The Night Crew

by John Sandford

  The gun was in her jacket pocket. She slumped onto the ground, eased her jacket up over her face. In the dark, with her dark hair, if she could keep her face covered, she’d be nearly invisible. She used to play war with her brothers, running around the house on a summer’s night with guns made out of splintered boards. If you were dressed right, you could hide in a radish patch.

  No radishes up here . . .

  Then a thump, and the sound of a man’s feet pounding on the hard earth, running, sprinting, but just a few feet. Again, close by—to the right? Twenty feet? Did the shadow move? She pointed the pistol at the shadow. The shadow was gray, man-shaped. Was it moving? It seemed to be moving toward her . . .

  ‘‘HEY ANNA.’’ Not the shadow. Judge screamed at the house, and now he was off to her left, coming up on the window she’d crawled through. Would he step into the yard? How long a shot would it be? And she thought, Time.

  But if she could take him out.

  She pivoted in her spot, waiting. Then crack, and she saw the muzzle flash from the rifle. Seventy-five feet away, back in the brush. Judge was apparently moving around the house.

  If she moved on him, while he was sitting still, he’d hear her: there was too much dry brush. She bit her lip, thinking, then turned down the road. The ground was rising beneath her, and she felt vulnerable, slinking along. Was he right there, behind her? Then the road began to fall. She stopped, drew back into the brush, and looked back toward the farmhouse. Nothing moving, nothing . . .

  Crack . . .

  She didn’t see the flash, but it sounded as though it came from the back, the way Judge had been going. Anna started down the slope in a hurry, and when the yard light dropped out of sight, she turned the flashlight on again, gave it full play out in front, and ran down the hill.

  Never in her life had her legs seemed shorter, the distances longer. Twice she thought she saw the gate ahead, and passed the spot with no gate in sight. The third time, it was the gate. What about the alarm? No help for it. She’d have to trip it to get the car in anyway. To save time, she pulled the gate open as she went through, then turned and ran up the dark road toward the car.

  She was breathing hard when she got to it, fumbled for the key, found it, pushed the unlock button when she was still fifty feet downhill. The taillights blinked and the interior lights came on, and a few seconds later, she was cranking the engine over.

  Lights on going back up the hill? Yes. The lights might push Judge back, might confuse him, get him running. They wouldn’t have long . . .

  She swung through the gate, and started up the dark lane, scanning the sides of the road. Had to keep moving fast: if he was planning to ambush her along the way, he might be only five feet from the car when she passed.

  She kept her foot down and the car bounded up the ruts, throwing her around in the seat: no seat belt, she might not have time to get it off. At the top of the rise, she hit the high beams, caught the ranch house full in her headlights. No sign of Judge, nothing moving except herself in the car. And the car was moving fast—too fast. She skidded around the side of the ranch, straightened it out, spotted the back porch . . . hammered the car right to the edge of the porch, flicked open the door . . .

  ‘‘JAKE!’’ she screamed. ‘‘JAKE!’’

  Nobody there. She leaned out the door to scream again, and saved herself:

  Crack . . .

  And the passenger side window exploded, showering her with splinters of glass.

  Crack . . .

  The back window went out. The gunfire was coming from out in the darkness, back toward the buildings she thought might have been chicken houses.

  She jammed the car into park and threw herself across the porch, through the door into the house.

  Crawled frantically to the bathroom.

  Harper was there, groaning, bleeding: ‘‘Hit me,’’ he moaned. ‘‘Got me from the side.’’ And he looked at her: ‘‘Ah, Jesus, what happened to you, you’re bleeding . . .’’

  Anna half-rose to look in the mirror: she had several small cuts on her face, apparently from the window glass. As soon as she saw them, they started to burn. But they weren’t bad, she thought. She dropped back down to Harper.

  ‘‘Let me see where you’re hit, let me see.’’

  He rolled to show her; the slug had hit him in the pelvic bone, and angled down to come out the inside of his thigh. A purple stream of blood flowed from the lower part of the wound, which he’d partially stopped with a sock.

  ‘‘Lord . . .’’ Anna dug into her coat, found the Herme`s scarf she kept stuffed in the inside pocket, flipped it into a coil and bound the sock to the wound.

  ‘‘Fuckin’ killin’ me,’’ Harper said.

  Crack . . .

  Apparent miss.

  ‘‘We got to find some way out,’’ Anna said frantically.

  ‘‘The car is right outside the door, but he’s shooting it to pieces.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know if I could make it out anyway,’’ Harper moaned. ‘‘Do you think you could run for it? I can probably hold him off a while longer, he just got me with a lucky shot. If you could run to someplace where the phone would work . . .’’

  ‘‘God!’’ Anna, trying to think. She looked over the rim of the tub at Glass, who now had both eyes open. Glass recognized her, tried to speak, her broken lips working, but nothing came out.

  Crack. Another miss. How do you miss a house?

  ‘‘Let me go look at the car,’’ she said to Harper, and she scrambled back out into the hallway, through the back room. The car was still there, engine running.

  Crack . . .

  Missed again; she frowned, wondering what he was doing. He wasn’t shooting at the car. She looked back toward the room where Harper was hidden, decided. She’d have to go. If he could hold them off for ten minutes, like he said, she might be able to get back.

  She decided, and scrambled back to tell Harper.

  Crack —and the house lights went, all at once.

  ‘‘Coming for ya now, Anna,’’ the voice screamed.

  ‘‘Come on in,’’ Anna shouted back. ‘‘The cops will be here in five minutes, and then we’re gonna kill you. You hear that? In five minutes, you’re gonna die. Think about it, Stevie—five minutes, no more Steve. Just a piece of trash they’re gonna throw in a hole, and nobody’ll care. Not even your parents . . . Your parents’ll be embarrassed to be related to you . . .’’

  Crack . . .

  ‘‘That’s right, piss him off,’’ Harper said, and she could hear the grin in his voice.

  And that pissed her off. She was bleeding herself, she had the blood of two people drying on her hands, and one of those persons was trying to laugh.

  ‘‘Goddamn you, Jake,’’ she hissed.

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Keep your mouth shut. No matter what you hear, keep your mouth shut, and stay here. Don’t move. Don’t come to help me. Okay? Number two: You shoot the next thing that comes through the bathroom door. If I decide to come through, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, just shoot it down.’’

  ‘‘What’re you going to do?’’

  ‘‘I’m gonna kill this sonofabitch.’’

  ‘‘How?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ she said, her voice deadly. ‘‘But I’m going to.’’

  She moved out of the bathroom into the office, groping her way in the dark. She could hear the car engine running in the background—and then suddenly, it stopped.

  And the voice:

  ‘‘I killed the guy, didn’t I?’’

  ‘‘Get the fuck away from here,’’ Anna screamed. ‘‘Get away from me.’’

  He wasn’t coming in—he was staying outside, and the next time he spoke, his voice came through a window in the back.

  ‘‘I don’t see anybody. I don’t see anyone.’’ Then from another window, maybe the bathroom window: ‘‘Where is everybody? Everybody else dead?’’

  Anna pushed further into th
e office room, found shelter behind a desk. Couldn’t see much: when it came to it, she thought, it might be whoever saw the other person first. Fifty-fifty.

  But he knew the place, and she didn’t.

  And now he was around in front. ‘‘Hey, Anna, come on out.’’

  ‘‘Get away from here,’’ she screamed. ‘‘The cops are coming.’’

  ‘‘You were trying to run away from me, weren’t you? You went down and got the car and you were all gonna run out of here, but something happened. And I know what it was. I hit the guy. I killed him. He’s dead, isn’t he? This is a thirty-ought-six, makes a big hole.’’

  His voice was working around to the side, now coming through a shot-out window behind her.

  She needed a set: a movie set. And a scene . . .

  ‘‘I’m coming in, Anna. I’m coming in. Bet you can’t guess where . . .’’

  She moved to a corner of the room, pulled her knees up to her chin. She called softly, ‘‘Jake, can you hear me? Jake, can you hear me? Are you there?’’

  ‘‘He’s not there,’’ the voice said. ‘‘Jake’s dead. He’s a dead motherfucker, Anna.’’

  ‘‘What do you want from me? What do you want? Tell me,’’ she screamed.

  ‘‘All I wanted was the goddamn time of day, but you couldn’t even give me the time of day. You’d fuck all those other people, but you wouldn’t even talk to me. And you were like, you were perfect. You and me would’ve been perfect, but you wouldn’t even talk.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t even know you,’’ Anna shouted.

  His voice came from a different window, pitched lower. ‘‘I wanted to talk at the raid: you saw me at the raid, I was leading the raid, but you wouldn’t even talk to me then.’’

  Pause: then the voice from another window.

  ‘‘You saw me lead it, you wouldn’t even talk to the leader. I set the whole fucking thing up after that night at the club when I first saw you, so you could judge me in action, and you wouldn’t even talk. You just made fun of me with that pig. Which is dead, by the way. I cut that pig’s throat, God, it bled, it bled about a gallon . . .’’

  He was circling the house, speaking from one window, then the next, then skipping a window.

  From the back, now: ‘‘I was really disappointed,’’ he said. ‘‘And then at that golf place? When I’d set everything up, just you and me? And you did it again, you humiliated me— you humiliated me. What made you think you could get away with that? And now you’re going to pay, Anna. Just like that pig.’’

  Anna whispered harshly, ‘‘Jake, you gotta help me. Jake, I lost my glasses. Jake, I can’t see . . . where’s the gun? Jake?’’

  She heard him coming. She took her glasses off and put them in her pocket, and the world around her went soft. She pulled her knees up tight to her face, hunched her shoulders, pulled herself further back into the darkest corner of the room.

  Heard his footfalls.

  ‘‘Go away,’’ she cried. ‘‘Just go away . . . haven’t you done enough?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  Now he was inside. Close. But she still couldn’t see him. She tried to pull back even further, pull her knees higher. ‘‘Go away,’’ she moaned. ‘‘Please, just let me alone.’’

  ‘‘Look at me, Anna. I’ve got a gun.’’

  ‘‘I can’t see,’’ she cried, ‘‘I can’t see anything, my glasses . . .’’

  A brilliant light cut across her face, just for an instant, and was gone.

  ‘‘Aw. Little girl can’t see?’’

  ‘‘Go away . . .’’

  He was coming in now, like a rat to a cheese. She was holding her breath, waiting for a blow, the wait unbearable . . .

  ‘‘Here I am, Anna.’’ He was right there, on his hands and knees, only six feet away. She could see his face in a fuzzy way, the blond hair, the square chin, the eyes a little too close together.

  He had the pistol in one hand, the muzzle pointing roughly toward her face. The butt of the rifle was on the floor, and he was leaning on it. ‘‘We’re gonna have some fun. We could have had some fun for a long time, if you’d come away from your bodyguard in that parking lot, but you had to do this.’’

  The tip of the barrel touched one cheek, which seemed to be turning black.

  ‘‘Do what?’’ she whimpered.

  ‘‘Fuckin’ bite me,’’ he said. He moved closer, his hand still at the cheek. ‘‘So it’s payback time, Anna. Steve is gonna have lots of fun . . .’’

  Close enough: ‘‘Have fun with this,’’ Anna said. And the way she said it startled him. She could see well enough to identify the flinch, the sudden clutching fear, and then she opened her knees.

  The pistol was there, of course, between her thighs, and pointing at the middle of his throat.

  He had just enough time to say, ‘‘Don’t.’’

  Anna shot him.

  And sat for three full seconds in dazed, blinded silence, Steve Judge slumped in front of her. He hadn’t jerked back, or been thrown back: he’d simply gone straight down. She fumbled her glasses out of her pocket, pushed them back on her nose, tried to stand up.

  ‘‘Jake?’’ she called weakly.

  ‘‘Anna?’’ He was close. She took the flash from her pocket and shined it back toward the bathroom. Harper was propped in the doorway, the rifle in his hand, a long trail of blood behind him, his face as pale as parchment.

  ‘‘I killed him,’’ Anna said.

  At that moment, Judge stood up.

  His eyes were crazy and half of his neck seemed to be missing. But he had one hand clasped to the wound and he pushed up and pivoted toward her, his eyes crazy, his mouth open, the white teeth straining at her.

  Anna stepped back, thrust the pistol out, and fired into his chest from six inches: one, two, three, and Judge went down again. Harper, behind her, was shouting, ‘‘No more, Anna,’’ but Anna stepped over Judge and fired two more shots into his head.

  This time he didn’t move.

  ‘‘Asshole,’’ Anna snarled. She was still pulling the trigger, the clicks echoing in the suddenly silent shambles.

  Anna carried Pam to Harper’s car, brushed glass fragments off the seat and put her down. Harper was too heavy: he crawled, dazed, to the porch, and Anna turned the halfwrecked vehicle around until she could get him in the passenger side and wedge the door closed. Some thing was wrong with the door, but it seemed to hold.

  Her scalp was bleeding badly; she hadn’t seen a scalp cut, but every time she put her right hand to her ear, it came away with a palm full of blood. She pointed the car down the drive, and took it out as easily as she could.

  They’d come in and out the same way each time, and that was the way she knew: there might have been a faster way to get an ambulance out to them, but she didn’t have time to look.

  She tried the phone after five minutes. No connection. She tried again at seven or eight minutes, without luck. At ten minutes, she got 911.

  ‘‘My God, everybody’s shot,’’ she babbled as she guided the car to the side of the road. She knew about where she was, gave enough direction that an ambulance could find them.

  She called Wyatt, told him.

  He was still shouting questions when she dropped the phone.

  thirty-one

  Anna Batory was waiting at the dock when they came in on the Lost Dog, Creek and Glass with another couple, a pair of gay and ferociously competitive endodontists.

  Creek cut the outboard when they were fifty feet from the berth, reached over the side, released the transom lock and pulled the motor out of the water. The boat’s momentum carried it gracefully on, and then Creek pushed the tiller over and it turned, slowed, slowed more, and Glass stepped over the rail onto the finger pier, dropped the bow line over a cleat and snubbed the boat off.

  Anna stood up, brushed off her butt. ‘‘How’d it go?’’

  Glass was bubbling: ‘‘It was amazing. These things, there was a boat, I mean . . .’
’

  ‘‘Spit it out,’’ Creek laughed.

  ‘‘Some of those boats were as big as locomotives. And they were this close,’’ Glass said, spreading her hands a foot apart. ‘‘One guy got hit in a turn, and he called this other guy an asshole, and they’re gonna fight when they get back.’’

  The beating barely showed on her anymore: when she’d gone into the hospital, the doctors were afraid that her brain had been permanently damaged. As it was, she’d been almost herself in a week, and out of the hospital in two. At four weeks, the bruising had faded, and the cuts were healed. She looked like somebody had scrubbed parts of her face with a Brillo pad, and her nose wasn’t as straight as it once had been, but she no longer looked like she might die.

  She still had headaches, though: the doctors said they might continue for a while. Maybe a long while. On the other hand, they might stop. Any day now. Or something like that.

  Creek, a month later, was almost as good as new; was beginning to talk about the whole episode as a myth that might have happened to someone else. As a good story, to be embroidered upon, on slow nights in the truck.

  Anna was the only one who still hurt.

  The cuts on her face had all been minor. The cut in her scalp had been deeper, and had done something to the hair follicles: a thin, knife-edge line of hair was growing out white. The doctors said it would probably never be black again; but it might. Or something.

  But her main problem was Harper.

  After she’d shot Judge, she’d turned, and in the light of Judge’s flash, had seen Harper crawling toward her, trying to help her. Answering her cries for help. When it had turned out that Anna had been mouse-trapping Judge—when she’d emptied the pistol into Judge’s head—something had changed.

  He loved her, he said, but he wasn’t coming around. She could feel him avoiding her. She pushed, tried to talk: and only once got him going, after a two-martini dinner, and he talked about her face when she’d fired the last shots into Judge.

  Anna realized that she frightened him. She didn’t want to, but she did.

  • • •