Field of Prey

9

R-A was in the parlor, where, in the olden days, visitors would be taken to chat. R-A had stripped out the furniture and put in beige accordion blinds for privacy, and moved in a weight bench and a few hundred pounds of bars and plates, plus speed and heavy bags.

In the morning, before he went to work, he’d go to the weights for half an hour, in a custom routine he’d created after several hours of Internet research. He’d end with a hard ten minutes of punching.

And a cigarette.

Get his lungs open, punching, and the nicotine hit like a pack of razor blades.

“You need to work out harder,” Horn said. He was in his wheelchair at the entrance to the parlor, watching. “Need to do something about that gut. When the cops come for you, they’re gonna put you in prison forever. The big black boys in there are gonna look at your fat white ass, and if you ain’t ready to defend yourself, they’re gonna wear you out.”

“Fuck you,” R-A said. “How am I gonna get out of this?”

“You gotta go proactive,” Horn said.

R-A mocked him: “Proactive? What’s a shitkicker like you doing with five-dollar words?” He sat down on the end of a weight bench, dangling a forty-pound dumbbell from each hand. He stood — finishing a squat — curled the dumbbells, thrust them overhead, uncurled them, and sat down slowly. When he was solid on the bench, he did it again.

“Shut up,” Horn said, showing some teeth, glittering and crooked like fresh-water pearls behind his dry lips. “I’ve been thinking about this. You want to take this Mattsson? How about this? You know that old typewriter up in your mom’s closet?”

“Yeah?”

“You go up there and write you a note. The note says, ‘It’s hardly worth killing women anymore, when all that’s on the other side is a bunch of dumb flatfeet. No fun in fooling you. You couldn’t find your own pussy with two hands and a flashlight.’”

“That’s gonna impress her,” R-A said.

“Get her attention, for sure,” Horn said. “Then you say, ‘You can’t even figure out who’s down that Black Hole, and I didn’t even try to hide who it was. You want some names? There’s Shawna Rivers from New Prague, I took her off four years ago, her skull’s down there. Then there’s Melissa Scott, she was eight years ago, and she was a fun little thing. I turned that girl every way but loose, and I still get a big ol’ boner just thinking about it. She was begging for more by the time I got tired of her and choked her out. Here you were on the TV whining about twenty skulls — you haven’t even figured out the pits in Alexandria and Eau Claire. I’ve been doing this for a long time, honey. I’d be embarrassed if it were only twenty, after all the work I’ve put into it.’”

R-A dropped back onto the weight bench. “Okay. That will get her attention. Why do I want to do that?”

“Let me finish. Tomorrow, you tell the boys at the store that you’ve got to run up to the Cities. You run right through the Cities to Sauk Centre and mail that letter. Don’t go licking any stamps or any envelope glue, or they’ll get you on that DNA. When she gets that letter, she’ll be someone. You could tell when you saw her on the TV that she wants to be someone. So she’ll be waiting to talk to you. You tease her, and tease her… We get her turned around, get her on TV, get her running around like a rat, sooner or later, we’ll figure out a way to pull her in, and take her.”

“Take her in Sauk Centre?”

“No, dumbass. You mail the letter from Sauk Centre to pull the attention up that way. They’ll still be down here, some, but they’ve been down here for a month and they ain’t got shit. They’ll be worried because you mentioned Alexandria, and another pit, and Sauk Centre is the next place down the highway. They’re already panicked. If there’s more pits out there, and they don’t get you quick, they’ll all lose their jobs. You let them worry about that for a couple of days, then…”

“This is gonna be nasty, isn’t it?” He grinned at Horn.

“Then you go up to Alexandria and take a nice little blond girl, and you choke her out, and you leave a note with her. From the same typewriter,” Horn said. “The note is in one hand, which is pointing out somewhere, and the note says, ‘The Alex pit is over that way… but pretty far. When I take the next one, I’ll point to her, too. Maybe the lines will cross over close enough that you’ll find it. It’s not like the Black Hole, it’s something completely different. Good luck!’ See, the thing is, they do all that analysis shit, and they’ll see it’s the same typewriter. They’ll believe you, and the next thing you know, they’ll be marching through the streets of Alexandria.”

“So.” R-A sat on the bench, dropped the dumbbells. He’d just lifted a total of two thousand pounds with each arm; both his arms and legs burned with acid buildup. “Everybody is up there looking… and Miss Big-Tit Goodhue County Sheriff’s Deputy is out of the action. Then we feed her something that’ll get her out in the open… and she comes in. What do we feed her?”

“Don’t have that yet,” Horn said. “I’ll think of something.”

R-A thought about it all morning, working around the store, and sitting in his office, figuring out inventory and bills. One of the bills, for nine hundred dollars, covered the wholesale cost of six aluminum Wave-Busters, used by boaters when back-trolling. He bought twelve a year, and reliably sold them. Still had four left. When he sold three of them, he’d run over to Greg’s Machine, five miles north of Durand, and get six more. Probably wouldn’t have to do that until February, he thought.

Wouldn’t have to stop at the candy store… although… Mary Lynn’s assistant had been cute, if he remembered her right. A little flat-chested, but a possibility.

He punched the “pay” button on his computer-books program, and the printer spit out a check for nine hundred bucks.

Mary Lynn had been a disappointment. She’d given up too quick.

But this deputy, this Mattsson… she looked like a fighter.

He walked home at noon, and wrote the note, using his dead mom’s old Royal typewriter. The ribbon was crappy and dry, but the words were clear enough. He called Roy, at the store, said he was feeling a little rocky, and was taking the afternoon off.

“You going to Sauk Centre?” Horn asked, when R-A got back home.

“Worth a try,” he said.

“Rolling the bones,” Horn said. “It’s getting interesting, now.”

R-A got in the car just about the time Lucas crossed the Mississippi on his way to Durand. Sauk Centre was two and a half hours away. If he dropped the letter as soon as he got there, Mattsson could get it as early as the next day.