John Sandford - Easy Prey

"What the hell are you doing?" the sheriff asked.

"He ain't gonna need it," gold shirt said. "Gonna go to waste."

"Gimme one of those," Friar said. Gold shirt opened the refrigerator, handed him a beer. As he unscrewed the cap, Friar said, "The thing about Martin is, he always thought he'd be famous. That might beall he thought about. He thought he could do it by starting small here in Burnt River, and if he worked hard and kept his nose clean, Coke would take care of him. He's been working his ass off, driving that goddamned truck for ten years, and I'd have to say he ain't made much progress up the corporate ladder." He took a pull on the bottle, then added, "Such as the corporate ladder is around here."

"You think he could kill a guy?" Lucas asked.

"Nobody'll go huntin' with him," blue shirt said. "He likes them guns a little too much. One time this guy I know was walking in from his deer stand"

Gold shirt jumped in. "Ray McDonald."

Blue shirt continued. "and he bumps into Martin, and Martin goes, 'You smoke cigarettes and the deer'll smell it a mile away' So Ray goes on home and he's laying in bed that night about to go to sleep, thinking about nothing, and then all of a sudden he realizes that he was about a half-mile away when he stripped that butt and threw it away."

Blue shirt looked at Lucas, Del, and the sheriff, a look that said, This is of significance. Lucas took a minute to decipher the look. "He'd been watching him through his scope."

"Yup. Ray said he almost shit in his pants, laying there in bed. Martin Scott had been looking at him smoking, through a scopeon that. 300 Magnum."

"Didn't shoot him," Del said.

"But I bet he was thinking about it," blue shirt said. "Martin is fuckin' loony tunes, and he was a loony tunes when I met him in kindergarten."

Late that night, when Lucas and Del and a pensive Tom Olson were a hundred miles out of the Sheridan airport, on the way back to the Twin Cities, the sheriff called. "I got some sorta bad news," he said.

"Ah, God, I don't need any," Lucas said. "No time for it."

"We didn't find Scott, but we found his truck," the sheriff said. "It's parked next to the Coke truck, at the distribution center. We talked to Randy Waters again, and he said that Scott parks it there on nights he thinks will be extra cold, because his garage doesn't have heat."

"It's not gonna be that cold tonight," Lucas protested. "What's it gonna be?"

"Maybe ten below," the sheriff said.

"That's nothing," Lucas said. "Nothing."

"Yeah, I know. And we can't find ScottI don't think he's in town. But even if he is in the Twin Cities, looking for his truck won't do you any good."

"Keep an eye out," Lucas said. "If we don't find Scott, maybe he'll show up for work."

Lucas told Del, who shook his head. "Gotta be him, though," Del said. "You saw the room."

"But what do you think? He's hitchhiking down to the Cities?"

"No, he just got down, somehow. Be nice to know the car, though."

Halfway back, Lucas said, "I just thought of something else. You know that Oriental chick at the Matrix? She saw the guy we think was the shooteronly for a second or twobut she thought it was the vending machine guy. She also thought he looked a little porky, and so did Jael, when a guy tried to break into her house that night But when St. Paul picked up the vending machine guy, he wasn't porky. He was skinny."

"Yeah?"

"I bet this asshole Martin Scott was wearing his Coke coveralls. One of those guys said he wore them twenty-four hours a day. I bet that's what this chick was reacting tothe coveralls, the kind a vending machine guy would wear."

"That's thin," Del said.

"But it's there," Lucas said.

"My ass is kicked," Del said, just before they landed. "You gonna drop me?"

"Yeah. But I'm gonna cruise up and take a look at Jael's place, make sure they've spread out that perimeter."

"I'll ride along for that," Del said.

They'd left Lucas's car at the motel, because it could only handle two, and had ridden over in Olson's rattletrap Volvo. "I'm going back to the valley," Olson said as he drove them back to the motel. "Back to Fargo. Tomorrow. Have somebody call me when you're gonna release the bodies. I'll come and bury them, but I won't wait here anymore. This place is a suburb of hell."

"Oh, bullshit. It's a pretty nice place," Del said irritably.

"Think about the last week," Olson said. His voice was mild, quiet. "Ten days ago, I had a familynow I don't. But it's not so much individual people who did this: They're just souls trying to get through life. It's the culture that does it. It's a death culture, and it's here, right now. It comes out of TV, it comes out of magazines, it comes out of the Internet, it comes out of video games. Look at that television set that poor Martin Scott had. The biggest, most expensive thing he owned, except for his truck. And all those video games. And he was a hard-working man; worked hard. But the culture burned him out, reached out through that satellite dish and grabbed him. We see it in Fargo, but you can still fight it there. Here this place is gone. Too late for this place. Too late. You'll see."

"Shut the fuck up," Del said.

Sunday. Day nine.

Six o' clock in the morning.

Olson parked at the hotel and said, "Call me when the bodies are ready."

Lucas said he would.

As they got in Lucas's car, Del said, "He could still have a finger in it."

"Nah. There's no conspiracy here, Del. A bullshit drug murder and then anutcase on the loose."

"Where do you think Scott is?"

"Here," Lucas said.

"In the suburb of hell?"

"Yup. Somewhere."

There were two guys in Jael's yard. "We get a car about once every five minutes," one of them said. "They're getting a little more traffic up at the Kinsley place, but man, there's just nothing going on."

"All right." They went inside, quietly as they could. A cop was sitting on an easy chair in a hallway, watching a TV on the floor. "We didn't want to get any TV flicker on the windows," he explained.

"Is Jael asleep?"

"Yeah."

"Where's the perimeter?"

"Two blocks out on every side; we got every street covered. He's gonna have to parachute in, if he's coming."

"What I'm worried about, if he comes, is a suicide run," Lucas said. "He's got that shotgun."

"I just wish he'd come," the cop said. "This is boring my goddamned brains out."

Back in the car, Lucas said, "I'd like to go up to Kinsley's, if you don't mind. Take ten minutes, look around."

"It's all right with me."

Two blocks from Jael's at a four-way stop, a crossing car paused as Lucas approached, then pulled slowly across the intersection. "Old goat," Del said.

"Yeah" Lucas crossed the street, going straight ahead, then said, "Wait a minute." He swerved, did a quick U-turn, and said, urgently, "We're going after the goat. Get your goddamn pen out, write down the tag, number, call it in." They were back at the intersection, the old slow-moving GTO already at the end of the block. Lucas went after him.

The GTO paused at a stop sign; the driver seemed unsure of his destination, looked both ways. Lucas closed up behind, putting his headlights on the license plate of the other car. Del said, "Got it."

"Call it in, tell them we want an answer right fuckin' now."

"What?"

"Remember back in the motel, when we called in Lynn Olson's driver's license and asked them to run down his vehicle registrations? He had a Volvo, an Explorer, and an old collector GTO. I bet that fuckin' Scott parked his truck with the Coke truck and walked over to the Olsons' place and took the GTO. How many GTOs do you see around anymoreat six o'clock in the morning?"

Del was already talking on his cell phone, getting switched. Reading the number he'd written on his arm. The GTO went straight ahead. Lucas turned left, did another U-turn and switched off his lights, crept to the end of the block. The GTO took a left at the next corner. Lucas accelerated around the corner, lights off, ran as hard as he could almost to the end of the block, jammed on the brakes, and crept forward again.