Sudden Prey (21 page)

The lieutenant ran up, said, ''Dispatch is calling the FAA, they'll try to get these assholes out of here.'' They both looked up at the chopper, and then the lieutenant said, looking at Butters's body, ''You know how lucky we are?''

''What?'' Lucas looked up. His scalp had begun to hurt, as though somebody had pressed a hot wire against it.

''He was in that house,'' the lieutenant said, and Lucas turned to look.

A man, a woman and a kid were looking out through the shattered door, past a patrol cop who'd run up to see that everybody was okay. The woman kept pushing the kid back, but the kid wanted to see. ''If he'd holed up in there, there wouldn't have been a goddamn thing we could do. We could've had some kind of nightmare out here.''

''Yeah . . .'' And Lucas suddenly laughed, all the tension of the last ten minutes slipping away. ''But look what he did to your cars.''

The lieutenant looked at the car, which showed a ragged line of holes starting in the front fender and running all the way to the back bumper. A couple of slugs had grooved the roof, the windows were gone. The lieutenant did a little Stan Laurel walk down the length of the car and said, ''They hurt m' auto-mobile, Ollie.''

''I guess. He didn't miss a single piece of sheet metal,'' Lucas said.

''Sure, it's a little rough,'' the lieutenant said, switching to a car salesman's voice. ''But look at the tires: the tires are in A-1 condition.''

They both laughed, shaking their heads. They laughed from relief, the lifting of the fear, the safety of the other cops and the people in the house.

Another chopper, TV3 this time, arriving late, swept over the house with its lights and beating blades and caught them standing over the body of Ansel Butters, looking at the car, laughing, unable to stop.

Chapter
Twelve.

THE DAWN CAME LIKE A SHEET OF DULL STEEL PUSHED over the eastern horizon, cold, sullen and stupid. Fifteen cop cars blocked off the neighborhood, and yellow crime-scene tape wrapped the trail along which Butters had fled. A halfdozen cops were walking the route, looking for anything he might have thrown from his pockets--a piece of paper, a receipt, anything.

Tennessee cops had been to Butters's broken-down acreage since the night before, when his prints had been nailed down. They'd discovered what looked like a fresh grave in a decrepit apple orchard, opened it and found a Labrador retriever, shot once in the head.

''Old dog, had bones sticking out of his back, all gray on his muzzle,'' a Tennessee state cop told Lucas. ''Probably shot him a couple of weeks ago. It's been cold enough that the body's still intact.''

Lucas, standing in the street next to the shot-up cop car, was impatient with the dog information: ''We need anything in the house that might point to associates,'' Lucas said.''Any piece of paper, phone records, anything.''

''We're tearing the place apart,'' the Tennessee cop said. ''But when we saw the grave, we thought we had to do something about it.''

''Screw the grave, we gotta find out where he's been and who he was hanging out with . . .''

''We're watching you on TV, we know you got a problem,'' the Tennessee cop said dryly. ''We're turning over everything.''

LUCAS RECOGNIZED THE TRUCK THE MOMENT HE SAW it: the truck that had slowed through the intersection. He couldn't be absolutely sure, but he was sure enough. Butters had been on his way in to Small's house. Whoever had called him had known, had saved Sarah's life, and probably Jennifer's and Small's and the boy's . . .

''Belongs to Elmore Darling,'' the St. Paul cops told him when he walked up. ''Wisconsin cops are on the way out to his house.''

''Goddamnit,'' Lucas said. The woman had suckered them. They'd had her, they'd let her go, and here was her truck.

The truck produced gas charge slips, maps, empty soda cans, and dozens of prints. The guns at the house had produced nothing but fragments of prints: they'd all been carefully polished with cleaning rags. There were a few good prints on a hunting bow, and more on some hunting arrows. The prints were on the way to the FBI.

St. Paul crime-scene guys had shrouded the truck's license plate from cameras, and asked the local media not to mention it, but the word was going to leak, and probably soon. If the Dunn County cops got to the Darlings' place soon enough, they might surprise them, and anyone staying with them.Lucas had to smother an impulse to run over to Wisconsin, tobe in on the raid. The Wisconsin cops would do well enough without him.

As Lucas ran through the bits and pieces of paper coming out of the van, all carefully cased in Ziploc bags, Del wandered up.

''How's Cheryl?'' Lucas asked.

''Hurtin'. They were giving her another sedative when I left. Christ, I heard about this, I couldn't believe it.''

''It was interesting,'' Lucas said.

''What happened to your head?''

''Cut, somehow. Nothing much.''

''You're bleeding like a stuck pig.''

''Nah . . .'' He wiped at his hair, and got fresh blood on the palm of his hand.

''Did you hear about the St. Paul cop that got shot? Waxman?'' Del asked.

Lucas was trying to find a place to wipe the blood, stopped, and asked, ''I didn't know his name . . . What?''

''Just came on the radio: he died.''

''Ah, shit.'' Lucas looked down the street. Everywhere, the St. Paul cops were clustering. The word was getting out.

''Radio says they never got him to the table,'' Del said. ''He was barely alive when he went in the door. They say he was gone thirty seconds later.''

ROUX CAME THROUGH WITH THE ST. PAUL CHIEF AND found Lucas and Del eating cinnamon mini-doughnuts at the house. The guns from the closet had been carefully laid out on the living-room floor, waiting for a ride downtown.

''Jesus,'' Roux said to Lucas, shocked. ''You were hit . . .''

''Naw, just cut.'' He pawed gently at his scalp. The cut was beginning to itch, and when he touched it, a burning sensation shot through his scalp, and he winced. ''The bleeding's stopped . . .'' He took his hand away and looked at it; blood dappled his fingertips.

''Lucas,'' she said, ''I'm telling you, not asking you. Go get it fixed.''

''Yeah . . .''

''Now,'' she said. Then, looking at the guns: ''They brought an arsenal with them. We lucked out.''

''Look, you gotta talk to the patrol people,'' Lucas said. ''LaChaise is on the street, now. He'll be looking for a friend--old bikers, dopers, somebody like Dexter Lamb. In fact, we ought to stake out the Lamb place, they could turn up there.''

''Yeah, yeah . . .''

''And you gotta get the patrol guys pushing the street people. Put some more money out there. The money worked. If we start running the assholes around, and there's some money in it, we'll find them.''

Roux said, '' We'll do that. You get your head fixed.''

DEL DROVE LUCAS A FEW BLOCKS TO RAMSEY MEDICAL Center, where a doctor anesthetized, cleaned and stitched the scalp wound.

''Souvenir,'' the doctor said.

She handed Lucas a scrap of silver metal, like a fragment of Christmas-tree tinsel, but stiff--maybe a scrap of car aerial.

''How many stitches?'' Lucas asked.

''Twelve or thirteen, I imagine,'' she said, sewing carefully.

Del was reading a two-year-old copy of Golf Digest , looking up every once in a while to see how it was going. When she finished, the doctor said ''Okay,'' and tidied gauze and disinfectant-soaked cotton away into a steel basket, and thenpaused and asked, ''Why were you laughing after you killed that man?''

''What?'' Lucas didn't understand the question. Del dropped the top of the magazine and stared at the doctor.

''I saw it on television,'' she said. ''You were standing there laughing, right over his body.''

''I don't think so,'' Lucas said, trying to remember.

''I saw it,'' she snapped. ''I thought it was pretty . . . distasteful, considering what just happened. So'd the anchorpeople: they said it was shocking.''

''I don't know.'' Lucas shook his head, reached toward his scalp, which now felt dead, then dropped his hand. ''I mean, I believe you--but I can't remember laughing about anything. Christ, we just finished carrying a shot cop down to a car.''

''The cop died,'' Del said, putting the magazine down.

''And I didn't kill anyone,'' Lucas said. He hopped off the exam table where he'd been sitting, and loomed over the doctor.

''That's not what they're saying on television,'' the doctor said, giving no ground. She glanced at Del, pulled off her latex gloves with a snap !.

''Don't believe everything you see in the movies,'' Lucas said.

''This wasn't the movies--it was videotape, and I saw it,'' she insisted.

''The only difference between TV news and the movies,'' Del said, ''is that movies don't lie about what they are.''

''Oh, bullshit,'' the doctor said.

''If you operated on a cancer patient, and the patient died, and when you came out of the operating room, you saw a friend and smiled at him . . . if somebody took a picture of you, would that represent the way you felt about the patient dying?''

She studied him for a minute, then said, ''No.''

''I hope not,'' Lucas said. ''I don't remember laughing.Maybe I did. But that doesn't have anything to do with what happened.''

ON THE WAY OUT, DEL SAID, WONDERINGLY, ''ARE WE in trouble or something?''

''I don't know,'' Lucas said. They tracked through the endless hallways to the back, where they'd ditched the car away from the reporters in the lobby. ''More and more, with TV, it's like we fell down the fuckin' rabbit hole.''

ANDERSON CALLED: HE'D BEEN TRACKING THE VARIOUS investigations. ''The Dunn County cops hit the Darling place. They found the husband . . . uh, Elmore Darling . . . was shot to death in the kitchen. His wife is missing. His truck is up there, so she's down here, somewhere, if she's still alive.''

Lucas shook his head: ''Huh. Family feud?''

''Hard to tell what's going on,'' Sloan said. ''They got a charge slip from yesterday--from last night--at an Amoco station off I-94 over in St. Paul, so he was over there, probably at that house. And then he gets shot up there. There's no doubt he was shot in place, there's splatter all over the kitchen. Short range with a shotgun.''

Lucas repeated the story to Del, who scratched his chin: ''That don't compute.''

Lucas said into the phone, ''They're printing everything, right?''

''I guess. They've got their crime-scene guy up there.''

''Be nice to know who all was in that house,'' Lucas said. ''If Sandy Darling was there with the rest of them.''

''I'll push them on it,'' Anderson said.

LACHAISE, MARTIN AND SANDY HAD BEEN HEADING back to the house with a bag of supermarket doughnuts andtwo quarts of milk, when Stadic had called and told them to get out.

''Shit.'' LaChaise was stunned. ''They got us, they got the house.''

''Maybe something happened with Ansel,'' Martin said slowly. ''Maybe they spotted him scoutin' out the Davenport house, and followed him back.''

He pulled the truck to the curb, reached out and poked the ''power'' button on the radio, got old-time rock 'n' roll, and started working down the buttons.

Sandy looked from one of them to the other: ''Now what?''

''I'm trying to think,'' LaChaise said.

''Let me go back home,'' Sandy said.

''Fuck that,'' Martin said. To LaChaise: ''We gotta get out of sight.''

''How about the trailer? We could probably lay low in the trailer for a while.''

''If they've got Elmore's truck, they'll bag Elmore for sure, and he'll tell them about the trailer,'' Martin said. ''If they put any pressure on him, he'll talk his ass off.''

He was still playing with the car buttons, and finally switched over to AM. They found a news station almost instantly, but no news--nothing but blather.

''Let's get turned around, and get out of here,'' LaChaise said finally. ''If Stadic's right, we're too close.''

''If he's right, we ought to hear something on the radio,'' Martin said.

But he swung the truck around, and they headed west toward Minneapolis. At that moment, a helicopter roared overhead, cutting diagonally across the city blocks, headed for Frogtown.

''Goddamnit,'' Martin said. ''They're doing it.''

LaChaise punched the radio buttons again, still found nothing.''Let's get over to Minneapolis. We can figure it out there.''

''Maybe it wasn't Butters led them in--maybe it was Elmore,'' Martin said. ''Maybe Butters is still out there.''

LaChaise seized on the idea: ''That's gotta be it.'' To Sandy: ''You were talking about it last night, weren't you? Bailing out on us.''

''No, we weren't,'' she lied.

''Don't give me that shit,'' he muttered; he poked spasmodically at the radio, and tripped over the news station again. This time, they were on the air locally:

''. . . police are flooding the east side neighborhood around Dale on the possibility that one or more members of the gang escaped the house at the same time as Butters. Residents are asked to report unusual foot traffic through their streets, but not to approach anyone they may see. These men are armed and obviously dangerous . . .''