Hidden Prey

Chapter 33

Lucas had never felt anything quite so close to panic as when they were running back toward the school. Hopper said, "You go check the locker room in case he's there. I'm gonna go pull the trigger on the emergency plan."

There had already been two school shootings in Minnesota that year, three kids dead. The thought that a cold-blooded killer, who'd already wiped out a Russian agent and a cop, and God knows who else, was loose in the school-maybe with a silenced pistol-was a possibility so grim that he could hardly bear to think about it.

He didn't argue with Hopper. Inside the door, Hopper said, "Locker room," and pointed. There were a few kids around, gawking at them, and Hopper started shouting, "Everybody go back to your classroom. Everybody back to your classroom."

Lucas ran down to the boys' locker room and inside. Dannie Carson continued on to the girls' locker room, her Glock at her side. Inside the boys', a kid was emptying a clothes basket full of towels, and he saw the urgency on Lucas's face and asked, "What?"

Lucas stepped close, one hand on his pistol, the pistol still under his jacket, and asked, quietly, "Have you seen Carl Walther?"

"Yeah, he was here two minutes ago. But I think he left…"

"Which way did he go?"

"I don't know, I didn't see him go, I only heard him…"

Lucas did a quick run through the locker room, including the showers, saw nobody else, and went back into the hallway. A gray-haired woman was walking down the hall, bouncing a basketball. Lucas said, "I'm a cop. Have you seen Carl Walther? He should have been out in the hallway just a minute ago…"

She said, "Uh…"

Overhead, a speaker burped some static, and then a man's voice said, "All teachers, we are turning lights out. All teachers, lights out."

And the gray-haired woman said, "Oh, shit. Carl? Does he have a gun?"

"We don't know. We can't find him, but he was just here. Were you walking around here?"

"No, I was in the gym…"

Dannie Carson came out of the girls' locker room and said, "Not there."

"The 'lights out' code means we're supposed to lock down and report in," the gray-haired woman said.

"Then do that," Lucas said. "Hurry."

They tore the school apart. Lucas ran through the weight room, checked the swimming pool, and two or three cops walked each row of the huge, elaborate auditorium; every room and cubbyhole was checked. No sign of Carl Walther. Twenty minutes after the search began, a teacher walked down to the office with a student and said, "Somebody needs to hear this."

And the kid said, "You should check the parking lot for his car," the kid said. "I saw him come in this morning. He parked right next to me."

Lucas borrowed the kid and they went out to the parking lot. On the way, the kid described the location where the car was parked-and when they got there, to the exact location, they found an empty space.

"This is mine," the kid said, pointing to an aging Volkswagen Rabbit in the next slot. "He's gone. But he was right here this morning. He's got a Chevy."

The tension backed off a notch. There were now ten city cops and six or eight sheriff's deputies and a highway patrolman in the school. Parents were beginning to arrive outside; the kids had cell phones. Lucas found Hopper and told him about the car and Hopper said, "Maybe he's gone home. We'll get some guys moving. Nobody's seen him in here, thank God."

They'd put Janet Walther in the principal's office, and told her to stay there. Now they got her, and Lucas asked, "Where do you think Carl would go. Home?"

She was scared to death. "Don't hurt him. He's a good kid, don't hurt him…"

The only places she could think that he might be were at home, at the store, or possibly at Grandpa's.

Lucas, Nadya, and Carson went with Hopper first to Jan Walther's home, cleared the place, then down to the store. The store was locked, and they cleared it; at the same time, they got a call from cops clearing Grandpa's-all the doors were still sealed from the outside.

"I'll talk to the highway patrol, the roads going out," Hopper said. "He can't be far."

Janet Walther grabbed Lucas's arm: "You don't hurt him. You don't hurt him, okay. He's just scared, you're just scaring him."

"We don't want to hurt him," Lucas said sincerely. "We really don't."

They found him late in the afternoon.

They found him because the story was now all over TV and radio, and a kid came in with his father. A half dozen of them were sitting around the police station when a cop stuck his head in the door and said, "There's a guy here with his kid. They say they might know where Carl Walther is… if we haven't found him yet."

"Bring 'em in," Hopper said.

The man's name was James Wolfe, and his kid was James, Jr., another high-school boy. Wolfe said, "Jimmy here had the idea… We took Carl deer hunting out of our cabin the last couple of years. And last summer, the kids were playing paint-ball games up there."

"Carl said it would be really a neat place for a war," Jimmy said.

"Where is it?" Lucas asked.

"On the Sturgeon River west of Cook. Thirty miles."

Hopper said to Lucas, "That'd explain why nobody's spotted him anywhere. Why we can't even find the car. He'd have been halfway up there before you went out and looked in the parking lot."

"Can we send somebody to check it?" Lucas asked one of the sheriff's deputies.

"Hard to find it," the elder Wolfe said. "We were talking about it on the way over. The best way would be to go into the Magnusons' place, they're one place down from us. You could walk through the woods over this little rise and look right down on the house. See if his car is there."

Lucas said to Hopper, "I'll go, I can take a couple of guys… We can be there in half an hour, and if it doesn't pan out…"

"There's one more thing," Wolfe said. "Uh, I keep a gun up there to clean up beaver and porcupines, and I think Carl knows where it is."

"He does," the younger Wolfe said. "We sorta let it out."

"You were screwin' around with it; that's what you were doing," his father said.

"What is it?" Lucas asked. "What kind of gun?"

"A Savage. 223 bolt-action with a two-to-eight-power scope on it. Not a great scope, but the gun shoots really good. Inside a minute, anyway," the kid said.

"And there's ammo?"

Wolfe nodded. "A couple of boxes. Fast-expansion stuff to blow up the critters. You go back there, if you think he's dangerous… You best take care."

The Sheriff's Department had a designated rapid-response team for the area, and three of them, including a sniper, were pulled in for the trip. They brought rifles and the usual assault and hostage gear. Lucas led the way out, with the elder Wolfe beside him in the Acura. Nadya insisted on going, and rode in the backseat. Dannie Carson had nothing with her but city clothes, and Lucas left her to coordinate in Hibbing.

On the way up to Wolfe's cabin, Wolfe asked Lucas what he thought the kid had done. Lucas said he wasn't sure. That they wanted to question him about a killing, and maybe two killings.

"I had a feeling about him-not anything like this-but I had a feeling that he'd been abused somehow. I know his mother, she's the nicest lady in the world, but I always wondered about old Burt. Burt was polite, but you couldn't help thinking he was an asshole. You know his grandson, Roger…"

"We're looking for him, too."

"I've been reading about it. I knew Roger pretty well and he was sort of messed up, too. Of course, his parents were killed in that car wreck, but that's not what it was-there was always something else, and I always wondered if Burt didn't have something to do with it. Not physical. Psychological."

"Well. Burt was a spy," Lucas said. "If he was recruiting family members, and they'd all grown up here where everybody's got a flag and supposed to be a good American… there'd be a lot of stress." He looked over his shoulder at Nadya. "Isn't that right?"

She nodded. "This is widely recognized in the community. Family stress is a very big problem."

Wolfe nodded, looking out the window. "Just… messed up, Roger was. Never saw the man really happy, except maybe at his wedding. Wonder where he is now?"

The Magnuson house was a half mile down a gravel road from Wolfe's place, set in a deep patch of woods along a small muddy river. There was a chain on the gate, and they could see a long track down through the trees to where the house must be, but they couldn't see the house. "There's a spot over there where you can get in, where they cut the brush out for the power line," Wolfe said, pointing down the road. "You might scratch your car…"

Magnuson wouldn't care, Wolfe said, he was a good ol' boy.

The sheriff's GMC led the way through, and they stopped halfway down to Magnuson's house, at the point where the driveway came closest to Wolfe's. Lucas gathered the three deputies around him, and they went over the approach. They took a couple of flash-bangs and some tear gas, and just as they were about to start into the woods they heard a distant banging sound, metal on metal, from the direction of Wolfe's place.

"Somebody there," Wolfe said. "It's gotta be him."

"Let's go," Lucas said.

Carl had gotten into the house with a rock through the kitchen window. He cleared out the glass, boosted himself inside, turned on the water pump and the electricity, pushed the thermostat from fifty to seventy-two, found a local station on the satellite, got the gun and a box of shells out of the hideaway.

All right. Get something to eat. He rummaged through the kitchen, found a couple of cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, heated it up, and sat at the kitchen table gobbling it down, the gun on the table.

The movement kept him preoccupied. Only when he put the bowl in the sink did he begin to feel alone-nobody to tell him to wash the bowl and put it away, nobody to tell where he was going, no Grandpa to talk to. No place to go, not with the cops looking for him.

In fact… the Chevy was outside, in plain sight. If anybody came down the drive, it would be the first thing they'd see. If the cops were looking for him, somebody could come down the drive, spot the car, and sneak away to report him, and he'd never know.

He picked up the gun, went outside, checked the garage. It was locked, but with a cheap padlock, enough to keep out kids. He looked around, found a hand-sized field stone, and beat on the lock until the hasp pulled out. He went inside, checked the four-by-four for keys-there were none, they were probably hung on the back of the bookcase-and lifted the overhead door.

With the door up, he moved the Chevy inside, then went back to the house. A local news program was on. He got a Coke from the refrigerator, perched on the couch. He thought about the Honda in the garage. Maybe later, he'd go out and scout around. For the moment, he'd just see what they were saying about him. Maybe, he thought, nobody had noticed he was gone.

Eight hundred yards, through second-growth timber, the ground soft and marshy underfoot. The banging continued, off and on, for the first three or four minutes of the march, and then stopped. They crossed a rise a few seconds later, and Wolfe whispered, "When you come across that next little rise, there, you can see the place."

They crossed a wet depression, and one of the sheriff's deputies whispered, "Nettles," and Lucas raised his hands over his head-he hated nettles-and warned Nadya. She nodded, and a minute later, they climbed out of the wet ground, through some scrubby maples, and looked down at Carl Walther's Chevy.

Carl was just walking out of a metal pole barn. A rifle lay on the hood of the Chevy and he picked it up, got in the car, started it, and rolled it into the pole barn.

"Broke into the pole barn to hide the car," Wolfe guessed.

"What's in there? Vehicles?"

"Yeah, there's a four-wheeler, a Honda, a boat, a couple of trailers, a couple of sleds, a John Deere Gator. I don't know if he knows where the keys for the Honda are, but… now that I think of it, I bet he does. I bet when they were up here screwing around with that gun, they were running the four-wheeler, too. If he got on that, he could go where we couldn't…"

Lucas turned to the deputies. "Everybody move carefully. We've got him. There's no point in anybody getting hurt." One of the deputies carried a radio, and Lucas said to him, "Call in, get some more people down here."

"We gonna talk to him, or what?"

"We'll stay in the woods, block the place, and wait until the other guys get here. Then we'll talk…"

"If we see him outside without the rifle, we could try to rush him."

"We could, but he might have something else with him-the pistol he used on Jerry Reasons," Lucas said.

The radio guy came back: "All right, I talked to Jim, and they're on the way, the whole bunch of them. Half hour."

"Let's move in close, and then wait," Lucas said. "Just close it up…"

Nadya stayed at his elbow, her face flushed, intent.

The house sat on the north side of the narrow river, with a tiny roll-out dock already pulled up on shore; a twelve-foot aluminum row-boat was turned upside down on the bank beside the dock. The house itself was surrounded by an open grassy yard that extended perhaps thirty feet on all sides, before the trees began; a few marigolds were spotted along the sidewalk to the front door. The driveway cut across the north edge of the yard, leading to the pole barn.

The sniper went with Lucas and Nadya, with Wolfe trailing. One of the other deputies took the east side of the house, the second the west side. They sat and waited. Five minutes passed, then ten.

And then Carl Walther burst from the house, running, rifle in hand, a fat cloth laundry bag over his shoulder. He went straight into the pole barn, head down.

"What's happening?" The sniper asked.

Lucas looked at the cabin roof. "You've got a satellite TV in there, don't you?" he asked Wolfe. He could see the pie-pan dish.

"Yeah."

"The fuckin' TV people saw them tearing out of the police station," Lucas said. The Honda's engine rumbled to life, and Carl backed out of the garage. The cloth bag was attached to a rack behind the seat, held in place with bungee cords. The rifle was in a plastic scabbard.

"Take the tires as soon as he's clear of the garage," Lucas said to the sniper. "Watch your guy there in the background."

The sniper spoke into his shoulder radio and then the Honda was easing out of the garage. "Take it," Lucas said.

The sniper waited another two seconds, waiting for an angle, and then took the back tire with a burst of three shots.

Carl tried to accelerate, but the tire flopped on the driveway and he jumped off the Honda, grabbed the gun, looked wildly in their direction, fired a single shot straight up in the air and then ran into the house again.

"What was that about?"

"Scared," Lucas said. He looked at his watch. "The other guys are still twenty minutes out. I'm going to call down to him. I'll move off your position, get as close as I can, and yell at him."

"What if he comes out with the gun?"

"You have to decide. I don't want him killed."

"Sure you don't want to wait?"

"I'm worried about what he's thinking in there," Lucas said. "His grandpa just killed himself."

Lucas worked his way back into the woods, so the pole barn was between himself and the house. Wolfe stayed with the sniper, but Nadya followed Lucas.

"You can come," he said, when he saw she was coming no matter what he said, "but stay out of the way."

"A woman's voice…" she said.

"You're the woman he once tried to kill. And he almost cut the head off another woman, if he's the one who killed the old lady in Duluth."

"Still. He might believe he would be safer with me."

"Just stay out of the fuckin' way, okay?"

They slipped around the corner of the pole barn, inside, out of sight. "Now just… just get behind the car or something," Lucas told Nadya.

She was peeking around the corner of the garage access door. The house was fifty feet away, with the Honda disabled halfway between. She didn't move, so Lucas took her by the arm and steered her toward Carl's Chevy. "Just… stay."

"I'm not a dog," she said.

Lucas went back to the garage door and shouted at the house. "Carl. We need to talk with you. Put the gun away. Put the gun away. If you shoot it at us, you'll go to jail. We need to talk to you, son."

No answer. Movement on the drapes? Maybe.

"Carl…"

"Go away. You killed my grandpa." Lucas peeked. Definite movement on the drapes on the far corner of the house. A bedroom, maybe.

"We didn't kill your grandpa."

Nadya stepped up beside him and Lucas said, "Jesus Christ, Nadya…"

Nadya called, "Carl. I have just spoken to your mother. She's afraid you'll be hurt. She wants you to come home, Carl…"

"Go away."

Lucas: "We can't go away, son…"

The glass broke in the window where Lucas thought he'd seen drapes moving, and Lucas shoved Nadya, hard, and went after her, pulling her down, and a second later a bullet smashed through the metal side of the building where they'd been standing.

"Jesus…" He pulled at Nadya, and they scrambled behind Carl's Chevy.

Somebody yelled, "Davenport, you okay?"

"We're okay, hold your fire."

Another shot ripped through the garage, and then another, and small pieces of metal showered over the Chevy. Daylight streamed through the holes, and Lucas could see inch-long peels of the thin sheet steel where the slugs had punched through. Another shot didn't hit the garage. "He's shooting up in the woods, now," Lucas said.

Nadya, on her hands and knees behind the John Deere, shouted, "Carl, please, we are trying to help you."

Bam.

Another shot hit the garage and maybe ricocheted off one of the snowmobiles. Wolfe wasn't going to be happy.

A burst of three-one of the deputies up in the woods was shooting back.

"Hold on!" Lucas shouted. "Hold on… Carl, we've got the house covered. Come on, man, you haven't done anything yet…"

Two more shots tore through the garage. Lucas yelled, "Carl, man, you're shooting up your own car. You're shooting up your car, Carl…"

Carl reloaded; he had a full load plus two for his pocket. No way out? If he could get to the garage, there was still the car, he could come flying out in the car and go the other way, they'd never think of that, he could drive out the utility access, there might be a couple of small trees and some brush in there… and he thought, nah, you'd never fuckin' make it.

Grandpa's image flashed up in his head: Grandpa dead. The gun's muzzle floated in front of his eyes, a few inches away. He could put the muzzle, up under his chin… wouldn't hurt. He'd go from here and now, to nothing, with nothing in between. Be better than landing in some prison where he'd be living in a shoe box and getting fucked by some old guy.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be underground, or a guerrilla fighter, or something-but not stuck on the bedroom floor of a crappy cabin with a half dozen shells and no food except six cans of soup and some peanut butter. When he saw the thing on TV the cops suddenly speeding out of town, he'd thought they'd be coming, that he'd been spotted somehow, or the Wolfes had talked to somebody. He'd taken five minutes to throw a little camping equipment in a nylon laundry bag, along with the soup and peanut butter, but it was all bullshit, he really knew that-he didn't even have a sleeping bag, or a tent, or good clothes. He'd freeze out there at night.

The muzzle of the gun just hung there, the smell of the powder, not bad; from something to nothing, no pain, no transition…

Then the guy in the garage yelled, "… you're shooting up your own car. You're shooting up your car, Carl…"

A wave of rage went through him. He worked at the fuckin' pizza place every night for six months to buy that car, then he got screwed on the car, it was a piece of junk. But it was his car, and these people…

He picked up the gun and headed for the door.

Then Carl came out, the front door slamming behind him. He walked, striding, angry, swift, toward the garage.

Lucas said, "Oh, shit, stay down…"

Carl had the rifle, held low, pointed into the garage. He screamed, "Get away from my car, get away from my fuckin' car…"

Lucas pulled his pistol and shouted, "Don't come in here, put down your gun, I don't want to have to shoot you."

"Fuck you," Carl shouted back.

"Carl, don't do this," Nadya screamed.

Carl was moving across the front of the garage, and Lucas and Nadya tried to move back, so they could get around the back fender, but Lucas thought he was coming too fast, that he wouldn't make it, and braced his shoulder against the back door and pointed the. 45…

Boom. Carl fired the rifle, and the bullet went through the car's windshield, Lucas thought; and maybe the back window. He heard the glass crack, not shatter, but pop with a funny glass sound, and Carl was still coming and then,

Crack.

The shot came from the woods and Carl went down, screaming, lost the gun. Lucas was around the car in three quick running steps, kicked the rifle, the kid twisting in the dirt like a broken-back dog.

The sniper was running down the hill with his rifle, and Lucas yelled to the radio guy, "Call an ambulance, tell them we need an ambulance…"

He pushed Carl down, the kid moaning in pain, checked his belt for a gun, found nothing, picked up the rifle, carried it out of arm's reach, and put it down again.

The sniper had stopped and was talking into his shoulder microphone; Wolfe was in the woods, standing, looking down at them. Another deputy was running in from the other side of the house.

Carl started crying. He looked very young, lying on the ground, with his slender blond face and pink cheeks. Lucas bent over him and asked, "Where are you hit, where are you hit?" and Carl began stuttering incoherently. The sniper came up and said, "I tried to take him in the butt. I was sure he was going to get you."

"Okay," Lucas said. "Help me roll him."

Another deputy came up, and Wolfe, and then the third deputy, and they rolled Carl up on one hip and Lucas saw the blood soaking into his jeans. "Let's get his jeans off, make sure it's not arterial."

Nadya helped, held Carl's hand, and Lucas noticed that she was bleeding; she had three or four small cuts on her face. She said to Carl, "You will be okay, you will be okay," and stroked his hair as a mother would.

The single, copper-jacketed bullet had penetrated the top of Carl's left buttock, angling down, then went through his right buttock and exited. Blood was flowing from all four wounds, but the flow wasn't too heavy. "I got a first-aid kit in the car; I'll bring it over," one of the deputies said. He left his rifle behind and ran off through the woods for the cars.

"Am I gonna die?" Carl asked.

"No, but you're gonna spend some time in the hospital," Lucas said. "Hell of a lot better than what you did to Oleshev or Jerry Reasons."

Carl, in pain, opened his mouth to say something, then a light came on in his eyes and he looked at Lucas and said, "I want a lawyer."

"Fuck you," Lucas said. He stood up and said to Nadya, "What happened to you? Let me look."

She stood up and Lucas took her chin between two fingers, turned her face. "You have four small cuts, probably from glass. There may still be glass… here. Here's a piece." He could see a small sliver of glass protruding from one of the cuts. He caught it between the fingernails of his two index fingers, and lifted it out. Blood tricked down her face. "That's what happens when you don't behave."

"Bad?" she asked.

"Nah. You might have to have some glass picked out, but nobody'll even see the cuts after they heal up. You'll still be gorgeous."

He looked back at the kid, and Nadya walked away, back into the garage and behind the car. He turned back in time to see her pick up a long, thin piece of glass from the car's trunk. "Careful with that…" he called.

She fit it between two fingers and then lightly slapped herself twice on the forehead. Blood trickled from two long new cuts, running across her fair skin into her eyebrows.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Politics," she said.