John Sandford - Night Prey

A woman in a sweat-stained orange bikini was working in the mirrors on the west wall, moving from a frontal pose, arms over head, to a side pose, biceps flexed against her stomach. Koop dropped the dumbbells on a pad and stripped down to his jock. He picked up the dumbbells, did ten quick pumps, tossed them back on the pad, and began his routine. In the back of his mind, he could hear the woman grunting as she posed, could hear the exhaust fan overhead, but all he could see was himself… And sometimes, through the mist of sweat, the gossamer-wrapped body of Sara Jensen, spread-eagled on the bed, the dark pubic mound and…

Slam it, slam it, slam it, go, go…

The woman stopped, picked up her towel. He was vaguely aware that she was standing in a corner, watching.

When he finally quit, she tossed him his towel. "Gettin' the pecs," she said.

"Need more work," he mumbled, wiping himself down. "Need more work." He carried his workout clothes back to the locker room, soaked them under a shower, wrung them by hand, threw them into a dryer and turned the dryer on. Then he showered, toweled off, dressed, went out to the main room, bought a Coke, drank it, went back and took his clothes out of the dryer, hung them in his locker, and left.

He hadn't said a word to anyone, except, "Need more work…"

John Carlson was already in summer mode, black Raiders jacket over knee-length rapper shorts and black Nikes with red laces.

"What's happening, dude?" John was black and far too heavy. Koop handed him a small roll. John didn't check it, just stuffed it in his pocket.

"Gotta date," Koop said.

"Far out, man…" John rapped the car with his knuckles, as if for luck. "Get you some latex, man, you don't want to get no fuckin'

"Do that," Koop said.

John backed away, took off his cap, and scratched his head. Koop started down the block, turned the corner. Another black kid was walking down the sidewalk. He swerved across the dirt parking strip to the curb, and when Koop slowed next to him, tossed a plastic twist through the passenger window and turned away. Koop kept going. Three blocks later, with nothing in his rearview, Koop stopped for a taste. Just a taste to wake him up.

Koop didn't understand his fascination with Jensen. Didn't understand why he was compelled to watch her, to get close to her. To hurry his daily rounds to meet her after work…

He finished liquidating the jewelry he'd taken from Jensen's apartment in a bar on the I-494 strip in Bloomington, selling the engagement ring and the wedding band to a guy who dressed and talked like an actor playing a pro athlete: a tan, a golf shirt, capped teeth, and a gold chain around his thick neck. But he knew stones, and the smile was gone from his eyes when he looked at them. He gave Koop $1,300. The total take from the apartment pushed $6,000, not counting the belt. It never occurred to Koop to feel a connection between the jewelry and the woman who'd caught his heart. The jewelry was his, not hers.

He left the Bloomington strip and idled back into Minneapolis, killing time behind the wheel, eventually turning east, to an Arby's on St. Paul's east side. He'd called the moving man who'd given him the map of Jensen's apartment, and arranged to meet. Koop was both early and late for the meetings, arriving a half hour early, watching the meeting spot from a distance. When his man arrived, alone, on time, he'd watch for another ten minutes before going in. He'd never had a contact turn on him. He didn't want it to happen, either.

The moving man arrived a few minutes early, hurried straight into the Arby's. The way he moved gave Koop some confidence that everything was okay: there was no tentativeness, no looking around. He carried a notebook in his hand. Koop waited five more minutes, watching, then went in. The guy was sitting in a booth with a cup of coffee, a young guy, looked like a college kid. Koop nodded at him, stopped for a cup of coffee himself, paid the girl behind the counter, and slid into the booth. "How're you doing?"

"It's been a while," the guy said.

"Yeah, well…" Koop handed him a Holiday Inn brochure. The guy took it and looked inside.

"Thanks," he said. "You must've done okay."

Koop shrugged. He wasn't much for chitchat. "Got anything else?"

"Yeah. A good one." The guy pushed the notebook at him. "I was pissing my pants waiting for you to call. We was moving some stuff into this house on Upper St. Dennis in St. Paul, you know where that is?"

"Up the hill off West Seventh," Koop said, pulling in the notebook. "Some nice houses up there. A little riffraff, too."

"This a nice house, man." The guy's head was bobbing. " Nice. There was a guy from a safe company there. They'd just set a big fuckin' safe in concrete, down in the basement, in a corner of a closet. I seen it myself."

"I don't do safes…" The notebook was too thick. Koop opened it and found a key impression in dried putty. He'd shown the guy how to do it. The impression was crisp, clean.

"Wait a minute, for Christ's sakes," the guy said, holding up his hands. "So when he was talking to the safe guy, he was walking around with this piece of paper in his hand. When they finished, he came up and asked how long we were gonna be, 'cause he wanted to take a shower and shave, 'cause he was going out. We said we'd be a while yet, and he went up and took a shower in the bathroom. The bathroom off his bedroom. We were working right down the hall, my buddy was settin' up a guest bed. So I stepped down the hall and looked into his bedroom. I could hear the shower going, and I saw this paper laying on the dresser with his billfold and watch, and I just took the chance, man. I zipped over and looked at it, and it was the fuckin' combination. How about that, huh? I wrote it down. And listen, you know what this guy does? This guy runs half the automatic car washes in the Twin Cities. And he was braggin' to us about going out to Vegas all the time. I bet that fuckin' safe is stuffed."

"How about his family?" This sounded better; Koop would rather steal money than anything.

"He's divorced. Kids live with his old lady."

"The key's good?"

"Yeah, but, uh… There's a security system on the door. I don't know nothing about that."

Koop looked at the man for a minute, then nodded. "I'll think about it."

"I could use some cash, get out of this fuckin' place," the guy said. "My parole's up in September. Maybe go to Vegas myself."

"I'll get back," Koop said.

He finished his drink, picked up the notebook, nodded to the guy, and walked out. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he glanced at his watch. Sara should be getting off…

Koop had killed his mother.

He'd killed her with a long, slender switchblade he'd found in a pawnshop in Seoul, Korea, where he'd been with the Army. When he'd gotten back to the States, he'd spent a long weekend hitchhiking from Fort Polk to Hannibal, Missouri, for the sole purpose of ripping her.

And he'd done that. He'd banged on the door and she'd opened it, a Camel glued to her lip. She'd asked, "What the fuck do you want?" and he'd said, "This." Then he'd stepped up into the trailer and she'd stepped back, and he'd stuck the knife in just about her belly button, and ripped up, right up through her breastbone. She'd opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out but blood.

Koop had touched nothing, seen nobody. He'd grown up in Hannibal, just like Huck Finn, but he hadn't been any kind of Huck. He'd just been a dumb-shit kid who never knew his father, and whose mother gave blow jobs for money after she got off work at the bar. On a busy night she might have four or five drunks stop by, banging on the aluminum door, sucking them, spitting in the sink next to his bedroom, spitting and gargling salt-and-soda, half the night gone. She'd drag him downtown, respectable eyes tearing at them, women in thigh-length skirts and tweedy jackets, pitying, disdaining. "Bitches; bitches ain't no better'n me, you better believe it," his mother said. But she was lying, and Koop knew that for sure. They were better than his mother, these women in their suits and hats and clack-clack high heels…