Sudden Prey (45 page)

''Who killed her old man?''

''She doesn't know. She said it wasn't LaChaise or Butters or Martin.''

''Stadic?'' asked Sherrill, in a hushed voice.

''I think so,'' Lucas said. ''He was trying to get rid of everyone. He got the truck tags, somehow, and figured out where they lived. He probably thought they were hiding up there, and went up to take them out. He had to see everybody dead to get free--and they all would've been dead if Sandy Darling hadn't tripped over her goddamn cowboy boots and fallen on her face in the stadium.''

''It's a hell of a story,'' Sloan said. ''The question is, how much of it is bullshit?''

''Maybe some,'' Lucas said. ''Maybe not, though. There were a couple of things: she said while they attacked the hospital, they chained her to a post in Harp's garage. There's a chain around the post, and there're two padlocks, just like she said, and there's paint missing from the post and it's on the chain, as if somebody was trying to pull it free. The chain's got latents all over it, so we'll know if she was handling the chain. I think she was. Then she says she tried to climb out a window on Harp's building, walk down a ledge and go down the fire escape, but that the fire escape wasjammed. There are fingerprints on the window, and the fire escape is jammed--it's actually an illegal latch, but you can't see it. So that's right. And walking that ledge in her bare feet, on snow, you'd have to be pretty desperate. And when she called from the dome, she didn't know it was all over, and she tried to warn me that LaChaise was going after Weather . . .''

''All right, so she walks,'' Sloan said. He stood up, yawned, and said, ''The big thing is, you gotta take care of yourself .''

''I gotta take care of Weather, is what I gotta do,'' Lucas said.

Sloan shook his head: ''Nope. Nobody can take care of Weather except Weather. You gotta take care of yourself.''

''Jesus, Sloan,'' Sherrill said. She was getting angry. ''You know what he means . . .''

Sloan opened his mouth and shut it again: A few years earlier, Lucas had gone through an episode of clinical depression, and since then, Sloan had thought of his friend as somewhat . . . delicate was not quite the right word; dangerously poised, perhaps. He said, ''Well . . .'' and let it go.

A nurse poked her head in, spotted Lucas and said, ''Weather's up.''

Lucas pushed himself out of the chair and said, ''See you guys later,'' and hurried down the hall after the nurse.

Weather had a private room, and when Lucas walked in, she was on her feet, in a hospital gown, digging into a lockerlike closet for her clothes. Her face was intent, hurried.

''Weather . . .''

She jumped, turned, saw him and her face softened: ''Oh, God, Lucas.'' She reached toward him.

''How are you?'' He wrapped her up in his arms and her feet came off the floor.

''If you don't smother me, I'll probably be okay,'' she gasped.

He put her down. ''Probably?''

''Well, when they had me sedated, they talked me into this ridiculous hospital gown.'' She pulled it out to the side, as if she were about to curtsy. ''Every doc I know has been down to check on me, and every one has taken a good look at my ass.''

''Just like you: bringing light into people's lives.''

''I gotta get out of this gown,'' she said, digging into the locker again. ''Shut the door.''

Lucas shut the door, and as she tossed the balled-up gown on the bed, he said, ''Really now--don't bullshit me. How are you?''

She was pulling on a blouse, and stopped, suddenly, as her hands came through the cuffs. ''I'm sorta . . . messed up, I think. It's the weirdest thing.'' She rubbed her temple, looking up at him. Then her eyes drifted away, focused in the middle distance past his shoulder. ''I'll be going along, thinking about something else, and then all of a sudden, there I am again, back in the hall with this man and you're standing there and then . . .''

She shuddered.

''Don't think about it,'' Lucas said.

''I'm not thinking about it. I refuse to think about it. But it's like . . . like somebody else holds up a picture of it, right in front of my eyes. It just comes, boom!'' she said.

''Post-traumatic stress,'' he said.

''That's what I think,'' she said. ''But in some way, I never really believed in it until now. It's like people who had it were . . . weaklings, or something.''

''It'll go away,'' he repeated. ''There in the hall--I didn't know what was happening with you and LaChaise, I couldn't take any chances, there wasn't any way to really know.''

''I worked that out,'' she said. ''And God, the whole thing was my fault. What was I doing here? When he came in the OR, I thought I was dead. I thought he'd kill me right there, and all my friends, the people with me. I felt so stupid . . .''

''You can't anticipate lunatics,'' Lucas said. ''None of this made any sense.''

Weather was rambling on: ''Then he made the fatal error. I didn't see it, because we were talking so . . . normally. But I see it now: he'd maneuvered himself, by what he'd done, the way he was acting, into a spot where all the solutions were drastic and narrow. Thinking about it, I'm not sure he would have surrendered. At the time I thought he would: No, I was sure of it. But now, I'm not sure. When we were talking, he'd keep changing his mind, like . . . like . . .''

''A child,'' Lucas said.

''Yes . . . Well, not quite. Like a crazy child,'' she said. She was staring out the window when she said that, looking down at the trees along the Mississippi, when suddenly she focused again, and turned to look up at him. ''What about you?'' she asked. ''We heard about the policeman, that he was killed and you were there . . . are you all right?''

''Oh, yeah, I'm fine.'' He stood back from her, holding on to her shoulders but at arm's length, looking her over. She seemed so bright, so focused, so normal, so all right , that he suddenly laughed.

''What?'' she asked, trying on a smile.

''Nothing,'' he said. He wrapped her up again, and her feet came off the floor again. ''Everything. Especially the way that gown showed your ass off.''

''Lucas . . . ''

''Sandford grabs you by the throat and never lets go.''

--Robert B. Parker

If you enjoyed Sudden Prey , you won't want to miss John Sandford's newest, most blood-chilling thriller . . .

Turn the page for a special excerpt from this provocative new novel-- available now from G. P. Putnam's Sons . . .

THE BEE WAS IMPATIENT, CHECKING HER WATCH, PEERING down the street, bouncing on her toes. She was waiting at the corner of Gayley and Le Conte, next to the Shell station, a forest-green JanSport backpack at her feet. Her face was a pale crescent in the headlights of passing cars, in the Los Angeles never-dark.

Anna Batory, riding without her seatbelt, her feet braced on the truck's plastic dashboard, saw the Bee step out to the curb and pointed: ''There she is.''

Creek grunted and eased the truck to the curb. Anna rolled down the passenger-side window and spoke to the mask: ''You're the Bee?''

''You're late.''

Anna glanced at the dashboard clock, then back out the window: ''Jason said ten-thirty.''

Jason was sitting in the back of the truck on a gray metal folding chair, next to Louis. He looked up from his Sony chip-cam and said, ''That's what they told me. Ten-thirty.''

''It's now ten-thirty- three ,'' the Bee said. She turned herwrist to show the blue face on a stainless-steel Rolex.

''Sorry,'' Anna said.

''Around the corner to Westwood, then Westwood to Circle. You know where Circle is?''

''Yeah, we know where everything is,'' Creek said. They'd been everywhere. ''Hold on.''

THERE'S A GUY ON THE CORNER,'' CREEK SAID.

Ahead and to the right, a woman in a ski mask was standing on the corner, making a hurry-up windmilling motion with one arm.

''That's Otter,'' the Bee said. ''And that's the corner of Circle. They must be out--turn right.''

Creek took the corner, past the waving woman. The street tilted uphill, and a hundred yards up, a cluster of women spilled down a driveway to the street, two of them struggling with a blue plastic municipal garbage can. A security guard was running down from the top of the hill, another one trailing behind.

''Got them coming out,'' Anna said, over her shoulder. A quick pulse ran through her: not quite excitement but some combination of pleasure and apprehension.

Nobody ever knew for sure what would happen at these things. Nothing much, probably, but any time you had guards with guns. . . . Did the guards have guns? She took a halfsecond to look but couldn't tell.

As she looked, she reached behind her, lifted the lid on the steel box bolted on the back of her seat, pulled the Nagra tape recorder from its foam nest. Jason was looking past her, through the windshield at the action, and she snapped: ''Get ready.''

''Yes, Mom,'' he said. He fitted a headset over the crown of his head, plugged in the earphone. Creek was driving with one hand, pulling on his own headset.

''Everybody hear me?'' Anna asked, speaking into her face mike. The radios were one-way: Anna talked, everyone else listened.

Creek said, ''Yeah,'' and took the truck over the curb, one big bounce and a nose-down, squealing, full stop. Jason had braced himself, and Louis had swivelled to let the chair take the jolt. The Bee toppled over and squealed, ''Shit.''

Ahead of them, the women carrying the garbage can were jerking and twisting down the driveway, doing the media polka--looking for the cameras, running for the lights, trying to stay away from the guards.

The raiders had gone into the back of the building, over a loading dock; the dock was contained inside a fence, with a concrete patio big enough for fifteen or twenty cars. At least a dozen women and a couple of men, all masked, milled around the patio; then a man ran out of the medical building, carrying a small, squealing, black-and-white pig. Then another woman, carrying boxes, or maybe cages.

As the truck settled, as Bee squealed, Anna was out and running, the Nagra banging against her leg. Jason was two steps behind her with the backup Sony, and Creek was out the driver's door, his camera up on his shoulder, off to Anna's left. Bee, a little out of shape, sputtered in their wake.

Then Creek lit up and Anna yelled at the man with the pig, ''Bring the pig. Bring the pig this way. . . . Bring the pig.'' The man saw them coming and walked toward them, and she had the Nagra's mike pointed at the squealing pig and Jason lit up.

The security guards saw the camera lights and the first one turned to the man trailing, yelled something to the other, who ran back up the hill. The first one continued down and shouted at Creek, ''Hey, no cameras here, no cameras.''

A group of masked women headed toward him, walled him off from the rest of the milling crowd, pushed him toward theramp. Frustrated, he climbed up the loading dock and hurried to the open door. Just as he was about to go through the door, he jumped back, and a young man in a blue oxford cloth shirt and jeans ran out of the building and headed toward the lights.

Anna said to the microphone, her voice calm, even, ''Creek, there's a kid coming in, watch him. Jason, stay with the pig.''

Creek back-pedaled. When Anna spoke into his ear, he'd looked up from his eyepiece and spotted the kid in the blue shirt: trouble, maybe. Trouble made good movies. The kid was striding toward them, a dark smear under his nose, one hand cupping his jaw. He seemed to be crying.

''They were gonna kill this pig, for nothing--for soap tests or something, shampoo,'' the masked pig-man shouted at Jason's camera. The pig was freaking out, long shrieking bleats, like a woman being stabbed. ''She's gonna live now,'' pigman shouted as the pig struggled against him. ''She's gonna live.''

The patio was chaos, with the cameras and the pig-man, the women with cages, all swirling around: Blue shirt arrived and Anna saw that he was crying, tears running down his cheeks as Creek tracked him with the lens. The dark smear was blood, which streamed from his nose and across his lips and chin.

''Give me that pig,'' the kid screamed, and he ran at the pig-man. ''Gimme that.'' The animal women blocked him out, not hitting him, just body-blocking. Both Creek and Jason tracked the twirling scrum while Anna tried to stay out of their line; she kept the Nagra pointed, picking up the overall noise, which could be laid back into the tape later, if needed.

The Bee caught Anna's arm: ''He's just a flunky, forget him,'' she shouted over the screams and grunting of the struggle. ''But we're gonna do the mice now. Get the mice, in the garbage cans.''

The women with the blue garbage cans were waiting their turn with the lights, and Anna spoke into the mike again: ''Jason, get out of there. Go over to those blue garbage cans, they're full of mice, they're gonna turn them loose.'' Jason took a step back, lifted his head, spotted the garbage cans. ''Creek, stay with the kid,'' Anna said. ''Stay with the kid.''

As Jason came up, the women with the garbage can, who'd been waiting, popped the lid and tipped it, and two or three hundred mice, some black, some white, some tan, scurried down the sides and ran out onto the patio, looked around, and headed for the nearest piece of cover.