John Sandford - Field of Prey

“That’d take a good shot.”

“It’d take an okay shot,” Weil said. “Not great.”

When they left Weil, Mattsson said, “Well, that was fun. What’s next?”

Lucas ran a hand through his hair: he smelled like burnt gunpowder. “You know, I’m running around in circles. All of us BCA guys are running around in circles. What I really need is what I told my boss I was going to do, which is go home and think about it some more. Not talk to anyone, not mow the grass, but sit in a quiet spot and think about it.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I keep trying to do it, and keep getting interrupted,” Lucas said.

“I’ll call you first thing, if anything happens tonight.”

“Yeah, well. .”

She leaned back against the door of her truck. “You think it’s a fool’s errand?”

“Probably,” Lucas said. “The thing is, I could be completely wrong. Having a cop there could keep the Scott family from being murdered. So. . tell your guy to stay awake.”

She nodded. “If you think of something, call me.”

Lucas went home to think.

Late that same afternoon, R-A was standing behind the counter in the hardware store, while another clerk, Dick, was out in the small engine shop demonstrating a STIHL brushcutter before loading it in the back of a customer’s truck.

Andy O’Neill, who ran the local carpet store, wandered in, carrying a broken white PVC cap. “Hoped you were still open,” he said. “Run over the goldarn vent pipe for the septic with my lawn mower. You got any caps like this?”

“Six-inch,” R-A said. “We oughta have a few. You bust the pipe, too?”

“Just down to ground level. I’m gonna cut the broken part off with a hacksaw, stick the cap on. Never wanted it sticking up like that, anyway.”

“That oughta work,” R-A said. He took the cap and led O’Neill back to the plumbing section, found the replacement cap. “You need a hacksaw?”

“Got one,” O’Neill said.

When he was ringing up the sale, R-A caught O’Neill. . peering at him.

“What? I got a hickey on my neck?”

“No, no,” O’Neill said. He was a tall man, as heavily muscled as R-A. “I been watching that Black Hole investigation thing. This girl over in Zumbrota says some postal clerk did it. They had a picture of him. You look like his brother, or something. You related?”

“Not unless my mother was doing something I didn’t know about,” R-A chuckled. “They don’t catch that guy, maybe I better grow a beard.”

“Does look like you,” O’Neill said. He hunted through the candy rack for a moment, found a candy bar. “Give me a Snickers, too. I don’t want it on the same receipt. My old lady looks at receipts.”

“Know how that goes,” R-A said. Though he didn’t.

R-A went home in a state: he wheeled Horn out to the living room and said, “Soon’s that sonofabitch thinks about it long enough, he’s gonna mention it to someone. Then it’ll get around town, and the law’s gonna come lookin’ for me.”

“Not against the law to look like somebody else,” Horn said.

“But. . there’s probably other stuff,” R-A said. “Maybe some evidence that we don’t know about, but they’re looking to hang on somebody. Maybe some of that DNA. There was enough of it in Mary Lynn’s pussy, when I put her down the well. If they test me on it, I’m done.”

“What are you going to do?” Horn asked.

“Well, I know you got nothing against killing people,” R-A said.

“Against you killing people. I’m not killing anybody , not in this condition,” Horn said.

“Well, shit, I don’t exactly have a problem with it, either,” R-A said. “How’m I gonna do it? A gun’s so goddamn loud in the night.”

“Baseball bat?”

“Jesus Christ, Horn, this isn’t some drunk blonde,” R-A said. “O’Neill’s a big guy. Carrying rolls of carpet around, he’s probably twice as strong as me. He’d take a baseball bat and stick it up my ass.”

“Just kiddin’ you,” Horn said. “Think what you got downstairs.”

R-A thought, then his face brightened. “Your old Ruger.”

“That’s right. Not a lot of accuracy if you’re shooting more than twenty feet, but if you’re shooting at two inches. .”

“Goddamn: I don’t think of you as being a dogcatcher,” R-A said.

“Neither do I, and I never did. There was a lot more to it-”

“Okay, okay. I apologize.” R-A rubbed his face. “Even so, they’ll tear the town apart when they find them.”

“Sure, but what’s worse-them tearing the town apart looking for a gunman, or coming to you directly and asking for a DNA sample?”

“I dunno, I dunno.”

“Got away with a.45 right here in town,” Horn said. “O’Neill’s out there on the edge, must have a two-acre lot.”

“The Ruger. Gotta do it soon,” R-A said. “Tonight. We can’t have him talking to anybody.”

“Maybe he already has,” Horn said.

“Nothing we could do about that,” R-A said. “We gotta play it like he hasn’t said anything.”

There was still light coming through the curtains, and would be for another hour or two. Horn said, “You can’t go out there until after dark. We’ve got time to plan it out.”

R-A said, “This could be the thing that kills me.”

“Maybe,” Horn said. “But you had a good run. If you still really don’t want to be caught, I’d think about running up to Alexandria, find yourself a blonde. Maybe even tonight. They won’t believe you’d be in two places in one night.”

R-A scratched his neck, under his chin, thinking about that. “That’d be one hell of a night,” he said after a few seconds. “I’d have to take O’Neill first, and that’d have to be after dark. Could I get up to Alexandria in time to do any good?”

“I don’t know. Figure it out.”

R-A: “Mattsson. Maybe they do get me, but I’m gonna get her first. I swear to God.”

So they planned it out, sitting in the living room. R-A had a few drinks, getting his guts up, and went down to the basement and got Horn’s Ruger Mark II.22 auto. It had a very long barrel, and was poorly balanced. He could live with it.

“Go up to the door, shoot him, kick the door shut, shoot the old lady,” R-A said, demonstrating the moves to an unnaturally intent Horn. “Gotta remember the part about kicking the door shut. If somebody hears bang! they might let it go. If they hear bang! bang! bang! they’ll be looking out the windows.”

“There won’t be much of a bang, but there’ll be some,” Horn said. “It won’t sound much like a gun. I never had anybody come out and ask, ‘You shoot something?’”

“I’ll take it down the basement before I go. . see what it sounds like.”

“Don’t go running out the door after you shoot them,” Horn suggested. “If somebody does hear that first bang, and looks around, and they see somebody running, they’ll be looking around for sure.”

R-A was sitting on the couch and popped the magazine on the Ruger. He was about to push one of the shells out with his thumb and Horn said, “Don’t!”

“Don’t what?”

“Those shells are gonna have my prints on them,” Horn said. “I imagine you’d want to keep them on there. And not yours.”

R-A looked at the magazine. “Yup.” The magazine had a long slot down the side, and R-A counted the shells. “Ten of them. I’m gonna have to shoot one, to make sure it’s still working, that the spring hasn’t gone flat.”

“You can do that down the basement. There’s another magazine down there, too. It’s not loaded. I’d polish off some shells, then load it up, wearing gloves, of course. Just in case you need to reload.”