John Sandford - Rules of Prey

"That's why I decided to come on to you," she said. "Because you weren't rushing me like some guys."

Much later in the night, she said, "I've got to sleep. I'm really starting to feel the day."

"Just one thing," he said in the dark. "When we went through that routine up in your apartment the first time I interviewed you, you said the guy who jumped you felt softer than me. You still think that?"

She was silent for a moment, then said, "Yes. I have this distinct impression that he was a little… not porky, but fleshy. Like there was fat under there and that he wasn't terribly muscular. I mean, he was a lot stronger than I am, but I only weigh a little over a hundred pounds. I don't think he's a tough guy."

"Shit."

"Does that mean something?"

"Maybe. I'm afraid it might."

Early the next morning Lucas walked out to his car, fished under the seat, and retrieved a Charter Arms.38 special revolver in a black nylon holster and two boxes of shells. He carried them back to the house.

"What's that?" Carla asked when he brought it in.

"A pistol. You thought you might need one."

"Hmm." Carla closed one eye and squinted at him with the other. "You brought it up with you, but didn't bring it out last night. That suggests you expected to stay over."

"A subject which does not merit further exploration," Lucas declared with a grin. "Get your shoes on. We've got to take a hike."

They went into the woods across the road from Lucas' cabin, followed a narrow jump-across stream that eventually became a long damp spot, then turned into a gully that led into the base of a steep hill. They came out on a grassy plateau facing a sandy cutbank.

"We'll shoot into the cutbank," Lucas said. "We'll start at ten feet and move back to twenty."

"Why so close?"

"Because if you're any further away, you ought to run or yell for help. Shooting is for close-up desperation," Lucas said. He looked around and nodded toward a downed log. "Let's go talk about it for a minute."

They sat on the log and Lucas pulled the pistol apart, demonstrated the function of each piece and how to load and unload it. He was clicking the brass shells into the cylinder when they heard a chattering overhead. Lucas looked up and saw the red squirrel.

"Okay," he whispered. "Now, watch this."

He pivoted slowly on the log and lifted the weapon toward the squirrel.

"What are you going to do?"

"Show you what a thirty-eight will do to real meat," Lucas said, his eyes fixed on the squirrel. The animal was half-hidden behind a thick limb on a red pine but occasionally exposed its entire body.

"Why? Why are you going to kill it?" Carla's eyes were wide, her face pale.

"You just don't know what a bullet will do until you see it. Gotta stick your fingers in the wounds. Like Doubting Thomas, you know?"

"Hey, don't," she commanded. "Come on, Lucas."

Lucas pointed the weapon at the squirrel, both eyes open, waiting.

"Hit the little sucker right between the eyes, never feel a thing…"

"Lucas…" Her voice was up and she clutched at his gun arm, dragging it down. She was horrified.

"You look horrified."

"Jesus Christ, the squirrel didn't do anything…"

"You feel scared?"

She dropped her arm and turned cold. "Is this some kind of lesson?"

"Yeah," Lucas said, turning away from the squirrel. "Hold on to that feeling you had. You felt that way for a squirrel. Now think about unloading a thirty-eight into a human being."

"Jesus, Lucas…"

"You hit a guy in the chest, not through the heart, but just in the chest and you'll blow up his lungs and he'll lie there snorting out this bright red blood with little bubbles in it and usually his eyes look like they're made out of wax and sometimes he rocks back and forth and he's dying and there's not a thing that anybody can do about it, except maybe God-"

"I don't want the gun," she said suddenly.

Lucas held the weapon up in front of his face. "They're awful things," he said. "But there's one thing that's even more awful."

"What's that?"

"When you're the squirrel."

He gave her the basics of close-in shooting, firing at crude man-size figures drawn in the sand of the cutbank. After thirty rounds she began hitting the figures regularly. At fifty, she developed a flinch and began to spray shots.

"You're jerking the gun," Lucas told her.

She fired again, jerking the gun. "No I'm not."

"I can see it."

"I can't."

Lucas swung the cylinder out, emptied it, put three shells in random chambers, and handed the pistol back to her.

"Shoot another round."

She fired another shot, jerking the weapon, missing.

"Again."

This time the hammer hit an empty chamber and there was no shot, but she jerked the pistol out of line.

"That's called a flinch," Lucas said.

They worked for another hour, stopping every few minutes to talk about safety, about concealment of the gun in her studio, about combat shooting.

"It takes a lot to make a really good shot," Lucas told her as she looked at the weapon in her hand. "We're not trying to teach you that. What you've got to do is learn to hit that target reliably at ten feet and at twenty feet. That shouldn't be a problem. If you ever get in a situation where you need to shoot somebody, point the gun and keep pulling the trigger until it stops shooting. Forget about rules or excessive violence or any of that. Just keep pulling."

They fired ninety-five of the hundred rounds before Lucas called a halt and handed her the weapon, loaded with the last five rounds.

"So now you'll have a loaded gun around the house," he said, handing it to her. "You carry it back, put it where you think best. You'll find that it's kind of a burden. It's the knowledge that there's a piece of Death in the house."

"I'll need more practice," she said simply, hefting the pistol.

"I've got another three hundred rounds in the car. Come out here every day, shoot twenty-five to fifty rounds. Check yourself for flinching. Get used to it."

"Now that I've got it, it makes me more nervous than I thought it would," Carla said as they walked back to the cabin. "But at the same time…"

"What?"

"It feels kind of good in my hand," she said. "It's like a paintbrush or something."

"Guns are great tools," Lucas said. "Incredibly efficient. Very precise. They're a pleasure to use, like a Leica or a Porsche. A pleasure in their own right. It's too bad that to fulfill their purpose, you've got to kill somebody."

"That's a nice thought," Carla said.

Lucas shrugged. "Samurai swords are the same way. They're works of art that are complete only when they're killing. It's nothing new in the world."

As they crossed the road back to the cabin, she asked, "You've got to go?"

"Yeah. I've got a game."

"I don't understand that," she said. "The games."

"Neither do I," Lucas said, laughing.

He took his time driving back to the Twin Cities, enjoying the countryside, resolutely not thinking about the maddog. He arrived after six, checked Anderson's office, found that he had gone home for the evening.

"Sloan's still out somewhere," the shift commander said. "But nobody's told me to look for anything special."

Lucas left, changed clothes at home, stopped at a Grand Avenue restaurant in St. Paul, ate, and loafed over to St. Anne's.

"Ah, here's Longstreet, slow as usual," Elle said. Even as General Robert E. Lee she wore her full habit, crisp and dark in the lights of the game room. A second nun, who wore conventional street dress and played the role of General George Pickett, was flipping through a stack of movement sheets. The attorney, Major General George Gordon Meade, commander in chief of the Union armies, and the bookie, cavalry commander General John Buford, were studying their position on the map. A university student, who played General John Reynolds in the game, was punching data into the computer. He looked up and nodded when Lucas came in. The grocer, Jeb Stuart, had not yet arrived.