Wicked Prey (42 page)

Lucas ran toward the door, waited until Shrake caught him, then Shrake yanked the door and Lucas, ready to fire, saw the three of them just disappearing down the parking ramp and fired once, twice, and saw one of them go down. Another one opened with the Uzi and they both dodged back into the hall, behind the concrete blocks, and the slugs banged off the door and went God-knows-where, but neither one of them was hurt.

“I think I hit one,” Lucas grunted. “They’re running down the entrance ramp.”

Shrake nodded and peeked around the door. “They’re gone. You ready?”

“Let’s go.”

Using cars as cover, they made it to the mouth of the down-spiral as quickly as they could, found the woman lying on her back, dead, blank-eyed, a long brown wig lying beside her head, and a pistol lying by her hands. She’d been hit twice, once in the midsection, once in the forehead. “I only hit her once,” Lucas said. “They’re killing their own.”

“Not leaving anybody behind to make a deal,” Shrake said. “You ready?”

* * *

AT THE BOTTOM of the ramp, Cohn and Lane could see two exits—one said “Monthly Parking” and the other “Daily Parking,” going in opposite directions. “Which way?” Lane asked.

“I don’t know. We weren’t supposed to come this way,” Cohn said.

Lane said, “I’m down to my last clip. I’m going that way.” He gestured at the monthly parking exit.

“I don’t think that’s right,” Cohn said. “Ah, Jesus. I don’t think that’s right. I think it’s out the other side.”

“Well, I’m going this way,” Lane said.

Cohn nodded. “I’m going the other way. If you make it, if I make it, I’ll see you at the farm.”

“See you there,” Lane said, and he ran off toward the monthly parking with the jewel bag over his shoulder. The thought crossed Cohn’s mind that he should shoot him, and take the bag; but he was too tired. Instead, he pushed himself up, shook his head, and headed toward the daily parking exit. There, he came up to a concrete pillar and looked out on the street; parked cars, but he didn’t see the street car. Could he have been wrong? They’d come down the spiral . . .

He looked back, and heard footfalls coming down the ramp. Had to make a move.

He sprinted across the street, heard somebody shouting, saw two cops running after him, forty yards back, and he turned and fired two quick shots and broke out on the open street and looked around.

Wrong place. He was going the wrong way. Lane had been right. Almost made him laugh.

Instead of laughing, he sprinted hopelessly toward an ornate old building across the street that showed the mouth of an alley or intersecting street. One of the cops shot at him and he heard the round go by, close, but no cigar.

He turned down the street and up ahead, saw two more cops, fat guys, big fat guys. They were looking at him, bracing themselves, but didn’t seem to have their guns out. He waved at them, shouted, “Help, help, gun, gun,” and the cops looked past him for a moment and he closed to thirty feet and then one of them shouted, “Stop right there, stop . . .”

He realized then that they were not fat, they were armored. He lifted his gun and fired three times, fast, as he closed on them, the last from only a few feet, aiming low, at their exposed legs, and one of them screamed and went down and then he was past them.

The other cop fired at him and missed, and fired again and missed, and he was almost at the mouth of the street and a third shot missed and he turned the corner and forty feet away, two more cops, large guys, the guys from the hotel, he thought, and he said to them, “Shit!” and fired and the last thing he saw was the flash from the muzzle of one of their guns.

* * *

LUCAS CROUCHED over him. “He’s gone. Was there another one?”

“I think so. I don’t know where.”

Shrake had fired the shot that killed Cohn; now he looked at the body and said, “Piece of shit.”

“I better go back; you stay with this guy,” Lucas said. An armored cop came around and shouted, “Police officer,” and Lucas shouted back, “We’re cops, we’re police. You okay?”

“Got a guy hit bad, hit bad,” the cop shouted. “He’s hit bad . . .”

Lucas told Shrake, “Go see, get an ambulance started if this guy hasn’t, I’m going back . . . You okay?”

“I’m good,” Shrake said.

“Hang in there,” Lucas said.

He turned and ran back the way they’d come, heading for the parking ramp. They’d come out on a diagonal street, and had gotten ahead of Cohn that way. Now he ran back on the same diagonal, into a cluster of cops spread around the ramp. They saw him coming, some turned toward him, but he could hear people shouting his name and he shouted back.

Larkin, the St. Paul sergeant, was there, and asked, “What happened?”

“We got two dead, the woman and Cohn,” Lucas said; he reloaded. “We got one cop shot, I don’t know who or what department, he was one of the control guys for the convention, got an ambulance started; what about here? Anybody hurt?”

Larkin’s face was covered with blood from his facial and scalp cuts. “Not except for me getting nicked up. One guy got the shit scared out of him, he almost ran right into that fuckin’ machine gun, but he made it out.”

“That’s the guy we’re looking for. I’m not absolutely sure there were three, but I’m almost sure.”

Larkin said, “There were. The clerk in the hotel says one guy held people in the chapel, as they came in. That was Cohn, I think. One guy drilled boxes and the woman watched the desk. They killed a guy in the hotel. Cold blood. Did it to prove that they’d do it.”

“Ah, Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“So what’ve we got around this garage?” Lucas asked.

“We’re sealing it off now, for two blocks in every direction. Skyways, alleys, streets. We’re checking everything that moves, getting ready for a sweep. We can have five hundred cops here in two hours. If we can make him hide, we’ll get him.”

“If he exists,” Lucas said. “Let’s start with the parking garage. Look under every car, don’t let anybody out. Remember, the guy’s got a machine gun.”

* * *

LANE HAD grown up in the countryside, had followed twisted-up creeks for miles down to the river, had navigated mile-long corn-fields with the corn so high that you couldn’t see beyond your hands. He didn’t get turned around easily, and he’d been pretty sure he was right about the exit; and hadn’t been unhappy that Cohn had disagreed. If Cohn ran into the cops . . .

Lane made it out of the garage, looked around, and dashed up the street, beginning to hope, now, that he might again see his wife and daughters. He spotted the street car, groped and found the emergency key under the bumper, opened the car, threw the jewel bag in, slid into the seat, jabbed the key at the ignition a couple of times before getting it in, and he was rolling.

He turned at the first block, saw no cops, accelerated, turned again, saw a couple of cops standing on a street corner, cruised by them without looking, turned again, and was now on a major street.

In fact, he knew exactly where he was. He’d both walked and driven it, when he was scouting the hotel. He peeled off his gloves, let himself relax just a notch. If he went straight, he’d go down in a valley, then up a bridge above some railroad tracks, and if he made a right turn at the end of the bridge . . .

He wouldn’t hit another streetlight until he got to Chicago.

That was almost halfway home.

ON SUNDAY, WEATHER SLEPT IN, until 7:30. Lucas usually got up with her, but this day, after the long week, he groaned and sat up, and Weather looked at him and patted him on the head and said, “Go back to sleep. You deserve it.”

He dropped back on his pillow and was gone. When he finally did get up, a few minutes before nine o’clock, the house was unnaturally silent. He showered and shaved, put on fresh jeans—ironed, he thought, but not dry-cleaned—and wandered out to the kitchen in his stocking feet, carrying his shoes.

The place was empty, but a note dangled from the middle of the kitchen doorway, on the end of a strip of Scotch tape.

* * *

 

HE YAWNED, stretched, put a teaspoon of instant coffee in a cup, filled it with water and stuck it in the microwave, got a box of Honey Nut Cheerios from the cupboard and a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, carried it to the breakfast nook and went back to get the coffee when the microwave beeped.

As he took it out, Letty appeared, clutching her bathrobe, her hair a blond tangle, her eyes still sleepy; she was wearing bunny-rabbit slippers.

“Got more coffee?”

“This is instant.”

“Okay . . .” She shuffled over to the counter and got down a cup, and repeated Lucas’s ritual with the Folgers, complete with the yawn and stretch.

“Finish that
Mockingbird
essay?” Lucas asked.

“Yeah.”

She carried the coffee over to the table.

“Is it any good?” he asked.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said. “I need to talk to you about something when Mom isn’t here.”

Lucas looked at her for a second, then said, “I don’t keep much from your mom.”

“You might keep this,” she said. “It’s for her own good.”

“So . . . what?”

She took a sip of coffee and then said, “I didn’t tell you the truth about the other night, with Juliet.”

Lucas looked at her over his cup. “So what’s the truth?”

“I was there—I just got there—when they came out of the house. Randy was yelling at Juliet and Ranch to ‘get me.’ Juliet didn’t push him, and he slashed her with that stick, and then she took him over the edge. I heard the cop car coming, freaked out, and took off on my bike. I didn’t want Mom to know, because it might scare her.”

Lucas sighed. “Ah, jeez . . . But Briar said she hadn’t seen you.”

“I taught her how to lie,” Letty said. “So she could deal with Randy.”

“Letty . . .”

“That’s not all . . .”

She told him about setting up Briar to get beaten. “I knew it’d happen sooner or later—probably lots of times. I thought if I could get it to happen while I was there, I could call the cops, and they could get there, and Randy’d go back to prison. I didn’t know they’d rape her.”

Lucas looked at her for a bit, shook his head, poured some Cheerios.

Letty said, “I thought I better say something before, you know, tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” He was confused.

“You know—the court thing.”

“What does that have to do with this?”

She took another sip, then said, “You know—in case you wanted to change your mind.”

“Aw, for Christ’s sake, Letty. We’re not going to change our minds. What’re you thinking about?”

He actually saw her come unknotted: “I was a little worried,” she said.

“I’m a little worried, too,” he said. “If you called nine-one-one, that means your voice is on tape and there’s no way to get it off. If Briar talks to somebody . . .”

“Why would anybody care?” she asked. “They know what happened. She got raped and beaten up, and she pushed Randy over the edge. You said they’re not going to prosecute her, and besides, she’s a juvenile.”

“Ranch isn’t,” Lucas said. “If he brings you up . . .”

“You told me Ranch doesn’t remember anything,” Letty said.

“He doesn’t—or says he doesn’t. And he was so iced up, I believe him. But . . . there could be fallout. They could put him on trial, they could put Briar on the stand . . .” He shook his head. “There could be trouble.”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she said. “I’m a kid. I got scared and ran away after calling the cops, and never told you. What could they do to me?”

He looked at her for a moment, calculating, smiled, one of his smiles that tended to scare people—but not Letty—and said, “Nothing.”

“And that’s what we tell Mom, right?”

He thought for another moment and then said, “That would be best. We . . . let it go.”

She stood up and said, “I’ve got to get dressed. I look like the witch in
The Wizard of Oz
.”

As she was on her way out, carrying the cup of coffee, he said, “Hey.”

She stopped.

Lucas said, “I’m not sure I’d have been smart enough to pull it off, when I was your age, but I would have tried. I would have tried the same goddamn thing. You take care of your family and you take care of your friends.”

“Goddamn right,” she said.

JESSE LANE was standing in the barn watching Max Gomez weld a broken tongue on the hay wagon, the place redolent with the burning metal, when his cell phone burped. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the face of it: “Caller Unknown.”

He said, “Yeah?”, half-expecting one of those robotic campaign recordings. Instead, he got Lindy.

“Jesse, you know who this is?”

“Where’re you at?” he asked, stepping outside into the sunshine.