John Sandford: Wicked Prey

Juliet showed up three or four minutes later, crying, "Oh, God, oh, God. Are you all right, honey? Are you all right? The cops are coming'"

Whitcomb had managed to roll onto his back. Most of the skin was gone from his nose, and he was bleeding from scrapes on his hands and forearms and belly.

He started to weep, slapping at his legs. He couldn't help himself, and it added to the humiliation. " Davenport did this to me," he said. "That fuckin' Davenport '"

Brutus Cohn didn't have much to unload. He tossed his suitcase on the motel bed and said, "I need to take a walk-haven't been able to walk since I got on the train in York. You get the guys together. See you in a half hour."

Cruz nodded and picked up a pen from the nightstand and handed it to him: "Write my room number in your palm. Remember it."

Cohn wrote the number in his palm and Cruz led the way out, and he said, "See you in a bit, babe," and gave her a little pat on the ass. She didn't mind, because that was just Cohn being Cohn, no offense meant.

So Cohn took a walk, looking up and down the street. They'd gotten off at Exit 2 in Wisconsin, a major fast-food and franchise intersection outside the built-up part of the metro area.

From the front of the motel, straight ahead, he could see a Taco Bell, which made his mouth water, and a McDonald's, both a block or two away. Closer, an Arby's, Country Kitchen, a Burger King, and a Denny's. To his right, across the main street off the interstate, a Buffalo Wings, a Starbucks, a Chipotle, and a couple of stores. To his left, a supermarket, a liquor store, some clothing stores, a buffet restaurant. Behind the hotel, to the left, a Home Depot.

Excellent. He needed fuel, liquor, and a hardware store, and here it all was.

He hit the Taco Bell first and got a Grilled Stuft Burrito with chicken; while he ate, he read the Star Tribune about the Republican convention. The paper was just short of hysterical, which was good. The more confusion, the more cops doing street security, the better. Besides, he was a political conservative and wished John McCain well. He liked the thought of a bunch of little anarchist assholes getting beat up by the cops.

Out of the Taco Bell, he stopped at the supermarket, got some apples, one doughnut, and three Pepsis. He picked up a bottle of George Dickel at the liquor store, then carried the whole load down to Home Depot, where he bought a box of contractor's clean-up bags and a crescent wrench, the biggest one he could find.

"Big wrench," said the cute little blonde at the checkout.

He gave her a twinkle: "I gotta big nut to deal with," he said.

She giggled, seeing in the comment a double entendre of some kind, which may or may not have existed, Cohn thought, as he walked back to the motel with his bags.

SO the gang was back in town.

Jesse Lane was a white man with dirty-blond hair that fell on his shoulders, a thick face with eyes too closely spaced, a bony nose marked by enlarged pores, and thin, pale-pink lips. A handmade silver earring, big as a wedding ring, hung from his left earlobe. Fifteen years earlier he'd done time in an Alabama prison, for armed robbery, where he picked up the weight-lifting habit. He was still a lifter, and showed it in the width of his shoulders and his narrow, tapered waist.

Lane owned a farm in Tennessee, on the "Bama border, where he grew soybeans and worked on cars in a shop in the barn. His specialty was turning run-of-the-mill family vehicles into machines that could flat outrun the highway patrol-not for crooks, but just the everyday Dukes of Hazzard wannabes.

Tate McCall was a black version of Jesse Lane. He'd done a total of ten years in California, both sets for robbery, but had been clean for eight years. Like Lane, he'd been a lifter, but where Lane was square, McCall was tall and rangy, like a wide receiver, with hands the size of dinner plates. McCall owned a piece of a diner on Main Street in Ocean Park, a neighborhood in Santa Monica.

Jack Spitzer was from Austin, Texas. He looked like a big-nosed French bicycle racer, or a runner, mid-height but greyhound-thin, his thinning black hair slicked back on his small head. His nose had been broken sometime in the past. He was mostly unemployed.

Lane was sitting at the computer desk, McCall was draped over an easy chair, Spitzer sat on a bed, more or less facing the other two. Lane and McCall were wearing golf shirts and slacks, while Spitzer wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and a black sport coat, because, all the others thought, he was carrying a pistol in the small of his back, the dumb shit.

Rosie Cruz came through the door that connected Cohn's two rooms and said, "He's coming."

"Nothing around here to see but chain restaurants," McCall said.

"How'd you know?" Cruz asked.

"I looked," McCall said. "While you were pickin' up Brute."

"And that's what Brute's doing-looking," she said. "You know what he's like."

"We gotta get this shit straightened out," McCall said, looking at Spitzer.

Spitzer said, defensively, "I'll do whatever Brute says."

"Goddamn right," Lane said.

They all sat, waiting, the television on but muted, a CNN chick soundlessly running her mouth with a forest fire on a screen behind her head. A minute or two, then a key rattled in the door lock, and Cohn came in. He was wearing tan golf slacks, a red golf shirt, and a blue blazer, carrying a grocery bag and a plastic sack. He looked like a city manager on his day off.

He saw them and flashed his smile, genuinely happy to see them, and they knew it. He shut the door and said, "Boys. Damned good to see you. Jesse. Tate. Jack'" He stepped through the room, shaking hands, slapping shoulders. Cruz was leaning in the doorway to the second room, watching.

Lane said, "Man, you're looking good. I like that beard."

"Yeah, yeah," Cohn said, scratching at the beard. "Let me run down the hall and get some ice."

He picked up the ice bucket, went out, and was back in a minute with a bucket of ice cubes.

"Got some Dickel," he said. "I been drinking nothing but scotch and gin, and it's good, but it ain't bourbon."

McCall said, "We got some shit to figure out." He looked at Spitzer.

"All right," Cohn said. "Let's get it out." He found a glass, scooped some ice into it, and poured in a couple of ounces of bourbon. "I think we agree that Jack sorta screwed the pooch the last time out." He took a sip of the drink and closed his eyes and smiled: "That's smooth."

"Screwed the pooch? He signed us up for death row," Lane said. "Wasn't no point in shooting those boys."

"Accident," Spitzer said. "Goddamn one in a million. I thought he was coming for me. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Once he was down, I had to do the other one."

"They were cops," McCall said.

"Jack's right, though. After the first one went down, he had to do the second," Cohn said. He was standing next to Spitzer, one hand on his shoulder, drink in the other hand.

McCall said, "Brute, you know I like working with you. You got a class act. But this asshole…"

Spitzer turned his head toward McCall and away from Cohn.

When he did that, Cohn put the drink down, pulled the eighteen-inch-long crescent wrench from his back pocket, cocked his wrist, and slammed it into the back of Spitzer's head. Spitzer jerked forward, his face suddenly blank, eyes wide, and fell on the floor.

Cruz said, urgently, "No, no, Brute…"

"Go in that other room," Cohn said.

"Brute…" She didn't move.

Cohn ignored her, went to a closet alcove with a dozen wire coat hangers on a rod. He'd already unwrapped one of them and he took it down, carried it back to Spitzer's body. Spitzer was out, and maybe dying, but making low growling sounds. Cohn bent the coat hanger around Spitzer's neck, put his knee down hard on the unconscious man's spine, and pulled up on the wire until it cut halfway through his neck. His teeth bared with the effort, he did a quick twist of the wire, turning it around itself. Spitzer stopped making any sound, though a minute later, his feet began to tremble and run as his brain died.