John Sandford - Stolen Prey

The nurse said, “We don’t know exactly what happened to you. We were hoping you could tell us.”

Albitis thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t know.” Then, “You’re speaking English. Where am I?”

“You’re in a hospital in Minneapolis,” the nurse said.

“Minneapolis? In the U.S. What am I doing here?”

“We don’t know exactly,” the nurse said.

Albitis’s eyes wandered away, then came back. “Minneapolis? I live in Tel Aviv.”

The nurse said, “Oh, boy.”

A week after the shooting, the Davenports moved back into the house. Jimenez had been working his ass off-there were no bullet holes or blood to be seen. He’d replaced the carpet in the hallway where Tres had died, with carpet indistinguishable from the original. He hadn’t yet put in the new upstairs hallway wall, but the maple was gone, and the hall showed bare studs and electric wiring down its length.

The hallway where Martinez had died had a varnished hardwood floor. Jimenez had stripped the varnish and redone it. He’d found a good door to replace the one Martinez had shot through, and had already fitted and painted it. The far wall had been peppered with pieces of nine-millimeter hollow-points, and he’d patched the drywall and repainted.

The temporary front door and the bare studs in the upper hallway were the only remaining signs of the fight.

Letty walked through, checked it all out, and pronounced herself satisfied. “If I didn’t have this cast … I hate this cast.”

“Better than the alternative,” Lucas said.

She thought about that for three seconds, then said, “But he didn’t hit me in the head. He hit me in the arm, and I hate this cast.”

“I got this little … aphorism … from the DEA,” Lucas said.

Weather was watching Letty like a hawk, and the third day after they’d gotten back in the house, she said to Lucas, “I hope there’s nothing wrong with her.”

“Like what?” Lucas asked.

“She’s not showing any signs of the psychological trauma that she should be. I’ve been reading everything I can find on it. The shock-”

“She’s okay,” Lucas said.

“But-”

“I know exactly what you’re saying,” Lucas said. “You’re worried that she might be a psychopath, or a sociopath, or one of those path things. She’s not. Or at least, that’s not all she is.”

“You know I love her,” Weather said.

“Of course you do, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re worried about,” Lucas said. “But stop worrying.”

“I’m not sure I can. I want her to be … happy. I want her to be well.”

“A lot of people think surgeons must have a little psychological thing, you know?” Lucas said. “They take perfectly good people and slice them to pieces so they can have a shorter nose. You’d have to be a little crazy to do that, or to get it done, for that matter. We’re all a little crazy, sweetheart.”

Weather got puffed up. “Comparing what I do-”

“I know, there’s no direct comparison.”

They had a little five-minute exchange about the psychological stability of surgeons, punctuated with examples of crazy surgeons that Weather had talked about in the past, and she finally said, “Look, whatever-I’m not talking about all of that. I’m talking about our daughter.”

“I know you are,” Lucas said. “And like I said, we’re all a little crazy, but basically, and overall, Letty’s okay.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s just like me,” Lucas said. “And I’m okay, mostly.”

Lucas and Letty stopped at a coffee shop, and Letty got a grande latte and Lucas got a no-fat hot chocolate, and Letty asked, “Is Mom okay?”

“She’s holding up. She’ll be working again tomorrow,” Lucas said.

“Okay, that’s good,” she said.

“How are you holding up?” Lucas asked.

“I…” she said, then stopped. “I don’t know.” Her voice was distracted, Lucas thought, like she was taking effort just to talk. Usually she was chatty. She didn’t sound depressed, though. Just distracted.

“Do you feel bad about it?”

“I don’t,” she said. “I shot that one guy before, but I didn’t kill him. But this … nope. Nothing. Just … I had to do it, and I did it, and it was done. I’m not worried about it, I don’t feel bad. Is that normal?”

“It depends,” Lucas said. “Sometimes, if-”

“How many people have you killed?” Letty asked abruptly.

Lucas considered. They’d never talked about it. Not directly. It was known, but it was a topic they’d always avoided. He did a quick tally in his head.

“Ten,” he said. “That I know of.”

“That you know of?”

“There are a few more people dead, that I was responsible for, directly or indirectly,” Lucas said. “I’d get in a situation where pretty much it’s going to end with a death. That sort of thing.”

“Is that normal?”

“No. Not for most cops. But I was always pushed into the rough stuff. All of my professional life,” he said. “And sometimes, you’ll get something-a hostage situation, say-and you’ll find out that there’s no way to do it without someone dying. When that happens, if it’s your only option … I just don’t have time to feel too bad about it.”

“Do you regret any of them?”

“Some of them,” Lucas said. “Sometimes they were just … crazy. You get into a situation like that, and what can you do? Like, you remember Alyssa? She was simply insane. Killing people. When we figured that out, we wound up in a confrontation. What happened was her call. She called it, and the whole situation went a certain way. I had no way to … to disarm her or anything. Either she died, or I did. I regret it because she was insane-she was ill. She might have been treatable…. I don’t know. It would have been nice to find out.”

“Were any not like that? Where you had a choice and went for … the death?”

“Did I set anything up, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

Lucas was silent for a moment, then said, “Twice.”

“Tell me…”

“One guy-I never talk about this, by the way, so if you open your trap…”

“I don’t talk,” she said.

“One guy was a lawyer, and a serial killer, and he would have gotten away with everything. Then, sooner or later, because he enjoyed it, because it was the main thing in his life, he would have started killing again. That was more than a decade ago. Now I look back on it and think maybe, maybe there was something else I could have done. But back then … no.”

“Judge, jury, executioner. Like that?”

“Back then, yeah,” he said. “Now I wonder if I wasn’t too hasty, if I couldn’t have done something more complicated. Couldn’t have figured another way to get him. But … it’s done.”

“What about the other one?”

“That was different. That was a hostage thing. You know about that one-the one where Weather was the hostage. I gave the orders to our sniper to take him. Shoot to kill, the instant he had an opening. As it happened, your mom had pretty much convinced him to give up, and he was about to do that, when we killed him. Maybe I could have done something different, but your mom’s life was on the line. Or seemed to be.”

“I talked to Mom a little about that one,” Letty said. “It tore her up, you know.”

“I know.”

There was a silence, and then Letty looked up at Lucas, her eyes clear, and said, “I’m okay.”

“At least as okay as I am,” Lucas said.

“Yep. Anyway, I’m not worried about me,” Letty said. “I’m worried about Mom .”

“She’ll deal with it,” Lucas said.