John Sandford - Certain prey

Lucas carried the sack of beer next door to the Marks' place. Lucy Marks was snipping the heads off played-out coneflowers as her husband maneuvered the

Kubota in and out of a shed. The shed showed splintered wood at the side of one of the doors, evidence of a recent impact.

'Role tells me you're gonna learn how to run the tractor/ she said, shaking her head. 'I'm glad I bought the quart-size bottle of peroxide.'

'Hey…'

'Lucas, you gotta encourage him to be careful. I'm afraid he'll roll it over on himself. He's like a kid.'

'He'll be all right,' Lucas said.

'That wouldn't be beer in that sack, would it?'

'Couple Leinies,' he said, guiltily.

'Yeah, well, I'll take the Leinies, you go figure out the tractor. When you get back, we'll fry some crappies and we can have the beer then.'

'Well…' She gave him a look and he handed her the bag.

The Kubota was… different. Running wasn't a problem, but maneuvering the joystick for the back-hoe took a little practice: 'I'll have you buttering your bread with this thing before we're finished,' Marks said, enthusiastically. 'I figure with a few hours practice, I could do all the driveways for this whole area, come winter.'

'Jesus Christ, Role, you make what, a half-million dollars a year selling stock?

And now you're gonna pick up an extra two hundred dollars a month doing driveways?'

When Lucas was checked out, Marks showed him where he was going to hide the key in his shed:

'Anytime I'm not up here, you're welcome to use it.'

'Maybe I could help you brush out a couple of those trails,' Lucas said; he liked the backhoe.

'Terrific'Then, as they walked back up toward the cabin, 'You gettin' any?'

Lucas could see Lucy Marks on the lake side of the house, cleaning up the grill.

'Overtime? I don't get overtime any more…'

'Pussy,' Marks said. 'Crumbcake. You know? It sorta looks like. ..'

'Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, I just took a call from a nice-looking forty ish FBI lady who's coming to Minneapolis and wants me to take her out to foxtrot.'

'Foxtrot? Foxtrot, my ass. If it was me, I'd drop about nine inches of the old

French-Canadian bratwurst on her,' said Marks, who talked big but was the most faithful man on earth. As they came around the corner of the house, he hollered at his wife: 'Lucas is gonna jump an FBI agent.'

'A female, I hope,' Lucy Marks said. She was spraying something on the grill, turning her face away from the coals.

'She wants to foxtrot with him,' Marks said. 'She called him up.'

'Sounds promising,' Lucy Marks said. 'How'd this happen?'

'I was down in Wichita, and we were in this bar and she didn't dance to rock music, so I was dancing with the owner…'

He trailed off, and after a few seconds, Lucy Marks said. 'Lucas? You still in there?'

'Excuse me,' Lucas said, 'But I gotta go. I'm sorry.'

He jogged away, across the lawn toward his own place, leaving the Marks at the grill, looking puzzled. At the cabin, he fumbled out the number Sherrill had given him for Malone, and dialed it. One of the FBI agents, a man, picked it up and said, 'John Shaw.' Lucas said, 'Let me speak to Malone.'

'She just left… I could try to catch her.'

'Catch her, goddamnit…'

The phone on the other end clattered on a desk and Lucas hung onto the receiver, eyes closed, rubbing his forehead. Could this be right?

Two minutes later, Malone picked up the phone and said, 'Malone.'

'This is Lucas. Did you get the composite of the shooter?'

'Yes. Pretty good.'

'Close your eyes, and think about the woman I danced with at that club in

Wichita, whatever it was. The Rink.'

'My eyes are closed. I… hmm. Gotta be a coincidence.'

'Hey, I'm a great-looking guy,' Lucas said, 'I know that, but just between you and me, Malone, not that many thirty-year-old women are coming onto me anymore.

And with this one… I had the feeling she was more interested than she should have been, and maybe not in sex. I didn't know why…'

'… Or maybe you thought it was sex…'

'Maybe I did, whatever. But I tell you, from talking to the people up here who saw her, and looking at that picture, something kept knocking at the back of my head,' Lucas said. 'I finally figured it out: if she's not the same chick, she's her twin. And if she was up here, she could very well have seen me on television. And if she did, and I walked into her place in

Wichita, and then just sat down for a cheeseburger and a beer.. .'

'All right,' Malone said, reluctantly. 'Sounds like a loser, but give me a couple of hours. I'll check it out. You'll be up at your cabin?'

'I don't know,' Lucas said. Out through the screen, he could see the lake, flat, quiet, a perfect North Woods evening coming on. And he'd just gotten there. 'I think I'm gonna head back to the Cities. I'm telling you, I think she's the shooter.'

He was out on 1-35, driving way too fast, and still a long way north of the

Cities, when the cell phone burped. He picked it up, and heard the first two words, then lost the signal. He punched it off; three minutes later, it rang again, and he answered it: Sherrill, breaking up, but audible.

'Your FBI friend called; she's all cranked up. That woman you danced with has disappeared – cleaned out her apartment, quit her job at the bar. ..'

'… I thought she owned it.'

'… So did everybody, but she was really just the manager. It's really owned by a guy named James Larimore, who is also known as Wooden Head

Larimore, who is really connected, really connected, in guess-where?'

'St. Louis.'

'Yup.' The cell connection was getting cleaner. 'So your FBI friend freaked, and got a crime-scene crew into the apartment, and guess-what again?'

'It'd been wiped.'

'Top to bottom.'

'Got her, goddamnit,' Lucas crowed. 'We got her. What's her name?'

'Clara Rinker.'

'Rinker. Fuck those FBI pussies, Marcy. We broke this fuckin' thing right over their heads.'

'Yeah, well… want to know where Wooden Head got the name Wooden Head?'

'Sure.' The adrenalin was pumping; he'd listen to anything.

'He was once in a bar when people started shooting, and he caught a ricochet, and the slug stuck in his skull bone, in his forehead above his nose. Made a dent, and stuck, but didn't go through. They say everybody was laughing so hard, the gunfight stopped. Even Wooden Head was laughing.'

'So he's a tough guy.'

'Very tough. And they ain't gonna get much out of him. He says he don't know nothin' about nothin'.'

M alone met him at the airport: 'You look kinda green,' Malone said. 'Tough flight down?'

'Naw, it was all right,' Lucas mumbled. He looked back through the terminal window at the plane, and Malone caught the look and said, 'You can't be one of those… you're not afraid to fly?'

'It's not my preferred method of travel,' Lucas said, walking away. She scrambled to catch up, and he turned his head to ask, 'What'd you get from the bar? Prints? Photos. We need to get a photo out now.'

'Airplanes are about fifty times safer than cars,' Malone said. 'I thought everybody knew that. Not only that, most people are distracted when they're driving, because they fall into routines, while pilots are trained

…'

'Yeah, yeah, enough,' Lucas said. 'I don't like to fly because I've got problems dealing with control issues because I've got an unconsciously macho self-image, okay? That make you happy? Now what about Rinker?'

'We can't find a photograph,' Malone said. 'And there's no reason for you to be defensive about a fear of flying…'

'There's gotta be a photograph…'

She gave up. 'There are no photographs in the apartment, and none in the bar.