Sudden Prey (35 page)

Martin spotted an all-night supermarket on the outskirts of the city, and told Sandy to take the off ramp. LaChaise waited in the car with Sandy until Martin returned: he'd bought two loaves of bread, a couple of pounds of sandwich meat, and two big bars of dark green auto mechanic's soap.

''What's the soap for?'' Sandy asked, peering into the bag.

''Whittlin','' Martin said, grinning at her.

LaChaise rented a room in a chain motel called the Red Roof Inn. LaChaise went in because he'd shaved just before they left the Cities, and Sandy had given him a neat trim. Wearing one of Harp's suits with a silk tie, he looked like a Republican. He paid cash for the room, two days, said he was alone, and asked that the maid be told not to wake him up.

''Been traveling all night,'' he said.

''No problem,'' said the woman behind the desk.

The room was on the back side of the motel, with two double beds and a TV. They slept, restlessly, until two o'clock, when Martin got up and ordered a pizza, Coke and coffee from a local pizza place. The stuff was delivered, no questions, and they ate silently. At four, with the sun slipping down in the west, they went back out to the car.

Martin said, ''I'll drive.'' ''That's all right, I . . .''

''Get in the back and shut up,'' LaChaise said.

''What's going on?'' Sandy asked. LaChaise grabbed her by the jacket and jerked her forward, until his face was only an inch from hers: she could smell the cheese and onions from the pizza.

''Change of plans. Now get in the fuckin' car.''

She got in the car. ''Dick, what're you going to do? Dick . . . ?''

''We're gonna rob another goddamned credit union, is what we're gonna do,'' LaChaise said.

LUCAS WAS AT THE HOSPITAL BECAUSE HE COULDN'T think of any better place to be: they now hadn't heard from LaChaise for thirty-six hours. Del, Sloan, Sherrill came and went and returned. They were running out of conversational gambits, sitting in dark rooms, out of sight, waiting . . .

Lester called. ''Lucas: LaChaise, Martin and Darling just hit a credit union in Kansas City. Not more than an hour ago--four twenty-five.''

''Kansas City?'' The news came like a punch, left him unsteady. ''Are they sure?''

''Yeah, they say there's no doubt. We're getting a videotape relayed through TV3. The Kansas City cops gave it to everybody in sight.''

''How soon will you have the tape?''

''Ten or fifteen minutes, I guess. TV3's putting it on the air soon as they get it. We're gonna tape it off them.''

Lucas hung up and looked at Sherrill and Sloan: ''You ain't gonna believe it,'' he said.

THE ROBBERY WAS SMOOTH, PROFESSIONAL. MARTIN was in first with an AR-15. He was shouting the moment hecame through the door, leveling the rifle, pointing at people.

LaChaise pushed Sandy Darling through the door behind Martin, then vaulted up on the counter. There were only two customers in the place, and three people behind the counter. LaChaise looted the cash drawers, said something to one of the younger women, smacked her on the ass with the palm of his hand and crossed through the counter gate. The camera, taking in the whole office, showed Sandy Darling pressed against the wall, her hands over her ears.

''They ain't no cherries,'' Del said. They were in homicide, fifteen guys and four women standing around a small TV.

''You've seen it before,'' Lucas said. ''It's the same goddamn robbery that we broke up, all over again.''

''Except for the grenade,'' Sherrill said.

As they were backing out the door, Martin gave a little speech. ''We want everybody into the manager's office, on the floor, behind the desk. We're gonna roll a hand grenade in here . . . now I don't want to scare anyone, 'cause they're nothing like you see in movies. There'll just be a little pop. You'll be fine if you're behind the desk . . .''

Martin held up what looked like a grenade, and the office staff and customers jammed into the manager's office, out of sight. Martin called, ''Here we go,'' and rolled the grenade into the room, and disappeared. The grenade turned out to be a hand-carved lump of green soap that didn't look too much like a grenade, when you looked at it close.

''No plates,'' Lucas grunted, watching. ''They didn't want anybody to run out and see the car and get the plates.''

''Darling didn't look too happy to be there. No gun, she looked scared, they had to push her in and out,'' Sloan said.

''They got eight grand,'' said somebody else.

''So he says to this chick,'' Lester began, and then corrected himself, ''. . . this woman, the teller, he says, 'You oughta make it to Acapulco sometime, honey.' ''

''Sounds like bullshit,'' said Del.

''I don't know,'' Lester said. ''He's the kind of guy who'd say something like that.'' He looked around the room: ''I wish we'd taken him here, goddamnit.''

LATE THAT NIGHT, SANDY SAT IN THE BACKSEAT, UNMOVING, wide awake, not quite believing it. The lights of Des Moines were fading in the rear window. They were headed back to Minneapolis, ahead of what the all-night stations were saying was a major storm coming up from the Southwest. Already blizzard conditions in Nebraska.

They'd be in the Cities by dawn, back in the apartment. The whole thing had been a game, to loosen up the targets.

''A stroke of fuckin' genius,'' LaChaise said, pounding Martin on the back. ''I just wish we had someplace to spend the cash.''

Chapter
Twenty-Two.

LUCAS SAT AWAKE, TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF IT. IF LaChaise and Martin were on a suicide run--and it had appeared that way from the beginning--what had changed their minds? They couldn't believe that escape was as simple as running to Mexico. The Mexicans would ship them back to the States as quickly as they were found; or kill them.

Maybe it was simpler than he was making it: maybe their nerve failed.

He got up, hands in his pockets, and stared out the window across his snow-covered lawn. In the distance, on the other side of the Mississippi, he could see Christmas lights red, green and white along somebody's roofline. A silent night.

And he was restless. He hadn't wanted Weather to come back to the house--one more night in the hotel, he'd said, just until we find their trail again--but she'd insisted. She wanted to sleep in her own bed. She was in it now, and sleeping soundly.

Lucas was sitting up with a pistol and a twelve-gauge Wingmaster pump. He looked at a clock: four in the morning.

He picked up a TV remote, pointed at a small TV in the corner of the room, and called up the aviation weather service. All day, the weather forecasters had been talking about a huge low-pressure system that was pinwheeling up from the southern Rockies. Snow had overrun all of the southwestern and south-central parts of the state, and now the weather radar showed it edging into the metro area.

If they were coming back, he thought--if this thing was no more than a shuck--and if they'd fallen behind the snow line, they might be stalled for a day. If they'd stayed ahead of it, they'd be coming into town about now.

Nobody thought they'd be coming back. The network TV people were getting out of town as fast as they could pack up and find space on an outgoing plane. Nobody wanted to be stuck out in flyover country the week before Christmas, not with a big storm coming.

The cops were the same way: going home, filing for overtime. Lucas called Kansas City cops, and the Missouri and Kansas highway patrols every hour, looking for even the faintest sniff of LaChaise. Nobody had gotten one: they'd vanished.

Just as if they'd taken country roads east and north, instead of west and south, where the search was focused, Lucas thought. He looked out the window again, then selfconsciously went and closed the wooden blinds.

After killing the TV, he wandered through the dark house, moving by touch, listening, trailing the shotgun. He checked the security system, got a drink of water and went back to the living room where he dropped on a couch. In a few minutes, he eased into a fitful sleep, the .45 in a belly holster, the shotgun on the coffee table.

THEY STAYED AHEAD OF THE SNOW.

They drove through southern Iowa in the crackling cold,millions of stars but no moon, following the red and yellow lights of the freighter trucks heading into Des Moines, and after Des Moines, up toward Minneapolis-St. Paul. They stopped once at a gas station, the bare-faced LaChaise pumping the gas and paying a sleepy attendant, the hood of his parka covering his head, a scarf shrouding his neck.

''Colder'n a witch's left tit,'' the attendant said. He looked at a thermometer in the window. ''Six below. You want some Heat to put in the gas?''

''Yeah, that'd be good,'' LaChaise said. A compact television sat in a corner, turned to CNN. As the attendant was ringing up the sale, a security-camera videotape came up, replaying the Kansas City robbery.

''What's that shit?'' LaChaise asked.

The attendant glanced at the TV. ''Ah, it's them assholes that were up in the Cities. They're making a run for Mexico.''

''Good,'' LaChaise said.

''Wisht I was going with them,'' the attendant said, and he counted out the change.

As they continued up I-35, the nighttime radio stations came and went, playing Christmas music. Clouds began to move in, like dark arrows overhead; the stars winked out.

''Christmas, four days,'' Sandy said, sadness in her voice.

''Don't mean a fuckin' thing to me,'' LaChaise said. ''My old man drank up our Christmases.''

''You must of had a few,'' Sandy said.

LaChaise sat silent for a moment, then said, ''Maybe a couple.'' He thought about his sister and her feetsie pajamas.

Martin said, ''We had a couple of good ones, when my old man was alive. He got me a fire engine, once.''

''What happened to him?'' Sandy asked.

''He died,'' Martin said. ''Throat cancer.''

''Jeez, that's awful,'' Sandy said. ''I'm sorry.''

''Hard way to go,'' Martin said. ''Then it was me and myma, and we didn't have no Christmases after that.''

LaChaise didn't like the subject matter and fiddled with the radio: the scanner locked on ''O Holy Night.''

''I know this song; my old man used to sing it,'' Martin said.

And he sang along in a creditable baritone,

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining, this is the night of the birth of Our Lord .

Sandy and LaChaise, astonished, glanced at each other: then Sandy looked out the windows, at the thin snowflakes now streaking past, and felt like she was a long way from anywhere.

They drove in silence for a long time, and Sandy slept off and on. She woke with the sense that it was much later, sat up, and looked out. They'd slowed: the snow was now coming at the front of the car like a tornado funnel, but they were passing through a bridge of light.

''Where are we?'' she asked.

''Just south of the Cities,'' Martin said. ''We'll be in town in twenty minutes.''

''Lots of snow.''

''Started hard about ten minutes ago,'' Martin said. He looked at LaChaise.

''What do you think?''

''Let's do it. Get back, drop Sandy and do it.'' He looked out the window. ''This storm is perfect. We won't get a better shot than this.''

''What?'' Sandy asked.

LaChaise looked back over the seat. ''We're gonna take the hospital.''

LACHAISE CAME TO HIM IN A DREAM. LUCAS WAS ON THE couch, struggling to wake up, but he couldn't. He was too tired, and whenever he tried to open his eyes, he'd immediatelyfall back into a deep sleep--and then struggle out again. He had to wake up, because LaChaise and Martin and Darling were sneaking through the garage, coming up to the kitchen door, guns in their hands, laughing, while Lucas struggled to wake . . .

''Lucas. Lucas . . .''

He bolted up, and Weather jumped back. ''Whoa,'' he said. ''Sorry.''

''That's okay. You wanted me to wake you . . .''

''Time to go?''

She was dressed in slacks and a long-sleeved blouse, operating clothes, and was carrying a plastic bag with one of her simple black Donna Karan suits from Saks. Faculty meetings. ''Pretty soon. I'll put some coffee on. It's snowing like crazy out there.''

MARTIN SKETCHED OUT THE LAYOUT OF THE EIGHTH Street entry of the Hennepin County Medical Center, from the earlier recon.

''Two doors: the main emergency room is locked. We could fake that we're hurt, and they'd let us in, but there'll be a bunch of people there . . .'' He tapped the second door. ''This one leads back to the main lobby, right past the emergency room--the emergency room is off to the left, down this hall. There's a guard desk just inside. If we was hurt, he'd let us in, I seen hurt people come in that door. But we'd have to take him out . . .''

''No problem.''

''. . . Then we go on down the hall and the elevators are over to the left. We want the second-floor surgical care . . .''

They worked through it: get the room numbers at the front desk, get up, hit the place, get out.

Martin said, ''It's six blocks or so: if we really got in trouble, we could run back here in five minutes, on foot. Thatsnow'd help: can't see shit in the snow, not until dawn. We got almost two hours yet.''