here—I’ll get as close to the back porch as I can without wrecking it. That’s five feet you’ll have to cross. Can you carry Pam that far?’’

  ‘‘Anna . . .’’ He was staring at her, unhappy. ‘‘Anna, I can carry her, but, Jesus, that’s crazy.’’

  ‘‘Can you think of anything else?’’

  He looked down at the linoleum, thinking. A few seconds later he said, ‘‘If we can figure out where the phone goes out, and where he is, if they’re different, I might be able to patch the wires.’’

  ‘‘Do you know anything about telephones?’’

  ‘‘No, but if he’s just cut the wires . . .’’

  ‘‘I don’t know if you can just put them back together,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Even if we find out where he is, and you can get out, he could move. If you’re just lying out there on the ground, messing with wires . . . you’d be dead. If I run, it doesn’t matter what he does once I’m out of here: he can’t catch me.’’

  ‘‘Christ.’’ He ran his hand through his hair, moved, groaned.

  ‘‘And if we mess with the wires, and the phones still don’t work, we’ll have lost the time—and we don’t have any time.’’ She touched Pam, looking across her at Harper.

  Harper broke his eyes away for a moment, then shook his head, grinned, put his hand on top of her head and mussed her hair. ‘‘Don’t worry about wrecking the car,’’ he said. ‘‘Fuck the car. Put it right on the porch.’’

  ‘‘Okay.’’

  ‘‘Let me get my back against the wall with Pam. If he tries to come in, I’ll light the motherfucker up.’’

  Anna nodded, grinned back at him, squeezed his good leg: ‘‘It’s the only way. Let’s see if we can get him talking.’’

  Anna started, crawling to a window on the back of the house, knocking it out with a chair. The shattering of the glass should attract his attention, if he was still out there. She sat on her heels like a dog baying at the moon, and shouted: ‘‘Steve. What do you want? What do you want?’’

  Nothing.

  Jake had moved to the hallway between the back room and the office. He called softly, ‘‘Nothing here.’’

  ‘‘Steve,’’ Anna shouted. ‘‘Where are you? What do you want? Are you still there?’’

  The voice, not far away: ‘‘I’m still here.’’

  And a second later, a shot: not the pistol any more, a loud, crack, and plaster flew from the wall overhead.

  ‘‘Shit,’’ Harper yelped. ‘‘He’s got a rifle. A big one.’’

  ‘‘Always gotta be killing something around here, putting them out of their misery,’’ the voice shouted.

  He was over toward the garage, or maybe the barn, Anna thought.

  ‘‘What do you want?’’

  ‘‘I want you dead,’’ the voice answered. ‘‘But I want to mess with you for a while.’’

  Another shot, this time into the office.

  Anna crawled past Harper, who said, ‘‘We’ve gotta get better protection. Sooner or later, he’ll think about shooting lower, onto the floor, and then we’re in trouble. Those goddamn slugs are going halfway through the house. Maybe all the way.’’

  Anna said, ‘‘Okay,’’ and crawled into the office. The desks were wooden. Not much help. There was another door off to the left, and she went that way.

  ‘‘What do you think now, about messing with my head? What do you think now?’’ Judge screamed, still from the direction of the garage.

  ‘‘We weren’t messing with you,’’ Harper shouted back. ‘‘How were we messing with you?’’

  ‘‘You’re always messing with me, all of you,’’ Judge screamed back.

  Anna crawled through the door and found herself in the bathroom—and in the corner was a cast-iron bathtub, just what you might hope for in an old ranch house. She crawled back through the office.

  ‘‘Jake—there’s a big old iron tub in the bathroom.’’

  ‘‘That’d help,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Let’s see if we can move her.’’

  Judge was still screaming at them: ‘‘All the time, all my life, you fuckers. Let’s see what you think about it now, I’ve got the big gun.’’

  ‘‘What the hell is he talking about?’’ Harper panted. He trailed his leg behind him as they moved Glass across the office floor and into the bathroom, wincing every time he had to pull his leg forward.

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ Anna said. ‘‘He’s nuts.’’

  ‘‘Let me do this,’’ Harper said. He was on one knee beside Glass, and picked her up, gently, and lifted her over the side of the tub. She opened one eye and said, ‘‘Car?’’

  ‘‘She’s awake,’’ Harper grunted.

  ‘‘We’re trying to get you out of here,’’ Anna said.

  She crawled to the door and shouted at Judge: ‘‘The cops are coming. If you get out of here now, maybe you’ve got a chance.’’

  ‘‘If the cops were coming, they would have been here,’’ Judge screamed back. ‘‘If I take you down, I walk. I’ll drag you out in the desert somewhere, with a shovel.’’

  Anna turned away, said to Harper, ‘‘I’m going, out the side of the back room,’’ and Harper said, ‘‘Goddamn, Anna . . .’’

  Anna: ‘‘Yell something at him.’’

  Harper pushed himself up from behind the bathtub and as Anna crawled down the hall to the back room, shouted, ‘‘Shut the fuck up, you fuckin’ moron.’’

  Crack. A slug pounded throug
h the side wall of the back room, but much lower this time. Anna was sprayed with splinters of lath and plaster. The bullet missed by three feet.

  ‘‘Anna?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I’m okay.’’

  The windows on the side of the back room were doublehung, with slide latches. She turned the latch on the first one, struggled to lift the window, got it up. There was a screen on the outside, with hooks inside. She unhooked it, and pushed it open.

  Harper was shouting: ‘‘The women are both still alive in here. If you stop now, you’ll just go to treatment.’’

  Crack.

  Something wooden exploded in the office. ‘‘Is he in the same place?’’ Anna called back to Harper.

  ‘‘I think so . . . came from the same direction.’’

  ‘‘I’m gone.’’

  Anna boosted herself over the window ledge and dropped to the ground. There was a stretch of open yard in front of her, before she got into the brush. She took a breath, and sprinted across it, keeping the house between her and the spot they thought Judge might be. She passed a bush, slowed, turned, dropped to her belly.

  Light poured from the house and she could hear Harper yelling, but could not make out what he was saying. And she heard Judge shouting back from the other side.

  She had the gun and she thought: ‘‘If I take him now . . .’’

  But if she tried and lost, she’d be dead, and so would Harper and Glass. She moved back a bit into the brush, turned on the flashlight and let the needle of light lead her toward the driveway. The moon was higher now and if she didn’t look straight at it, she could see that lighter strip that marked the rut coming up from the road.

  She turned off the flashlight: better to let her eyes adjust. A minute passed, and another, as she patiently moved toward the track. She couldn’t afford to blunder into a tree, or twist an ankle.

  Then Judge spoke: ‘‘Hey.’’

  Close by; the hair rose on her neck. He was not within an arm’s length, but within fifty feet, she thought. She couldn’t hear him breathing, but she could hear the snap of twigs beneath his feet. He said it again, ‘‘Hey.’’