John Sandford - Field of Prey

Letty patted her on the arm: “Maybe later. Maybe we’ll see her after we talk to Del.”

At five o’clock in the morning, a tall, solemn surgeon came out of the OR and walked down toward them, still in his operating gown, with a small splash of blood at just about the belly button, and said, “I could use a cigarette.”

Everybody was standing, and he looked at them and said, “He’s closed up, he’s breathing, he’s got no more leaks that we can see, and he’s got blood. There are numerous possibilities on the downside: stroke and blood clots, but the slug didn’t hit much bone, so we’re better off there, not a lot of fat punched into the bloodstream. He lost a chunk of his liver, but he’s got most of it left.”

“He’s going to make it,” Lucas said.

The doc said, “I can’t make that promise, but he’s seventy-thirty. Two-to-one he makes it. He’s in good shape, and that helps. They got him here in a hurry, and that not only saved his life up front, but makes the recovery that much more likely.”

Cheryl, whose hands were clenched in front of her, began sobbing, and Colson said, “This is his wife.”

The surgeon tipped his head and then said, “I’m sorry. I would have been more diplomatic if I’d known. I was told his wife was in Minnesota.”

She said, “That’s fine. I’m a surgical nurse, I listen to docs all day. But I just, I just, I just. .”

Lucas gave her a squeeze. “Don’t worry, they got it covered. They got it covered.”

Lucas willed himself to believe. An hour after they talked to the doctor, they briefly saw Del as he was wheeled unconscious to the Critical Care Unit. He would not be awake until mid-morning, they were told; they should get some sleep.

Lucas got them rooms at a Hyatt near the airport. The limo had gone, so they took a cab over. Cheryl nearly fell asleep in the cab: some of the stress backing off. They checked in, Lucas said good night to the two women, and they all crashed.

Finding really big spuds is getting harder and harder,” Horn said. “That’s a good one, though.”

“You know what you can find?” R-A asked, as he carved the baking potato on the kitchen counter. “You got those big red sweet potatoes. The only thing is, they’re harder than regular potatoes. Be like hitting somebody with bare knuckles.”

“Could try it sometime, if the cops don’t get you first,” Horn said. Horn was looking a lot better, like he’d looked eleven or twelve years earlier, when he was alive. R-A was beginning to regret not getting rid of the body years before.

R-A finished carving, dried the potato with a paper towel, looked at it, said, “Close enough, I think.” He picked up a thin plastic glove, the kind food handlers wear, pulled it on, and slipped his four fingers into the holes through the potato, with his thumb wrapped around the bottom.

The fit was too tight, and he pulled the potato off his hand, did a little more whittling between the fourth and fifth finger holes, and tried again. This time, the fit was right: like a pair of brass knuckles, but made out of a big Idaho baking potato.

“This should put her down,” he said.

When going after women in the past, they’d tried several methods. The postal bag had worked well the first four times, but the fifth, with Heather Jorgenson, had been a disaster. They decided that in the future, the woman’s hands, feet, and mouth had to be securely taped. To do that, they had to be taken down in a hurry.

Their first thought had been chloroform or ether. Chloroform had been almost impossible to get without leaving a trail. Ether was tough to get, too, according to all the available sources at the time. Then they found out about John Deere diesel starting fluid, which is almost pure ether, and which they carried in the store. They’d turn the can upside down, punch a hole in the bottom with a nail to release the spray propellant, and then pour the ether into a bottle. And there you were.

One problem: induction was really slow. You could grab a woman, pull a bag over her head, with a rag inside, soaking wet with ether, and it might not knock her out for good for five minutes. She’d be screaming her head off all that time. Then, when she woke up, she’d be puking all over everything. Worse, you stank of ether. If you were pulled over by a cop, you’d be doing the stupid human tricks in one minute-and if the cop looked in the car, you’d either have to kill him, or hang.

So ether and chloroform were out.

Then R-A read somewhere about sapping people with potatoes. Usually, it’d be a potato in a sock, but after practicing with it for a bit, the method turned out to be unreliable. Better to fit the potato on your hand, punch them right in the mouth. They’d go down for the count, and by the time they were reoriented, they’d be trussed up like a Christmas turkey.

Quick, efficient, effective-and the potato would go out the truck window, to be run over by the regular traffic.

The hardest part of his investigation had been finding out where Mattsson actually lived. R-A could find a name, but not an address, on the Internet. She wasn’t listed in the county property tax records, which meant she was renting somewhere. He mentioned to a clerk at the store that he was looking for an old friend that he’d lost touch with, and the clerk suggested the court records for lawsuits and such.

That sounded smart, so R-A ran into Red Wing and found her in the court records: a divorce. The papers were being served to a downtown address, and when he went to look at it, found a storefront, with a locked door and a staircase off to one side. The mailbox said C. Mattsson. He took a look at the lock; he knew locks, because he sold them.

The lock was old, and not very good. Even better, the door had a glass panel, and if he could cut through the glass, he could slip his hand inside and unlock the door.

On the way back home, he stopped at Walmart and bought a pay-as-you-go cell phone, for cash. A burner, the dopers called them.

What else? He’d be climbing that stairs in the dark, and if he was wearing his usual boots, she might hear him coming. He had a cozy pair of moccasins for wearing around the house in winter. They oughta work.

“You better move fast,” Horn said, as sun spun down in a clear blue sky, and the night began coming up. They were sitting in the living room, looking out over the lawn. “You don’t have many days left, before they come in here.”

“I can get away with it,” R-A said.

Horn made a farting noise. “You got no chance. Fuck her while you can. Take a gun with you.”

“If I have to use a gun, I’m probably cooked anyway,” R-A said.

“The gun’s for you,” Horn said. “Gives you a choice.”

R-A rattled the ice cubes in his glass, and thought about it.

There was a bar in Red Wing called The Blue Ox, two blocks from Mattsson’s place, and that was where R-A set up. He got there at ten-thirty, nervous as a hen in a weasel house, and drank beer. Not too much beer, but some, maybe a six-pack spread over two and a half hours.

Every half hour or so, he’d tell the bartender to watch his stool, he had to pee. He’d stop at the men’s room, then go out the back door, walk down a block, and check the lights in Mattsson’s apartment.

An SUV was parked out front, and he assumed it was hers-there weren’t any garages around, and no other cars parked within a couple hundred feet. If she came out the door and he punched her, and then there was a guy behind her, an unknown lover. . maybe another cop with a gun. .

He would have a reason to carry a pistol. He’d brought it with him, because this whole night would be different. The other women he’d taken were usually drunk, often out of shape, unsuspecting, easy to take down. Mattsson could be a whole ’nother thing.