Sudden prey

TEN

WHILE LUCAS DASHED TO SMALL'S HOME, STADIC crossed the St. Croix at Taylors

Falls and headed into the Wisconsin night on Highway 8. The going was slow: there were no lights, and at times, as he passed through the intermittent snow squalls, the highway virtually disappeared. A green sign-Turtle Lake 17-flicked past; and much later a John Deere sign, and then lights.

He was running on adrenaline now: only five hours since the attacks, and it seemed like a lifetime.

At Turtle Lake, he passed a hotel with a No Vacancy sign, and then the casino loomed out of the snow like an alcoholic hallucination. He turned into the lot and had to drive halfway to the back to find a parking space. The casinos were always full, even at midnight, even in a blizzard.

A uniformed security officer stood just inside the doors, eyes watchful. Stadic asked, ''Where's the phone?'' and the security man pointed down the length of the casino. ''Outside any of the rest rooms,'' he said.

The first phone, mounted on the wall between the men'sand women's rest rooms, was occupied by a woman who appeared to be in crisis: she had a handkerchief in her hand and she twisted it and untwisted it as she cried into the phone. Stadic moved on, found another one. The noise from the slots might be a problem, he thought, but he needed the phone. He cupped his hand around the receiver and dialed the fire station.

A sleepy man answered. Stadic, watching the casino traffic, said, ''This is

Sergeant Manfred Hamm with the Minnesota Highway Patrol out of Taylors Falls,

Minnesota. To whom am I speaking?''

The sleepy man said, ''Uh, this is Jack, uh, Lane.''

''Mr. Lane, you're with the Turtle Lake Fire Department?''

''Uh, yeah?''

''Would you by any chance cover a rural fire route, Mr. and Mrs. Elmore

Darling?''

''Uh, yeah.'' Lane was waking up.

''Mr. Lane, we've got a problem here. Mrs. Darling has been involved in an automobile accident outside of Taylors Falls, and we need to send a man to speak to Mr. Darling. We don't know exactly where his house is, as all we have is a rural route address. Would you have a location on the Darling house?''

''Well, uh… Just a minute there.''

Stadic heard the fireman talking to somebody, and a moment later he came back:

''Sergeant Baker?''

''Sergeant Hamm,'' Stadic said.

''Oh, yeah, Hamm, sorry. The Darlings live at fire number twelve-eighty-nine.

You stay on Highway 8, and you go a little more than a mile past the Highway 63 turnoff, and you'll see Kk going to the south. They're about a mile down that road… You'll see a red sign by the driveway, says, Township Almena and the number. Twelve-eighty-nine. Got that?''

''Yes, thank you,'' Stadic said, scribbling it down. ''We'll send a man.''

''Was, uh, the accident…?''

''We're not allowed to say more until the next of kin are located,'' Stadic said formally. Then: ''Thank you again.''

THE SNOWFALL HAD EASED AS HE CREPT OUT KK, TRYING to stay in the middle of the road. Although the air was clear, the fresh snow flattened everything: he couldn't see the edge of the road, or where the ditches started. He crawled along, past the big rural mailboxes, hunting for the fire signs in the beam of a six-cell flashlight.

And he found it, just like the fireman had said he would.

The Darling house sat back from the road, and showed a sodium vapor yard light at the side of a three-car pole barn. The inverted mushroom shape of a satellite

TV antenna sprouted at the side of the pole barn, pointing south. The house was two stories tall, white and neat. A white board fence led off into the dark and snow.

A fresh set of tire tracks led to the garage: with the snow coming down as it had been, there must have been a recent arrival. Stadic continued a half-mile down Kk to the next driveway, turned around and headed back.

LaChaise had given him a local phone number in the Cities, and another man had answered when he called. So at least two of them were down there-and after the fight, they were probably all three hanging together.

He wasn't sure what he'd find at this place: but if they were friends of

LaChaise, they might know where he was… and they might know Stadic's name.

Just short of the Darlings' driveway, he turned off his headlights and eased along the road with the parking lights. He turned into the end of the driveway and, keeping his foot off the brake, killed the engine and rolled to a stop.

He had a shotgun in the back, on the floor. He picked it up, jacked a shell into the chamber, zipped his parka, put on his gloves and cracked the door. He'd forgotten the dome light: it flickered, and he quickly pulled the door shut.

Watched. Nothing. He reached up, pushed the dome light switch all the way to the left, and tried the door again. No light. He got out, and headed down the drive, the shotgun in his hand.

A shaft of light fell on the snow outside the kitchen. Stadic did a quick-peek, one eye, just a half-second, past the edge of a yellowed pull-down shade. A gray-faced man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, with a bare-neck farmer haircut, sat alone at a kitchen table. He was eating macaroni out of a Tupperware bowl, washing it down with a can of beer. He was watching CNN.

Stadic ducked under the window and, walking light-footed, testing the snow for crunch, continued past the house to a detached garage, and down the side of the garage to a window. He flicked his pocket flash just long enough to see the truck inside. He checked the plates: Q-HORSE2. So they had two vehicles. There were probably no more than two people inside the house, because that was the nominal capacity of the truck. And there was probably only one person inside, the one he could see, because the other truck was gone.

He stepped back to the house, checked the window again. The man-Elmore

Darling?-was still there, eating. Stadic moved to the back door. The door opened onto a small threeseason porch. He pulled open the aluminum storm door a half-inch at a time. Tried the inner door: the knob turned under his hand.

Nobody locked anything in the country. Assholes. He opened the inner door as carefully as he had the storm door, a half-inch at a time, taking care not to let the shotgun rattle against the door frame.

Inside, on the porch, he was breathing hard from the tension, his breath curling like smoke in the dimly lit air. He could hear the TV, not the words, but the mutter. The porch smelled of grain and maybe, a bit, of horse shit: not unpleasant. Farm smells. The porch was almost as cold as the outside. He eased the storm door shut.

The door between the porch and the house had a window, covered with a pink curtain. He peeked, quickly: still eating. He'd have to move before Darling sensed him here, Stadic thought. He took a breath, reached out and tried the doorknob. Stiff.

All right. He backed away a step, lifted the shotgun to the present-arms position, cocked his leg.

Took a breath and kicked the doorknob.

The door flew open, the screws of the lock housing ripping out of the wood on the inside. Darling, a soup-spoon of macaroni halfway to his face, fell out of his chair and onto the linoleum floor, and tried to scramble to his feet.

Stadic, moving: ''Freeze… Freeze.'' Stadic was on top of Darling, leaning toward him, the barrel of the shotgun following his face. Stadic shouted,

''Police,'' and ''Down on the floor, down on the floor…''

With his dark coat blowing around his ankles, the cold wind behind him, and the black gun, he looked like the figure of death. Darling flattened himself on the floor, his hands arched behind his head, shouting, ''Don't, don't, don't.''

SANDY SPENT AN HOUR WATCHING THE TV NEWS, THE crisis building in the newsrooms.

Murder and terrorism experts arriving at the networks like boatloads of war refugees, looking for life on television. You could tell they liked it: liked the murder, liked the guns, liked having the expertise.

''Bunch of vultures,'' Butters said.

LaChaise and Butters and Martin were drunk. Martin simply got quieter and meaner: he'd stare at Sandy, drinking, stare some more. Butters tended to laugh and lurch around the house, and want to dance. LaChaise talked incessantly about the old days when they rode together with the Seed, and all the things the cops had done to him and his daddy.

''Nothing like what they did to my daddy,'' Butters said once. ''He used to write some bad checks when me and momma got hungry, and they'd be all over him.

Used to beat him up and make him cry. The goddamn sheriff there liked to see a man cry. I was gonna kill him when I got big enough, but somebody else did it first.''

''So what finally happened?'' Sandy asked. ''To your old man?''

''Hung himself down the basement one day, right next to this big old rack of empty Ball jars. I come home from school and found him there, just twisting around. Did it with one of them pieces of plastic electric cable, had a hell of a time getting it unwrapped off his neck…''

The story angered LaChaise-topped him-and he walked around the house kicking doors down. Then he came back and said, ''I don't want to hear no more about your daddy,'' and dropped into the one big chair and into himself, glowering at them, his disapproval rank in the air.

''Well, fuck you,'' Butters said, and Sandy felt like something could happen between them. But LaChaise grinned and said, ''You, too,'' and that defused it.

Then Nightline came on, with the story about Butters, and they listened to the

Nightline reporter list his life record.

''How'd they get that?'' LaChaise roared, and he glared around the room, as though one of them had given Butters up. ''Who'n the fuck is the traitor?''

And then it occurred to him. He swung, the bottle of Jim Beam still in his hand, to Sandy: ''That fuckin' Elmore.''

Sandy backed away, shook her head. ''No. Not Elmore. I warned him to keep his mouth shut, and he said he would.''But she thought, Maybe he did. Maybe he got on a phone and gave them up to Old John.

''I might have touched something,'' Butters said calmly, and LaChaise swung around toward him.

''You had gloves,'' he said.

''Couldn't get the pistol out of my pocket with gloves, so I took them off.

Tried to stay away from things, but… maybe I touched something. My fingerprints would ring bells with the cops.''

LaChaise considered, then said, ''Nah, it's that fuckin' Elmore, that's who it is.''

''If it was Elmore, he would've given them Martin, too,'' Butters said. He was holding a bourbon bottle, and took a swig.

''He's right, Dick…'' Sandy started, but LaChaise pointed at her, a thick forefinger in her face: ''Shut up.''

And he dropped back into his chair. After a moment he said, ''I just fell apart.

I saw the guy and I came apart.''

Three people had gone out to kill, and only LaChaise had failed. He'd been brooding about it.

''There was no way you could know,'' Martin said finally. He was as drunk as

Butters. ''It would have happened to me or Ansel, too. You call, you make the check, who's to know that he's gonna walk in one second later?''

''No, it's my fault,'' LaChaise said. ''I wasn't steady. I coulda took her. I coulda took them both. I coulda shot her, then shot him, let 'em watch each other die. She was right there, but I was gettin' fancy, then this cop pops up behind her. He was fast…''

''Lucky that shot caught you in the side, instead of square in the back,''

Butters said. They knew what he meant, but the word ''back'' seemed to hang in the air. LaChaise had been running when he was hit.

''I gotta get out of here,'' Sandy said. She stood up, butLaChaise pushed himself out of the chair and said, ''I told you to fuckin' shut up.'' And quick-quick as a whip-he caught her with an openhanded roundhouse, and knocked her to the floor, as Martin had earlier in the evening. Butters and Martin sat impassively, watching, as she struggled to her hands and knees.

She could taste blood in her mouth. She looked up at him and thought about getting a gun. She should have killed him the night she found out that he'd murdered the cop. She couldn't do it then. She could do it now.

''You gonna shut up?'' LaChaise asked.

''Let me go home, Dick,'' she said. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.

''Fuck that. You're staying here,'' he said.

But he didn't mention Elmore again that night.

ELMORE TOLD STADIC EVERYTHING HE KNEW, AND only lied in a few spots. ''Sandy's not in it at all,'' he said. ''They showed up, and there wasn't anything we could do. They got all the guns in the world.''

''Who are the other guys?'' Stadic asked.

''Martin, who's like this crazy queer from Michigan who walks around with a bow and arrow, and Ansel Butters. He's from Tennessee and he comes up and goes hunting with Martin.''

''Is Butters a fag?'' Stadic and Darling sat in wooden chairs, across the kitchen table from each other. The shotgun's barrel rested on the table, pointing at Darling's chest. Stadic had closed the outer door, and the house was getting warm again. The kitchen was a pleasant place, with just enough chintz and country pottery to make it homey. Darling had a nice wife, Stadic thought.

''No, Butters is straight, but he takes a lot of drugs,'' Darling said.

''Martin, now, everybody says he's a fag and he'sin love with Dick, but he never does anything homosexual or nothing… it's just a thing.''

''And that's all,'' Stadic said. ''There's just the four.''

''Just the three-you can't count Sandy,'' Elmore said. ''I'd tell you where they were at, but I don't know. I mean, I kinda know…''

Darling was holding this one piece back, lying. He was an excellent liar, but

Stadic was a professional interrogator. He wasn't sure that Darling was lying, but he also knew that he had no way to control the man. He couldn't take him with him, couldn't hold him. And if Darling got in touch with LaChaise, LaChaise would recognize Stadic's description. A problem.

He sat in the kitchen chair with the barrel of the gun pointing at Darling's chest.

''Tell me again,'' Stadic said. ''You get off at Lexington…''

''And it must be about six blocks up the road. North. Then right. Just a little house.''

''You didn't see the number or the street name.''

''Nope. I was just following behind.'' He brightened. ''But I'll tell you-my truck is on the street. So is Martin's. You could look for my truck, it's got a license plate says, QHORSE.''

Stadic nodded. ''So six or seven blocks.''

''No more than that,'' Darling said. ''We could find it. I'd go down there with you.''

Stadic thought for another moment, then shook his head.

''Nah,'' he said.

''What, then?'' Darling asked, his eyebrows going up as if mystified, a stupid smile on his face. Stadic shrugged, and pulled the trigger.

The 00s in the three-inch Magnum shell blew Elmore Darling completely off his kitchen chair.

• • •

SANDY HUDDLED IN THE BEDROOM, JUST TO BE AWAY from them.

LaChaise went to sleep in his chair, and Martin and Butters sat in the living room, the television turned down, talking quietly about the kills.

Martin said, ''I had my hands on him and when the knife went in, he kind of rose up, and shook. Like when you cut the throat on a deer, they make that last little try to get goin'… you know?'' ''Sure, they push up, try to get their feet under them…''

''Damn good time to get hurt,'' Martin said. ''There's one old boy, Rob Harris over to Luce County, got down on a spike buck like that, stuck him in the throat with his knife, and that buck rose up and stuck one of them spikes right in

Rob's eye. Blinded the eye.''

''What happened to the buck?'' Butters asked.

''Run off. Rob says it must've been a brisket hit 'cause there was blood all over hell,'' Martin said. ''Probably out there to this day…''

''Yeah, well, this Sherrill dude sure ain't.''

''Not when I get that close,'' Martin said. ''When I get that close, the boy's a goner…''

They both turned and looked at LaChaise, thinking they might have given offense, but LaChaise was unconscious.

''This Kupicek, she never even twitched,'' Butters said. ''Never even knew what hit her. One minute she's talking to me, the next minute, it's St. Peter.''

''Silencer work good?''

Butters nodded. ''Worked real good. All you hear is that ratchet sound, you know, maybe a little pop, but it's no more'n opening a can of soda.''

''Wish I had me a silencer like that.''

''If I were gonna do it again, I think I might do it as asingle-shot. You know, load one round, carry it cockedandlocked over an empty clip. Then you wouldn't get the ratchet noise…''

They went on, working over the details, the TV turned down. Butters's face would come up every half hour or so. On the first newsbreak of the day, at five o'clock, TV3 produced a series of computer-morphed photos of both LaChaise and

Butters, with a variety of hairstyles and facial hair.

''Oughta shave your head,'' Martin said. ''That's the only thing they ain't got.''

''Nah. Too late for me,'' Butters said. He looked at his watch. ''Be daylight in a couple-three hours. I'm going out. Check this kid's house, the Davenport kid.''

''Better wait for Dick,'' Martin said.

Butters shook his head as he stood up. ''It's about fifty-fifty that it's an ambush,'' Butters said. ''Better that only one of us goes; and Dick's hurt, and they don't know you yet.''

''You sober?''

''As a judge.''

Martin dropped his hands on his thighs, a light conclusive slap, and nodded.

Butters said: ''Help me load up.''

''What're you takin'?'' Martin asked.

Butters grinned: ''One of everything.''

LaChaise stirred in the chair, half-opened his eyes, shook his head and slept again.

''I better get going,'' Butters said. ''Don't want to disturb Dick's beauty rest.''