John Sandford - Night Prey

Koop had not decided what to do. Not exactly. But he knew for sure that he wouldn't be going back to jail. He couldn't handle that. Jail was death. There would be no deals, nothing that would put him inside.

There was an excellent chance he'd be acquitted, his attorney said: the state's case seemed to be based entirely on Schultz's testimony. "In fact, I'm surprised they bothered to arrest you. Surprised," the attorney said.

If he was convicted, though, Koop'd have to do some small amount of time-certainly not a year, although technically he could get six years. After the conviction, the state would continue bail through a presentencing investigation. He'd be free for at least another month…

But if he was convicted, Koop knew, he'd be gone. Mexico. Canada. Alaska. Somewhere. No more jail…

The attorney had told him where he could get the truck. "I checked, and they're finished with it." He needed the truck. The truck was his, gave him security. But what if the cops had him on some kind of watch list? What if they tagged him to the bank, where he had his stash? He needed to get at the stash, for the money to pay the bondsman.

Wait, wait, wait…

The trial wasn't even going to be for a month. He didn't have to do anything in the next fifteen minutes. If they were watching him, he'd spot it. Unless they'd bugged the truck. Koop put his hands to his head and pushed: holding it together.

He got the truck back-it was all routine, clerical, the bureaucrats didn't give a shit, as long as you had the paper-and drove to his house. Two of the neighborhood cunts were walking on the street and stepped up on a lawn when they saw him coming, wrenching a baby buggy up on the grass with them.

Bitches, he mouthed at them.

He pushed the button on the garage-door opener when he was still a half-block away, and rolled straight into the garage stall, the door dropping behind him. He took ten minutes to walk around the house. The cops had been all over the place. Things were moved, and hadn't been put back quite right. Nothing was trashed. Nothing was missing, as far as he could tell. The basement looked untouched.

He walked through the front room. An armchair sat facing the television. "Cocksucker," he screamed. He kicked the side of it, and the fabric caved in. Koop, breathing hard, looked around the room, at the long wall reaching down toward the bedrooms. Sheetrock. A slightly dirty, inoffensive beige. "Cocksucker," he screamed at it. He hit the wall with his fist; the sheetrock caved in, a hole like a crater on the moon. "Cocksucker." Struck again, another hole. "Cocksucker…"

Screaming, punching, he moved sideways down the hall, stopped only when he was at the end of it, looked back. Nine holes, fist-size, shoulder height. And pain. Dazed, he looked at his hand: the knuckles were a pulp of blood. He put the knuckles to his mouth, licked them off, sucked on them. Tasted good, the blood.

Breathing hard, blowing like a horse, Koop staggered back to the bedroom, sucking his knuckles as he went.

In the bedroom, the first thing he saw was the bottle of Opium, sitting on the chest. He unscrewed the top, sniffed it, closed his eyes, saw her.

White nightgown, black triangle, full lips…

Koop put some Opium on his fingertips, dabbed it under his nose, stood swaying with his eyes closed, just visiting…

Finally, with the dreamlike odor of Sara Jensen playing with his mind, and the pain in his hand helping to reorder it, he got a flashlight and went back out to the garage. He began working through the truck, inch by inch, bolt by bolt, sucking his knuckles when the blood got too thick…

Lucas hovered in the men's accessories, next to the cologne, behind a rotating rack of wallets, keeping the top of Koop's head in sight. He carried a fat leather briefcase. Koop loitered in the men's sportswear, his hands in his pockets, touching nothing, not really looking.

Connell beeped. "What's he doing?"

"Killing time," Lucas said. A short elderly lady stopped to look at him, and he turned away. "Can you see him?"

"He's two aisles over."

"Careful. You're too close. Sloan?"

"Yeah, I got him. I'm going over to the north exit. That's the closest way out now. I'll go on through the skyway if he moves that way."

"Good. Del?"

"Just coming up to sportswear. I can't see him, but I'm right across from Connell. I can see Connell."

"You're real close to him. He's behind the shirt rack," Connell chirped.

"Excuse me, could you tell me where men's bathrobes are?" Lucas turned around, and looked down at the short elderly lady. She had ear curls like a lamb, and small thick glasses.

"Down by that post where you see the Exit sign," Lucas said.

"Thank you," she said, and tottered away.

Lucas angled through Ralph Lauren into Guess. A blond woman in a black dress stepped up to him and said, "Escape?"

"What?" He stepped toward her, and she stepped back and held up a cylindrical bottle as though she were defending herself.

"Just a spritz?"

Men's perfume. "Oh, no, I'm sorry," Lucas said, moving on. The woman looked after him.

Koop was moving, and Connell beeped. "He's headed toward the north door. Still moving slow."

"I've got him," Lucas said.

Sloan said, "I'm going through the skyway."

"I'll move into Sloan's spot," Del said. "Meagan, you've been the most exposed, you either oughta go through way ahead or stay back."

"It's too soon to go through ahead of him," Connell said. "I'll hang back."

"I'll catch up to you," Lucas said.

Lucas moved up to a glass case of Coach briefcases and looked down the store at Koop's back. Koop had stopped again, no more than thirty feet away, poking a finger through a rack of leather jackets. Lucas stepped back, focused on Koop, when a hand hooked his elbow. A youngish man in a suit was behind him, another to his left. The perfume woman was behind them.

"May I ask you what you're doing?" the man in the suit asked. Store security, a tough guy, with capped teeth. Lucas stepped hard behind the counter, out of sight of Koop, the two men lurching along with him. The security man's grip tightened.

"I'm a Minneapolis homicide cop on surveillance," Lucas said, his voice low and mean, like a hatchet. He reached into his pocket, pulled his badge case, flipped it open. "If you give me away, I'll pull your fucking testicles off and stuff them in your ears."

"Jesus." The security man looked at the bug in Lucas's ear, then at his face, at what looked like rage. He went pale. "Sorry."

"Get the fuck out of this end of the store, all of you," Lucas said. He pointed the other way. "Go that way. Go separately. Don't walk in the aisles and don't look back."

"I'm…" the man was stuttering. "I'm sorry, I used to be a cop."

"Yeah, right." Lucas turned away and sidled out from behind the case. Koop was gone. "Shit."

Connell beeped. "He's moving."

Roux was scared to death. Connell's idea had scared her so badly that she thought about switching back to Gauloises.

But Jensen had come to see her the day before, wearing a power suit and carrying a power briefcase, and she'd laid it out: a sucker game might be the only way to take him.

Roux, stuck between a rock and a hard place, had gone for the hard place.

"Thanks," Connell had said to Jensen when they were in the hall outside of Roux's office. "Takes guts."

"I want to get him so bad that my teeth hurt," Jensen had said. "When will he get out?"

"Tomorrow morning," Connell had said. Her eyes defocused, as though she were looking into the future.

"And you," Jensen said to Lucas. "Did I tell you, you remind me of my older brother?"

"He must be a good-looking guy," Lucas said.

"God, I'm sick, and he's trying to push me under," Connell groaned. "The nausea is overwhelming…"