John Sandford - Buried Prey

As they came up, Del said, “There’s the van.”

An older white van was parked halfway down the line of rooms. As they went past, Lucas looked at the numbers of the tag and said, “That’s him.”

Del rolled past the motel at full speed, followed by Shrake; they did a U-turn a quarter mile down the road and came back, sliding into the residence side of the L, where they couldn’t be seen from the van.

They hopped out, and Lucas and Del went into the lobby, while Jenkins and Shrake stood at the corner of the L, where they could keep an eye on the van.

A thin, old, sun-blasted woman sat in a closet-sized office behind the lobby desk, smoking a cigarette and looking at a computer screen. She stood up when Lucas came in, followed by the others, all of them blinking in the dim light.

Lucas showed his ID and said, “We’re police officers with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We are looking for a man named Roger Hanson, who owns that white van parked halfway down your lot. Black hair, heavyset guy. We need to know what room he’s in, and we need a key.”

“I don’t know what his name is, but he’s in Fifteen,” the woman said. Her voice was a crow-like croak, rough from a lifetime of cigarettes. “I got a key here.”

She went through a drawer and came up with a key on a plastic tag. Lucas took it and said, “Please stay inside. Lock the door when we leave. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out.”

“He’s dangerous?” she asked.

“He’s a killer,” Del said.

They went back out, heard the old woman lock the door. Lucas said, “All right. How’re we gonna do this?”

Shrake said, “I went down and peeked at the first door. They’re metal fire doors. We won’t be able to kick it.”

“I’ve got a key, but that’ll be slower,” Lucas said.

Jenkins said, “You turn it, get it open. I’ll kick it, in case it’s chained, and hop back. Shrake and Del can have their guns ready, and pop right through.”

Lucas nodded. “That works. Let’s do it.”

They went down the walkway under the eaves of the motel, Del and Shrake pulling their guns. Halfway down to Fifteen, Jenkins whispered, “There’s an eighteen-wheeler coming. If you get the key in then…”

Lucas spotted the truck and moved quickly to the door and knelt beside it, watched the truck. A few cars went by, and then the truck came up, and as the engine noise started to build, he slipped the key into the door lock, turned the key, pushed just a bit, felt the door come loose, and as the truck went by, said to Jenkins, “Now.”

Jenkins kicked the door, nearly knocking it off its frame; no chain. Del and Shrake surged into the hotel room, straight through to the bath, and Shrake said, “It’s clear. Goddamn it.”

The television was playing, a suitcase sat on the floor next to the bed, and a ring of keys sat under a bedside lamp, along with a pair of sunglasses. Del kicked the suitcase and said, “Got a gun, here.”

Lucas glanced at it: a Glock.

“He’s close…”

“He’s across the highway at that store, I bet,” Shrake said.

They all looked out the door, at the store across the way. It was tiny. Lucas said, “If he’s in there, there’s a good chance that he’s looking at us through the front window.”

“Doesn’t have a gun,” Del said. “At least, not this gun.”

Lucas said to Shrake, “I’m sticking by my word: there won’t be any execution. But somebody’s got to stay here, in case he’s in one of the other rooms. Del and I were friends of Marcy’s, and want to be there for the bust. Jenkins is faster than you, in case he runs.”

Shrake said, “Go.”

Lucas said, “Keep your gun out; he might be down in one of these other rooms. He might have met somebody, or something.”

“I got it,” Shrake said. “Go.”

Hanson had his face in the soda cooler when the BCA agents went into his room. He was walking toward the cash register when they came back out, and he saw them at once, and knew who they were: some brand of cops.

He had no car, no keys, not much money, and no clothes but the ones he was standing in. His side, which seemed to be healing okay, nevertheless burned like fire. He saw them come out of the motel, and he turned and walked back through the store, past the restrooms, and out the back entrance, through a door marked “Not an Exit” and heard the counterman call, “Hey,” as he went out.

He went through the back door only because he couldn’t go through the front, but he had no idea where he was going. When he got out the back, he saw two things: the counterman’s parked truck, and a small house, probably fifty yards away across the parking lot, with another car, an old Corolla, parked next to it. He ran that way. If he could get some keys…

Then what?

How far could he get?

He didn’t think about it: he ran, and he thought, Keys.

He just ran.

Lucas saw a flash of what looked like daylight through the store window and it crossed his mind that somebody had just run out the back. He, Del, and Jenkins were lined up at the edge of the highway, waiting to run across, when he saw the flash, and Lucas took the chance and ran straight through the traffic, causing one car to swerve and another to hit the brakes so hard that they screamed, and Del shouted, “Hey,” but Lucas was across the highway and running hard.

Del and Jenkins were slowed by more cars, but got across, now fifty yards behind Lucas, and instead of going into the front of the store Lucas went left, around the far end of it, saw the little shabby house out back and the fat black-haired man running toward it, and he half turned and windmilled an arm at Jenkins and Del, and shouted, “This way,” and kept running.

Ahead of him, Hanson kicked through a half-closed gate on a hurricane fence, ran across a concrete-block porch and half turned and saw Lucas coming, only twenty-five or thirty yards back, yanked open the screen door and crashed through the inner door into the house’s living room.

A woman was standing in the kitchen and she screamed at him and he saw a butcher knife on the kitchen counter and she back-pedaled away from him, and then threw a towel at him, and he dodged the towel and grabbed the knife with one hand, and the woman by the hair with the other, and she twisted and screamed and then Lucas crashed through the door behind them.

Hanson tried to shout something-“I’ll kill her,” or “I’vE got a knifE”-but Lucas never gave him time, simply vaulting across a couch, reaching for Hanson’s throat. His body smashed into Hanson’s left side, the impact pushing the fat man back against the kitchen sink. He slashed at Lucas’s face with the knife and the woman came free and fell on the floor, and Lucas tried to catch Hanson’s knife hand but missed, snagged a shirtsleeve, but he felt the knife slash across his shoulder and the back of his neck, and he twisted away from the knife and the woman’s body hit him behind the ankles and he went

down, losing his grip on Hanson and then, BOOM.

The gunshot, the sound not the slug, was like a bolt of lightning, and then another BOOM and Lucas, confused and half blinded by blood, scrambled across the supine woman, tried to pull her away from Hanson, and then realized Hanson was going down.

Jenkins said, “Stay down, stay down…” and he pushed Lucas down with his hand. The woman was squealing, and Del was saying, “.. ambulance down at a place called Pit Stop right now. We’ve got a seriously injured police officer…”

Jenkins looked down at him and Lucas said, “I’m not seriously injured.”

Jenkins said, “Maybe not, but you’re bleeding like you’re seriously injured. So just stay down.”

Del loomed over him: “Dumb shit.”