John Sandford - The Hanged Man’s Song

AS SHEwent, Drexel reached up to turn off the light over the workbench, but as he did it, I put a finger to my lips and he paused. When LuEllen was walking away from the top of the stairs, I asked, “Would you have a small gun? Something handy, not too noisy? But threatening-looking?”

“It’s best not to threaten people with a gun,” Drexel said solemnly. “If you get to the point of taking it out, it’s best to pull the trigger. And at that point, you probably shouldn’t worry too much about the noise. The difference in noise between a.380 and a.357 isn’t that critical, if you’re shooting it off in a motel with people all around. It’ll be noticeable either way, so you might as well have something that’ll do the job.”

“So what do you have?”

He looked pleased: guns had always been his first love, and he enjoyed dealing them. “That really depends on what you’re going to use it for.”

“Look, I really don’t want to get too deep into this, and I’d like to get it done before my friend gets back.”

“You’re not…” His eyebrows went up.

I didn’t understand the question for a second, then said, “Jesus Christ, no , I’m not gonna shoot her . We’re dealing with a guy who’s a little nuts, but if I take a gun, LuEllen might argue.”

He nodded. “Good. I’m glad it’s not her. She’s always been a good customer and I would hate to lose her. Okay, you’re not an enthusiast, you need it for close-up protection, nothing fancy. I have just the thing. Seven hundred dollars.”

WE WEREclimbing the stairs when LuEllen came back, the pistol pulling down my pants pocket. It was a Smith & Wesson hammerless revolver-hammerless so it wouldn’t snag on your clothes when you pulled it out in a hurry-loaded with six rounds of.38 special. Guns are for killing. People can make a sport out of shooting, a pastime, a hobby, but all of those things are a perversion of a gun’s intention. Guns are for killing and handguns are for killing people; I wasn’t comforted by its presence.

And I told LuEllen about it as soon as we cleared Drexel’s.

“Didn’t ask me about it,” she said.

“I didn’t think about it until we were down there in the basement,” I said. I took the gun out of my pocket and pushed it under the seat. “I didn’t want you to veto it.”

“At this point, I wouldn’t have,” she said. “Not after we saw the execution. But it bums me out… but why’d you tell me now?”

“If we get caught inside, and we have a gun…”

“Yeah.”

In most states, armed illegal entry will get you a few additional years. Not that we’d get caught.

MICHELLE STROMlived in an Arlington apartment, like half of the other DDC employees. The apartment was in a complex fifteen minutes from our hotel. From the street, it was a tidy, well-kept collection of six-story yellow-brick buildings, with a swimming pool deck and parking garage. There were a bunch of trendy chain stores-Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, Barnes & Noble-as part of the same complex of buildings, and a lot of pedestrian traffic around it all.

“Well-off singles, mostly,” LuEllen said. “Won’t be any trouble getting in the door. Hope the corridor outside Strom’s place isn’t too busy.”

We began by figuring out which part of the building she was in, and then calling her. No answer.

Then I sat in the car, on the street, where I could see one of the entry doors. LuEllen, carrying a cloth tote with the laptop and probe inside, sat on a retaining wall a few yards down from the entrance, as though waiting for a car to pick her up. When I saw a man inside, walking toward the door, I gave her a beep with the car horn. She bounced to her feet, hurried up the steps with her key ring in her hand. By that time, the guy was coming through the door, and she caught it, smiled at him, and went through.

I sat in the car, not a care in the world, for five minutes. Then she reappeared, looking positively perky-she loved doing this. I don’t know how in the hell she thought she’d be able to quit. She walked to the car, hopped in, said, “Routine Schlage,” and we were out of there.

The software gave us the blank number and we stole three blanks from a suburban Home Depot. We also got a tiny triangular file, which we paid for. LuEllen took three hours to make three keys, looking at the software designs and working very carefully. When she was done, we drove back to the apartment and tried them on the outer door. All three worked, but outside locks are notoriously loose. We probably wouldn’t have that kind of luck with Strom’s lock.

“Single, early thirties, Saturday night. What are the chances?” LuEllen asked.

“I don’t know. We can call.”

“Better off if we could watch her, isolate her, then you go in while I make sure she’s out of the way.”

“In a perfect world,” I said. “But we’re short on time.”

She thought about it for a minute. “We call her, and if she’s in, we go away. Maybe until Monday. If there’s no answer, you go in. I do my waiting-impatiently act in the downstairs hallway, and if she comes in, I call you on your cell, and you get out.”

“If she still looks like her ID photos. And that assumes she’s not somewhere else in the building, and that she won’t come in the end doors instead of the main door.”

“It assumes she’ll take an elevator instead of walking up the steps,” LuEllen said. “Nothing we can do about it if she’s at the next-door neighbor’s. She’ll walk in on your ass and you’ll have to chop her head off and make it look like Carp did it.”

“Got it. I’ll draw the sign of the Carp on the walls.”

“In her blood.”

“Naturally.”

We tended toward heartiness when we suspected we were about to do something stupid, of which there had been a couple of instances in the past.

We went back to the apartment complex, walked arm in arm past all the commercial stuff, window-shopping, looking up at where LuEllen thought Strom’s apartment was. The window was dark. We called from the Barnes & Noble. No answer. Called her cell phone, and she picked it up on the third ring. “ Sharon?” I asked.

“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number,” she said. Strom was a natural soprano, and sounded like a nice woman-a polite one, anyway. I could hear other voices in the background, and said, “I’m sorry, is this…?” I gave a number close to hers.

“No, you’re very close, but you’ve got two of the numbers turned around. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “I hope I didn’t disturb you.” Another voice, and a clank-dishes-and we both hung up.

I looked at LuEllen. “She’s in a restaurant.”

“Could be five minutes from here,” LuEllen said. “Probably is.”

“No better time,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I HADthe keys in my pocket, my laptop under my arm. We went through the front door, and up. LuEllen pointed me at Strom’s and I tried the first key. The door popped open. “I’m a genius,” LuEllen said. “I’ll be downstairs.”

I stepped inside the apartment and called, “Hello?”

No response. I pushed the door shut with my foot, tripped a light switch, and called, a bit louder, “Hello? Anybody home?”

No answer. I moved quickly, one fast lap of what turned out to be a two-bedroom apartment, looking for the lights on a burglar alarm key pad. No pad. The place smelled of plants and the acrid odor of plant food. I found, in the kitchen, six African violets, all freshly watered, sitting on a draining board across the sink.

Then I headed into the second bedroom, which had a cozy office setup, including a desktop Dell and a good office chair. A black-leather satchel, the kind prosperous women executives use as briefcases, sat next to the chair. I brought the machine up, then checked the satchel. Inside was the usual collection of office junk-pens, pencils, Kleenex, an airlines sleep mask, a telephone connection cord for a laptop but no laptop, a spare pair of regular glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses, a hundred or so business cards, and, tucked away in a pen slot, a gray USB memory key. Terrific.