John Sandford - Buried Prey

Lucas grabbed Jenkins’s arm: “How bad? Where’re they taking her? Where’re they taking her?”

Jenkins shook his head: “They’re not transporting her.”

Lucas’s mind froze for a minute, then: “What?”

“They’re not transporting, man.” Jenkins moved up and threw an arm around Lucas’s shoulder. “She’s gone, man. That’s what they’re telling us.”

Lucas stared at him for a moment, and then Del said, his voice shaking, “We’re going. Get that fucker out of there…” gesturing at Berg. Shrake yanked the thin man out of the back of the truck and slammed the door.

Del ran around to the driver’s side, and Lucas said, “No, I got it,” and Del said, “Bullshit, I’m driving. Get in. Get the fuck in the car.”

Del drove fast, but not crazy, as Lucas would have, all the way across town, with Lucas yelling suggestions at him, onto I-94, off I-94 at Cretin Avenue, south down Cretin at sixty miles an hour, then across the bridge and past the airport and the Mall of America and down into Bloomington’s suburban maze.

And all the way, with the sick feeling of doom in his gut, Lucas was yelling out reasons why it couldn’t be right: one of the best hospitals in the metro area was five minutes from the Barkers’ house; they would have transported her no matter what, there was a lot of confusion, that fuckin’ Jenkins had it wrong.

Del just drove and once in a while, shook his head. Jenkins, he believed, wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. He was a thug, but a smart one, and not insensitive. He didn’t say it, kept his foot down and shook his head as Lucas shouted out possibilities.

There were Bloomington cops all over the place, and the street down to Barker’s house was blocked off. Del rolled the Lexus past the blocking black-and-white, hanging his BCA credentials out the window, and put the truck in a vacant spot a halfblock from the Barker house.

They climbed down and jogged past a half-dozen uniformed Bloomington cops coming and going, cutting across a couple of yards, swerving around a loop of crime-scene tape to a detective standing out in the yard. He looked up as Lucas and Del came up and said, “I know you-”

“Davenport and Capslock, with the BCA,” Lucas said. “We heard that Marcy Sherrill was down. Is she…?”

The cop shook his head: “You were with Minneapolis, right?”

“Yeah, we both were. We’re close friends of hers.”

“I’m John Rimes, I’m running the scene right now. I’ll let you go in,” he said. “But you might not want to… have to go around to the side door.”

“Man, she’s…” Lucas held his hands out, palms up, pleading.

Rimes nodded. “She’s gone. We got two more down, another cop named Buster Hill, and Todd Barker, the husband here-”

“Aw, man.” Lucas stopped, put his hand to his forehead. Del put a hand on his shoulder. “Aw… can’t be right.”

“I’m sorry,” Rimes said.

“I interviewed them a couple days ago; this is part of the Jones investigation,” Lucas said, as they walked around to the side of the house. A kind of black dread was enveloping his brain. “I talked to Marcy a couple times today.”

Del said, “Easy…”

Lucas shook him off. “I’m okay.”

Rimes said, “Hill got off a couple of shots and it looks like he hit the guy-we’ve got a blood trail going around the side of the house over to the next street. Not much, but it’s a trail.”

Del asked, as they went through the side door, “Anybody get the tags?”

“No, but a guy down the street said it was a white cargo van…. Of course, there are only about thirty thousand of those.”

Lucas said to Del, “It’s him. It’s the van. It’s the guy.”

Rimes asked, “Who?” but Lucas shook his head.

Then they were crossing a kitchen toward a crowd of people in the living room, and Rimes said, “Make a hole,” and people stepped back and Lucas looked down and suddenly, shockingly, saw Marcy, eyes still open, faceup on the living room rug, only a small hole under her chin, but a big puddle of blood under her neck. She was wearing a white silky blouse with bloody handprints down the front, where somebody had tried to tend to her. Her eyes were blank as the sky.

“Aw, Christ,” he said, and he began to shake.

Around her, the house was a shambles, overturned chairs and blood tracks on the carpet, telling the story.

“This Hill guy was hit in the leg. He started screaming for an ambulance, but she was gone,” Rimes said. “He said he knew she was gone the minute he looked at the wound. Hill’s gonna be okay, the husband’s hurt bad, but he’ll make it. He took two in the chest and one in the shoulder… Sherrill was hit right under the chin.”

“Took out her spinal cord,” said a crime-scene guy. “Instantaneous. Like she was decapitated.”

Rimes shook his head at the guy and said, “Thank you,” and the guy looked at Lucas’s face and went away.

Rimes said, “The woman, this Kelly Barker, she wasn’t hurt. She said the shooter was a big fat guy with a black beard. We’re gonna get DNA on him, so he’s toast if we can put our hands on him.”

Rimes’s voice was quiet, but intense, a recitation of what he’d learned since he took over the scene. He asked Lucas, “You need to sit down?”

Lucas turned toward Del but he couldn’t find his voice, couldn’t even find any spit in his mouth, not enough moisture to force out a word, and he shook his head and went back through the kitchen and out to the backyard and sat down on the grass.

Del was on his cell phone when he came out a minute later. He clicked off, squatted next to Lucas, and said, “Come on, these guys are pros. They’ll get it done. Let’s get you home.”

“Got to tell her folks,” Lucas said, finding a few words. Tears started streaming down his face. “Somebody’s-”

“Somebody does, but not you,” Del said. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

Lucas didn’t fight him. He sat in the passenger seat, couldn’t stop the tears. Del said, “This is the worst goddamn thing. It’s the worst goddamn thing.”

Weather called on Lucas’s cell and asked, “Where are you?”

“Coming home. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said.

“Are you driving?”

“No. Del is.”

“Ten minutes,” she said.

Weather and Letty were in the driveway when they got to Lucas’s home. Del pulled in, and said, “I’ll go downtown and take care of the paper on Berg-I wish we’d never talked to that fool.”

Lucas nodded and climbed out of the truck, and Weather came and took him around the waist and said, “Shrake called, and Del. Lucas, I’m so sorry.”

Lucas nodded and Letty asked, “What’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got to think about it. I’m so freaked out I can’t think right now. This was like a freak shot, the guy was spraying the house. He shot the husband three times from four feet and didn’t kill him, but he hits Marcy once from forty feet and she’s gone. Ah, Jesus…”

Letty said, “You’ve got to find the guy who did it and take care of him. Personally.”

Weather said, “Letty, let it go.”

Letty said to Weather, “I’m not letting it go.” And to Lucas: “If you don’t settle this, get a hand in it, you’re going to be screwed up for a long time. First the Jones girls and now Marcy. Dad-”

Weather said, “Letty, shut up. Look: just shut up for now. We can talk about it later. Lucas, let’s go sit down.”

“I need to talk to the guys at Minneapolis,” Lucas said. “I need to talk to her partner, find out what happened. I’ve got enough to find this guy, and now we’ve got DNA on him.”

“You’re not going to do any of that tonight,” Weather said. “Come on. I’ve got some hot dogs hidden away. We’ll get something to eat.. you need to think.”