Sudden Prey (22 page)

''C'mon,'' LaChaise said impatiently, ''what happened?''

''They got Butters,'' Sandy said. ''If they know he was one guy coming out of the house, they got him.''

''Yeah, but is he dead or alive?''

''. . . we've just gotten word from our reporter Tim Mead at Ramsey Medical Center that the St. Paul police officer wounded in the shoot-out has died. We still have no identification, and authorities say the officer won't be identified until next of kin can be found and notified, but our reporter at Ramsey says the officer definitely has died. With Butters's death, that brings to two the number of people killed in this latest clash between Twin Cities police officers and the LaChaise gang . . .''

LaChaise groaned: ''Oh, goddamn, they killed Ansel. The sonsofbitches killed Ansel.''

Martin: ''We gotta get under cover. If they got the house, they'll get my prints. If they get my prints, sooner or later they'll get this truck. We don't have much time.''

The highway was slippery with the snow, and LaChaise finally told Martin to get off and find someplace to park. ''We gotta talk this out. We're in big fuckin' trouble. We lost our gear.''

''You got your 'dog, I got my forty-five and the knife.''

''We lost the heavy stuff,'' LaChaise said. He patted his pocket and said, ''But I still got Harp's money.''

''Dick, you gotta give this up and run for it,'' Sandy said. ''Drop me off, I'll call the cops. I'll tell them I was kidnapped and you let me go. I'll tell them you're headed for Alaska or the Yukon, you can head for Mexico.''

''Aw, that ain't gonna work,'' LaChaise said.

''The whole thing lasted one day, Dick,'' Sandy said, pressing him. ''Now you're on the road, no guns, no transportation, no place to run to.''

''But we do have some money,'' Martin said. ''That can get us some guns. And I just thought where we might get a car and a place to hide.''

MARTIN TOOK THEM INTO SOUTH MINNEAPOLIS, TO Harp's laundromat. The laundromat was empty: it was too early and too cold to think about washing laundry. They parked the truck in front of the garage doors, Martin got a claw hammer out of his toolbox, and all three of them walked around to the front. The door that led up the stairs was locked. Martin, with LaChaise blocking, popped the door with the hammer. The lock was old, and not meant to stop much. When Martin pushed the door shut, it caught again.

''Locks are different at the top,'' Martin said quietly. ''Bestyou can buy. And it's a steel door. But if we can get him to open it, just a crack, there's nothing but a shitty little safety chain after that.''

Martin led the way up the stairs. He'd told LaChaise about the pile of cardboard boxes at the top of the stairs. They moved and restacked them until they had a narrow passage to the door.

''Ready?'' Martin had his .45 in his hand, and LaChaise drew his Bulldog.

''Try it,'' LaChaise said.

Martin banged on the door, then tried the doorbell next to it. And then banged some more.

''Open up, Harp,'' he shouted. ''Minneapolis police, open up.''

Silence.

Martin tried again. ''Goddamnit, open the fuckin' door, Minneapolis police.''

They could hear themselves breathing, but felt no vibration, no footfall, no bump or knock that might suggest somebody was home.

''He should be here, this time of day,'' Martin said.

''Maybe he can't hear us.''

''He could hear us . . .'' Martin put his ear to the door and stood that way, one hand up to silence LaChaise, for a full minute. Then he looked at LaChaise: ''Shit, he's not here.''

''We gotta get off the street,'' LaChaise said.

''I know, I know.'' Martin looked at the door, shook his head. ''No way we're going through that. And the garage door will be locked. We could try pulling the fire escape down.''

''The whole city would see us climbing up there,'' La-Chaise said. Then: ''Run downstairs and see if there's anybody in the laundromat.''

Martin nodded, trotted down the stairs, fought the jammeddoor for a moment, then disappeared outside. A second later he was back. He shoved the door shut and called up, '' Nobody.''

LaChaise crushed one of the boxes, pushed others in front of the door, until he had a clear patch of wall.

''What're you doing?'' Martin asked, hustling up the stairs.

''This,'' LaChaise said. He hit the wall with the claw side of the hammer. A square foot of old plaster cracked and sprayed out, showing the laths beneath.

''Jesus, sounds like dynamite,'' Martin said, looking back down the stairs.

''Nobody to hear us,'' LaChaise said. ''And Harp don't come up this way, so he won't see it.'' He hit the wall again, a third time and a fourth. ''Why don't you go down to the bottom and keep an eye out. This could take a few minutes.''

LACHAISE BROKE A SIX-INCH HOLE THROUGHTHEWALL, alternately beating it with the head of the hammer, smashing it, then digging the hole out with the claw. When the hole was big enough, he reached through and popped the locks on the door. They pushed inside, and found an empty apartment.

''Nobody around,'' Martin said, after a quick reconnaissance. ''But his car's downstairs. The Continental. Maybe he ran out to the store.''

''Give us some breathing space,'' LaChaise said. ''We gotta be ready, though. Shouldn't cook nothin' until we got him.''

Sandy had followed Martin through the apartment. The place had once been four tiny apartments, she thought, remodeled into one big one. A hallway divided the new unified apartment exactly in half--that would have been the old main entry hall.

The place felt empty. More than that. Vacated. She looked in the refrigerator: it was nearly bare. She stepped back downthe hallway and looked into the master bedroom--she'd peeked in when they first entered, but this time, she pushed in and looked around. A small leather suitcase was lying empty at the end of the bed. The apartment was cold, she noticed. She went back to the living room and checked the thermostat. It was set at fifty-five.

She said, ''I think they went on a trip.''

''Huh?'' LaChaise looked at her. ''Why?''

''Well, there're holes in the closet where they took a whole bunch of clothes out at the same time. And there's a suitcase sitting on the floor like they decided to take a different one, but didn't put the first one back. And the thermostat's set at fifty-five, like you'd turn it down before you went somewhere.''

''Huh,'' said Martin, nodding. ''It feels like they left.''

Martin noticed the two telephone answering machines, sitting side by side. ''He's got two answering machines,'' he said. ''I wonder if he left a message.''

He picked up one phone, and dialed the number posted on the other: the phone rang twice, then a man's voice said, ''Leave a message.'' Nothing there. He hung up, picked up the second phone and dialed the first. And Harp's voice said, ''We're outa here. Back on the twenty-sixth or so. I'll check the messages every day.''

''He's gone,'' Martin said to LaChaise. ''He says they're gone until the twenty-sixth.''

LaChaise made him redial, listened to the message, then looked at Martin with a broad grin. ''Goddamn. We landed on our feet,'' he said, when he'd hung up. He looked around the apartment: ''This place is six times better than the other one. This is great. And we got a Continental. A fuckin' luxury car . . .'' He started to laugh, and whacked Martin on the back. Even Martin managed to crack a smile.

* * *

ROUX AND THE MAYOR MET LUCAS IN ROUX'S OFFICE, and heard about the laughing incident.

''I didn't believe it was me, until I saw the tape,'' Lucas said. ''I don't know why we were laughing. We just about had a goddamned disaster on our hands, and instead, it was all done with. I guess that's why.'' The explanation sounded lame.

''The St. Paul cop getting killed--that's not a disaster?'' the mayor asked.

''We didn't know the cop was dead. And we thought we were going to get a whole goddamned family shot up. When Butters ran in there, when he blew through that door, I thought we were out of luck.''

''The TV people are wondering why there weren't enough people out there in the first place. Enough to take him as soon as he showed,'' the mayor said.

''Normally, it would have been plenty. Except that he saw us coming and he had a machine gun. And he didn't care if he died. All that--that changes everything. We're lucky only one guy got killed; it could have been three or four. If he'd had some combat experience, he might've waited until the entry team was halfway into the house, and then took them on at close range.''

''Anyway, that's all St. Paul's problem,'' Roux said. ''And as far as Lucas is concerned, the laughing thing, I think I can clear it out.''

The mayor's eyebrows went up. ''How?''

Roux said, ''You know Richard Small--TV3? He was on the stakeout last night. He wouldn't leave, and Lucas let him keep his shotgun. I talked to him this morning and he figures Lucas and Del are his war buddies now. I'll call him about the laughing incident, and why they were doing it--out of relief, or hysteria, and how unfair this is, some horseshit like that. He just about runs TV3. If he goes on the air with anotherperspective, we can turn it around. And he'll do it. When I talked to him this morning, he was still jacking shells in and out of the shotgun.''

The mayor looked from Lucas to Roux. ''Do it,'' he said, nodding. ''Emphasize the fairness thing, and how he'd be setting the record straight on his combat buddy.''

And to Lucas: ''You gotta keep your ass down and out of sight.''

''I'm trying,'' Lucas said.

HOMICIDE HAD BEEN TURNED INTO A WAR PLANS room: file cabinets and desks pushed into corners, two tables shoved together with a six-foot plastic map of the Twin Cities spread across it. Sherrill was there, wearing her .357 in a belt clip.

''You okay?'' Lucas asked.

''Yeah. We got the arrangements going on Mike. I'm all cried out.''

''We got one of them,'' Lucas said.

''Not the one I want, not yet,'' Sherrill said, shaking her head. ''We got Kupicek's guy. I want the third man, the one we don't know yet.''

Anderson wandered in, spotted Lucas, and stepped over: ''I got a lot of new paper, if you want it.''

They talked about the paper for fifteen minutes, what the Tennessee cops were doing, the Wisconsin cops, about the death of Elmore Darling. ''We've got more pictures of Sandra Darling, we'll put those out. But I don't know. I don't know if she's with this LaChaise, or we're gonna find her dead in a ditch somewhere.''

''She's with him,'' Sherrill said.

''Why do you think that?'' Lucas asked.

''I don't know. I just think she's with them. If they were going to kill them, why not kill both of them? I bet she'sscrewing LaChaise. Or maybe the second guy. I bet she helped set up the funeral home thing with the second guy . . .''

''Bonnie and Clyde,'' Lucas said.

''More like Dumber and Dumbest,'' said Sherrill.

LACHAISE, MARTIN AND SANDY DARLING WERE RIVETED by the images on the television. The pictures came up from a winter street, with a woman in a long wool coat and fur hat talking into a microphone.

''. . . rushed the wounded officer to the hospital, but he died seconds after arrival. As that was going on, Chief Davenport and Lieutenant Selle were seen laughing as they stood over the body of the attacker . . .''

Her voice rolled on over a videotape, taken from a high angle, a uniformed cop and a guy in street clothes, standing over what looked like a pile of clothes in the street. Had to be Butters. And the cops were laughing, no doubt about it.

''. . . police were refusing to disclose the identity of the officer or officers who actually shot Butters, saying that information would be available after LaChaise and his gang members are caught, but nobody has denied that Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport took part in the gunfight and was himself wounded. At the moment, a police spokeswoman said, the threat to the officers' families will not allow full disclosure . . .''

''Look at the fuckers,'' LaChaise said.

Martin frowned as the tape of Davenport and Selle was run again. The picture seemed wrong. ''They don't look too happy,'' he said.

''They're laughing,'' LaChaise shouted at him. ''They're laughing.''

LaChaise paced in front of the TV, snarling at it, beating his hands together, palms open, the angry claps snapping intothe room. He went to the window shades, looked down at the street, listening, then stalked back to the television.

''That cop who was laughing. They said it was Davenport, right? The guy on our list?''

As if to answer his question, the television reporter said, ''The chain of events started last night, when Chief Davenport put a surveillance team on the home of his daughter by TV3 correspondent Jennifer Carey, who now lives with TV3 executive vice-president Richard Small . . .''

She went through the story, ending with the tape loop of Davenport and Selle laughing over Butters's body.

''We're gonna mow those fuckers down,'' LaChaise brayed at Martin.

Martin said, ''Dick, we gotta take care. We can't go off half-cocked, if we want to get anything done.''