John Sandford - Field of Prey

“I still got some rope,” R-A said. “I’m good.”

Horn started to laugh. R-A turned to him, but Horn had gone; wasn’t there anymore. R-A could still hear him laughing, though, somewhere in the house.

Lucas jogged out of the supermarket, across the parking lot to his truck, looking up at the hardware store. The windows were dark, with a couple of small neon advertising signs flickering into the growing darkness.

Shaffer had been sitting right here, and he’d thought about the keys. Who makes keys? A hardware store. He walks up to the store, and there he meets the killer, and asks the wrong question.

But the killer couldn’t have just shot him in the store. Could he? Or would he have lured Shaffer off to somewhere else? Not something he could know, Lucas thought.

Other thoughts began to impinge. Axel: he’d heard the name before, but where? Somewhere in the murder books? That didn’t seem right, but he’d heard the name.

And he thought, Ropes . The fuckin’ ropes. They were burn-cut on both ends. You had to have a dedicated burn-cutter to do that, and where’d you find those? At a hardware store. Would you go to a hardware store once or twice a year, year after year, and buy a four-foot rope? Probably not. That’s something people would remember. But if you could cut the rope yourself, because you owned the place. .

Shaffer’s crew had gone around to hardware stores asking about ropes, but hadn’t gotten anywhere-they’d never realized that it wasn’t the ropes that were important, but the cuts . You could get rope anywhere, but burn cuts, at both ends, only at a hardware store.

And the cut-glass door at Mattsson’s apartment: Where would you get glass cut? Who’d know how to do that, neatly and efficiently? A guy who worked at a hardware store.

Axel’s name popped back into his head. Yes. He had it: he’d heard it from Toby, the snakeskin dealer. Axel was a big-game hunter and possibly a friend of Horn’s. And the woman who’d seen Horn and a friend unloading a huge deer at a butcher shop-Axel, the headhunter.

All coming together, in the space of fifteen seconds as he hurried across the parking lot, got into the truck, and started it. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw a line of store employees at the window, watching him go.

He went straight up to the hardware store and parked in front of it, and walked over to the front door. The store was nearly dark, lit by a variety of LED lights on the office equipment and alarms, and a lone fluorescent light in the back. He saw a movement, banged on the door with his fist. A moment later, a man in an apron emerged from the dark and waved him off. Lucas banged hard, again, held up his ID.

The man, tall, thin, and bald, squinted through the glass at him, then unlocked the door, opened it, and said, “We’re closed.”

“I’m a police officer,” Lucas said. “I need to talk to Roger Axel.”

“He’s not here. He hurt himself this morning when a tool rack fell on him. He had to go home.”

“Where’s that?”

The clerk pointed down the street. “About two blocks down there, in that big old gray house halfway down the second block.”

“Could you give me the address?”

“Hang on a second.”

The clerk stepped back into the building and Lucas followed through the door. The clerk said, nervously, “I’m not sure. .”

Lucas: “I need the address. And while I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, at this point, I need to warn you, if you call Axel, or warn him that I’m coming, I will arrest you and I will put you in prison for the rest of your natural life. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

The clerk peered at him, and his Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times, and then he said, “You think he’s the Black Hole guy.”

“I do,” Lucas said. “How’d you pick that up?”

“If he’s not, don’t tell him what I’m gonna say. ’Cause I need this job.”

“If he’s not, I won’t tell him anything,” Lucas said. “So how’d you pick it up?”

“Because I think it’s possible,” the clerk said. “I’ve known him for six years, and by God, I think it’s possible.”

“Get the address,” Lucas said.

The clerk found the address in Axel’s personal checkbook, which was lying on his desk. Lucas noted it, and asked, “What about this accident he had this morning?”

The clerk said, “It was strange. He pulled a tool rack down on himself. It sort of made sense at the time, but, if you really think about it, you don’t quite see how it happened. One thing was, he got this great big long scratch on his face, like from a nail. If you didn’t know it was from a nail, you’d think it was from a fingernail. Like a woman’s fingernail.”

“I want you to lock up, right now, and go home, and wait,” Lucas told the clerk. “Don’t answer the door, if it’s not a cop.”

“Yes, sir,” the clerk said, pulling off the apron. “I’ll wait until I hear from you.”

Lucas called Duncan as he walked out to the car: “Where are you at?”

“Red Wing. Looking at tapes.”

“I’ve got him,” Lucas said. “He runs the hardware store in Holbein. His name is Roger Axel. I’m a block from his house and I can’t wait. I’m gonna kick the door and go in. Get everybody here, quick as you can.”

“Holy shit, Lucas, you gotta wait. You gotta wait-”

“I can’t wait. I can’t. It’s getting dark, and if he’s gonna kill Mattsson tonight, he’ll do it when it gets dark. Call a judge and get a warrant going.”

“Based on what?”

“Based on. . testimony from the supermarket management which leads us to believe that Axel is the bad guy. Shit, I don’t know, Jon, I just know he’s the guy. And I can’t wait.”

Lucas rang off and locked his car as he passed it, and started walking down the block toward Axel’s house. Halfway there, he broke into a jog. Would Axel have had the gall to keep Mattsson in his own house, virtually in downtown Holbein? Maybe, but maybe not. Lucas couldn’t take the chance of killing him, because if he’d put Mattsson somewhere else, they needed to know where.

He ran.

The streets were empty, but one elderly man in a hat, sitting on his front porch, reading a newspaper by the porch light, turned to watch him go by, a man in jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt, out jogging on a hot night. Not something you see every day.

Lucas got To Axel’s house, slowed down, caught his breath, and walked up on the porch. Checked the house number to make sure he had it right. Thought about it for a second, then rang the doorbell. Nobody answered, but Lucas felt the man in the house; felt footfalls. Somebody had moved from one room to another, in a hurry.

Well, hell: he didn’t really need the job.

He took a step back, and kicked the door. The door was not quite an antique, but it was old, and much used, and blew inward. Lucas went in after it, pulling his.45 as he did, and saw movement to his right and saw Axel there, reaching into a bookcase. Lucas pointed the.45 at Axel’s head and shouted, “Stop there.”

Axel stopped, his hand still in the bookcase. The facial resemblance to Sprick, the postman, was remarkable. Lucas said, “If you pull a gun out of there, I’m going to shoot you in the head. Pull your hand out.”

“Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck do you want?” Axel demanded. He pulled his hand out of the bookcase, empty.

“You know who I am,” Lucas said. “I’m a cop, and you’ve got Catrin Mattsson. Where is she?”

“You’re nuts,” Axel said.

He turned, and with the change of light, Lucas could see the pattern of fingernail scratches on his face; all doubt disappeared.