John Sandford - Field of Prey

“Good. That’s good,” R-A said. “I’ll do that.” He pointed the gun at Horn’s head, but Horn didn’t bother to flinch. “Gotta remember: jack one in, safety off, one shot, boom, kick the door shut. Jack one in, safety off, one shot, boom, kick the door shut.”

“Here’s another thing,” Horn said. “Lot of people got those cheap game cameras now. They put them up in trees, set for night hours. You need something to cover your face-a sock or a ski mask, and a hat.”

“That’s good,” R-A said. “That’s a good idea.”

“And don’t forget: you need to type up that note.”

“Getting really fuckin’ complicated,” R-A said.

“Confusing is what it is,” Horn said. “When it comes to the cops, confusion is your friend.”

By the time they got it figured out, and R-A had gone down to the basement and fired a round into a hard-foam archery target, and then come back up, and finished typing the note he’d leave by the blonde’s body in Alexandria, red sunlight was streaming in through the low west windows in the parlor. It’d be dark in half an hour.

“Got to do it,” R-A said.

The night was almost always quiet in Holbein. Sometimes the kids would be out in the warm twilight, playing war with apples picked off neighborhood trees, and you’d hear shouting when somebody got ambushed or hit behind the ear with an unripe Haralson; or, if they were a little older, necking in the shadows. Three nights a year, a carnival would be in town, and you could hear it for miles around, and then there was the Fourth of July, which could get loud. . but otherwise, the nights were slow and quiet, and a banging screen door was as noisy as it got.

The O’Neill house was right on the edge of town. The house faced neighbors on the other side of the street, but behind it, to the east, it was nothing but corn and soybeans all the way to the Mississippi.

After thinking it over, and thinking about the long hike he’d made back from Zumbrota, R-A parked almost a mile away, two big cornfields east of the O’Neill house. He’d come up from the back, and if he had to run for it, he could disappear into one of the cornfields and make it back to his truck in ten minutes or so. There was even a place to park, down through a pasture gate behind a screen of ditch weeds.

At least, that was what he figured out, after driving around for a while. He parked in the pasture and turned his truck lights out, and sat. If the owner of the field came along, he’d have no excuse for being there, so he took along a bottle of bourbon, put it in the backseat. If somebody jumped him, he’d say he’d pulled off where the cops wouldn’t find him, because, well, he was driving drunk.

Or, he could just kill the guy.

He’d work that out if it happened.

He looked out the window, tempted to take a drink. Full dark. He unscrewed the cap on the bourbon, took a hard swallow.

The first part of the plan went wrong.

From the road, R-A could see reasonably well: the moon was probably three-quarters, and the stars were bright. He walked across the narrow pasture to the cornfield-he could see the lights in the back windows of the O’Neills’ house-but as soon as he got in the corn, he couldn’t see anything. Worse, the rows ran in the wrong direction, at right angles to the direction he wanted to walk. After crashing through thirty feet of corn, he made a right turn, walked down the row, climbed the fence at the end of it, crossed the ditch to the road, and started jogging west. The gun was in the game pocket of a hunting shirt, and banged against his butt as he ran.

He crossed another narrow gravel road, crossed back over the ditch to the cornfield, and in this one, he found, the rows ran in the right direction. He walked along, arms and hands in front of his face so his face wouldn’t get cut by the corn leaves, and after eight or ten minutes, hit the fence behind the O’Neills’ house.

The trip from the truck had taken almost twenty minutes, far longer than he expected. He’d stick to the road going back, he decided, at least until he saw lights behind him.

The second part of the plan went well, at least from R-A’s perspective. The O’Neills didn’t bother to draw a lot of curtains in their house, especially on the sides. After pulling the ski mask over his head, R-A crossed the fence line and moved slowly-he was an experienced hunter-across the backyard, watching especially the house to the left side of the O’Neills’. There were lights over there, but he never saw anybody moving inside.

The O’Neill kitchen, he decided, was at the back of the house, because Mrs. O’Neill (Lucy? He thought that was right) was standing framed in a small high window. That’d be the window over the kitchen sink, where she was doing dishes. There were lights in the front of the house, and the peculiar blue glow of a television.

That would be Andy, watching the TV while his wife did dishes. R-A watched and listened; the neighborhood was quiet. More than quiet: it was still. He’d go for the front door, he decided. Take Andy O’Neill first.

He moved down the side of the house. There was a lit window on the second floor, under a dormer. A bedroom?

At the corner of the front porch, he knelt, concealed by a clump of arborvitae. Still time to turn back. . but he couldn’t. Andy was a talker.

Took a breath. Muttered to himself: jack a shell into the chamber, pistol now cocked, flip the safety off. Check the safety again. Wait some more. Check the safety a third time.

He took a last look around, and a deep breath, stood up, walked around the corner of the house and up the porch steps. The front entrance had both an inner door and a screen door. He tried the screen door and found it unlocked. He pulled it just slightly open, then rang the doorbell.

O’Neill came to the door with a querulous look, impatient with the interruption, but not quite annoyed. R-A saw him coming and turned away, as though he were looking out across the lawn, but at the same time, kept his left hand on the handle to the screen door. As soon as he heard the door open behind him, and O’Neill saying. . “Yes. .” he turned and pulled open the screen door and swung the pistol up. With the muzzle two inches from O’Neill’s forehead he pulled the trigger twice, the gun went whump whump and O’Neill went down.

Mrs. O’Neill in the kitchen called, “Andy? Andy, what was that? Who’s there?”

R-A hopped across O’Neill’s body, kicked the door shut, and ran across the living room carpet to the kitchen door and got there just as Mrs. O’Neill stepped into the doorway. He was leading with the muzzle of the gun and whump whump and Mrs. O’Neill went down, but maybe not dead, and he stepped close and fired again, this time with the muzzle one inch from her temple, whump .

Five shots, four rounds left.

Then, from upstairs, “Mom? Mom? What was that?”

R-A turned back to the living room. He’d seen the wide steps going up, over the built-in bookcase, and he ran back through the kitchen door and turned toward the staircase, and saw the girl there, maybe ten years old, staring openmouthed at her father’s body by the door, then she saw him, and quick as a flash, turned and ran back up the stairs.

R-A was right behind her, slamming up the stairs, around the landing, saw a door closing, locking, kicked it as hard as he could, felt it give, but hold, kicked it again, close to the knob, and it caved, and he kicked it again and was in, but as he went through he heard the window shatter, and inside the door saw the girl at the window about to go out on the porch roof and he fired four times into her back, whump whump whump whump.

She was terribly hurt, but not dead yet, and rolled over on her back, and looked up at him, her eyes already going hazy, and she asked, “Why?” He leaned forward and tried to fire again, into her forehead, but nothing happened. He looked at the gun: empty magazine. He ejected the empty mag, slapped in a new one, and fired the last shot and the girl’s eyes shuddered and closed.