John Sandford - Secret Prey

Audrey answered the phone on the third ring and Helen said to her, "Did you do it?"

And Audrey could hear Connie in the background, saying, urgently, "Mom, hang up. Hang up."

"Do what?" Audrey said calmly, though she knew.

"You’d know, if you did it."

"That Davenport’s been there again, hasn’t he?" Audrey asked. "May I speak to him?"

"He’s gone," Helen said. She choked on the words, and Audrey heard Connie say, "Mom, I’m gonna hang this up. You shouldn’t-"

And the connection was gone. Audrey looked at the phone for a moment, then punched the power button and turned it off. Davenport had found the pill. She wouldn’t need to talk to Helen again.

As she walked out through the Fidelity office, she met the young manager on her way back: "I’m sorry," Audrey said. "I’ve got something of a family emergency. I have to go home."

She drove back toward her house on remote control. She didn’t have access to any serious money, so running was not a possibility. And with Helen alive, she didn’t really have many options left. She could think of precisely one.

"I can die," she said to the car. She was overwhelmed with a feeling of sadness, not for herself, but for the world. She’d be gone. The world wouldn’t have her anymore. "But they’ll see then," she told the car. "That’s when they’ll see."

The car seemed to steer itself, but she knew where it was going: North Woods Arms, in Wayzata. The gun shop was a small place, a door beside a picture window, the window laced over with security bars disguised as wrought-iron curlicues. The area beside the door and around the window had weathered-wood siding, to simulate a North Woods cabin; small Christmas lights blinked in the window, around a festive display of nine-millimeter pistols.

A bell rang above the door as she walked in, and the owner looked up from a magazine. "Hello."

"Hello," Audrey said, glancing around at the rack of long guns. "I’m looking for a gun for my husband for Christmas."

"You’ve come to the right place," the owner said pleasantly. "Do you know what you’re looking for, or-"

"Yes." Audrey unfolded a piece of yellow notebook paper. She’d thought that would be a nice touch. "A Remington 870 Wingmaster twelve-gauge shotgun."

"No problem," the owner said enthusiastically. "You know what he’s going to use it for?"

"Ducks, I guess. He mostly hunts ducks. And geese."

"No problem…"

She took the 870 along with two boxes of No. 2 shells. The store owner took her check, carried the boxes out to the car, and said, "Tell your husband I said, ‘Good hunting.’ "

"When I see him," she said, and got in the car. The store owner thought that was an odd thing to say; he would mention it to his wife that night.

Lucas and Sherrill had gotten to the McDonald house before Audrey, and a minute before two patrol cops in a squad car. Lucas knocked on the front door, got no response, and while the uniforms waited in front, they walked together once around the house. Nobody. Peering through the deck windows, they saw no sign of movement or light. Back in front, Sherrill rang the doorbell again. Lucas said, looking up at the bedroom windows, "Nobody’s home. Feels too quiet. I hope she’s not running."

They were standing in the "L" made by the front of the house, the living wing to the front, extending to the left, the three-car garage swinging off to the right. "Maybe put out a call on her. Or we could just wait," Sherrill said. The uniforms were leaning on the front fender of their squad car, chatting.

"I hope she’s not looking for Helen," Lucas said. And thought about Elle Kruger, and his jaw tightened. "Or anybody else. By God, I’d like to be there to bust her; but maybe we’d better-Whoops. There she is."

Audrey turned into the bottom of the driveway, saw the Porsche and the police car at the top. She reached up and pushed the garage door opener. The shotgun rode beside her, muzzle down, in the passenger foot-well, the butt resting against her hip. She’d loaded four shells, as many as it would take, and had two more loose on the seat for reloading.

And she was ready for it. On the way home from the gun store, her vision had seemed to narrow: on the highway, she could see only the road itself. On the driveway, she could see only the garage door, until she made the little left, then right loop that could take her into the garage. Then, she looked out the passenger-side window and saw Davenport walking toward the garage, and her vision narrowed to a small point: Davenport’s face. A mean man, she thought. Harsh. A man like Daddy.

When the garage door started up, the two uniformed cops pushed away from the fender of their squad car, and looked down the drive. Audrey rolled slowly up the drive, made a little jog that took her straight in toward the far door. Lucas and Sherrill started walking toward it from the front stoop, and the two uniformed cops started toward it from their parking spot at the edge of the driveway. The back of Audrey’s car had just cleared the inside of the door when it started down again.

Lucas turned and said, "Side door." Sherrill followed him toward an access door at the near end of the three overhead doors, just ambling along without thinking about it. Lucas opened the access door and stepped into the semidark garage, which was getting darker as the end door dropped the last couple of feet. "Mrs. McDonald," he said.

Audrey heard that, and looking left, saw Davenport step inside the garage. He was standing in a shaft of light from the open access door. She grabbed the shotgun with her right hand, took a second to make sure the safety was off, then opened the door with her left hand, pushed it out with her feet, and pivoted out of the car. The shotgun was long and awkward, and she had to maneuver it around the car’s roof post. Still, once it was out, it came up smoothly, and she saw the surprise register on Davenport’s face and heard him scream a word and saw a violent motion and then the muzzle was coming down…

The dome and door lights came on in Audrey’s car as she opened the door; and with that light, Lucas could see the shotgun barrel as it came up. Sherrill had come in behind him and he screamed, "Gun!" and battered her sideways as he went down behind a Lexus. At the same instant, the shotgun blew a foot-long finger of flame at him, and the wall behind exploded in a shower of drywall plaster.

BAAA-OOOM.

The sound came after the lightning flash-a long time after, it seemed, though he was suspended in air when he thought that. Then he was on the floor, groping for his pistol, dragging it out of the holster, rolling along beside the Lexus, and the shotgun lit up the garage again, blowing glass out over his head. He’d lost track of Sherrill, lost track of everything: the thunder of the shotgun was magnified in the enclosed space, and the lightning of the shots was now the only illumination, aside from the feeble dome light from McDonald’s car.

Audrey had been blinded by the muzzle flash; she hadn’t expected that, but she expected Davenport to be falling, so she dropped the muzzle of the weapon as she pumped it, and convulsively jerked the trigger again. Glass shattered and she registered a voice, screaming; and a surge of confidence ran through her. Got him. Now to finish him .

"Light." Lucas heard somebody screaming; his mind processed it as Sherrill, but he couldn’t tell what she was saying. "Top."

BAAA-OOOM.

Three shots; and Audrey was getting closer, walking toward them. But some shotguns only held three shots. Was she reloading? Was this a four-shot chamber? And then suddenly, the overhead lights were on and he saw, from the corner of his eye, Sherrill scrambling away from a light switch, a gun in her hand. And at the same time, from his spot on the concrete floor, saw Audrey’s ankle behind the back bumper of the sport-ute. He pushed his hand forward, couldn’t see the front barrel of the pistol but squeezed off a shot. Twelve feet: and he missed to the right. Audrey did a little hop step, and he heard her pump, and a shotgun shell bounced off the floor and he adjusted a hair to the right and pulled the trigger again.