John Sandford - Invisible prey

Leslie smiled at her. “I can hit a house. And you get smarter all the time.”

“We're both smart,” Jane said. “Let's just see if we can stay ahead of Davenport.”

“Wish we'd done this first, instead of that harebrained dog thing,” Leslie said.

“You oughta see the holes in my legs.”

“Maybe later.” Jane looked at her watch. “I have to change, and we have to leave soon. Oh God, Leslie, is this the end of it?” That, she thought, was what Jane Austen would have asked.

She turned to look back at the house when they left. She'd get back tonight, she thought, but then, if the police arrested her, she might not see it for a while.

A tear trickled down one cheek, then the other. She wiped them away and Leslie growled, “Don't pussy out on me.”

“You know how I hate that word,” she said. She wiped her face again. “I'm so scared.

We should never have done Bucher. Never have killed at home.”

“We'll be okay,” Leslie said. He reached over and patted her thigh. “We've just got to kill our way out of it.”

“I know,” she said. “It scares me so bad…”

They GOT to Davenport's at nine-fifteen and cruised the neighborhood. Still too light.

They went out to a bagel place off Ford Parkway and got a couple of bagels with cream cheese for Leslie. Nine-thirty. There were more people around than they'd expected, riding out the last light of day on the River Boulevard bike trail, and walking dogs on the sidewalk. But the yards were big, and they could park well down the darker side street and still see Davenport's house, one down beyond the corner house.

There were lights all over Davenport's house; the family was in.

“I could probably kill him with the baseball from here,” Leslie said, when they rolled into the spot Jane had picked. He had gotten in the backseat at the bagel shop. Now he slipped the rifle out of the case, and sitting with his back to the driver's side of the car, pointed the rifle through the raised back window at Davenport's front porch.

“No problem,” he said, looking through the scope. Jane put the yellow plastic ear protectors in her ears. Leslie fiddled with the rifle for a moment, then snapped it back to his shoulder. “No problem.

A hundred and fifty feet, if these are hundred-foot lots, less if they're ninety feet…” His voice was muffled, but still audible.

“God. I'm so scared, Les,” she said, slipping the revolver out of her purse. Checked the streets: nobody in sight. “I'm not sure I can do it.”

“Hey,” Leslie said. “Don't pussy out.”

She lifted the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. There was a one-inch spit of flame, not as bright as a flash camera, and a tremendous crack.

She recoiled from it, dropped the gun, hands to her ears, eyes wide. She looked out through the back window. The gunshot had sounded like the end of the world, but the world, a hundred feet away, seemed to go on. A car passed, and ten seconds later, a man on a bicycle with a leashed Labrador running beside him.

Leslie was lying back on the seat, and in the dim light, looked terrifically dead.

“Damn gun,” Jane muttered into the stench of gunpowder and blood. She had to kneel on the seat and reach over the back to get the revolver off the floor. She wiped it with a paper towel, then pressed it into one of Leslie's limp hands, rolling it, making sure of at least one print.

Leslie kept his cell phone plugged into the car's cigarette lighter. She picked it up, called Amity Anderson. When Anderson picked up, she said, “Can you come now?”

“Right now?” The anxiety was heavy in Anderson's voice.

“That would be good.”

“Did you…”

“This is a radio,” Widdler said. “Don't talk, just come.”

She checked for watchers, then let herself out of the car. Shut the door, locked it with the second remote. That was a nice piece of work, she thought. Locked from the inside, with the keys still in Leslie's pocket. These keys, the second set, would go back in the front key drawer, to be found by the investigators.

She walked away into the dark. She was sure she hadn't thought of everything, but she was confident that she'd thought of enough. All she wanted was a simple “Not guilty.” Was that too much to ask? Amity found her on the corner.

Jane wasn't all that cranked: Leslie had been on his way out. His actual passing was more a matter of when than if.

And though she was calm enough, she had to seem cranked. She had to be frantic, flustered, and freaked. As she came up to the corner she brushed her hair forward, messing it up; her hair was never messed up. She slapped herself on the face a couple of times.

She muttered to herself, bit her lip until tears came to her eyes. Slapped herself again.

Amity found her freshly slapped and teary eyed, on the corner, properly disheveled for a recent murderess.

Jane got in the car: “Thank God,” she moaned.

“You did it.”

“We have to go to your house,” Jane said. “For one minute. I'm so scared. I'm going to wet my pants. I just… God, I can't hold it in.”

“Hold it, hold it, we'll be there in two minutes,” Amity said. Down Cretin, left on Ford, up the street past the shopping centers, up the hill, into the driveway.

In thr bathroom, Jane pulled down her pants, listened, then stood up and opened the medicine cabinet. Two prescription bottles. She took the one in the back. Sat down, peed, waddled to the sink with her pants down around her ankles, looked in, then turned around and carefully and silently pried open the shower door. Hair near the drain. She got a piece of toilet paper, and cleaned up some hair, put it in her pocket.

Almost panting now. The cops might be on their way at any moment: a passerby happens to glance into the car, sees a shoe… and she had a lot to get done. She sat back on the toilet, flushed, stood up, pulled up her pants. Lot to get done.

Amity was shaky. “When do you think, ah, what…?” “Let's go,” Jane said. “Now, we're in a hurry.”

In the car, headed west across the bridge, Jane said, “I mailed you the map. You should get it tomorrow. Don't wait too long before you go. Leslie owned the land through a trust, and they'll find it pretty quick. Make sure you're not being followed.

Davenport's talked to you, if he knows anything else, if he's investigating the quilts… then you might be followed.”

Amity looked in the rearview mirror. “How do you know we're not being followed now?”

Jane made a smile. “We can't be,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because if we are, we're finished.”

Amity looked at her, white-faced. “That's it? We can't be because we can't be?”

“Actually they'd be much more likely to be following Leslie and me,” Jane said. “If they were, they probably would have picked me up back at Davenport's house, don't you think?”

Amity nodded. That made sense. “Maybe I should drop you off around the block from your place. Just in case.”

“You could do that,” Jane said. “Just to be perfectly clear about this, you're now an accomplice in whatever it is that happened to Leslie. I happen to think it was a suicide, and you should think that, too. Because if you ever even hint that I know something about it, well, then, you're in it, too.”

“All I want to do is go to Italy,” Amity said.

Amity dropped her off around the block, and Jane strolled home in the soft night light, listening to the insects, to the frogs, to the rustlings in the hedges: cats on their nightly missions, a possum here, a fox there, all unseen.

Nobody waiting. And she thought, No Les, no more.

She made a smile-look, reflecting at her own courage, her own ability to operate under pressure. It was like being a spy, almost…