John Sandford - Rules of Prey

"What? You mean McGowan's?" asked Lucas.

"There were a bunch of calls last week and over the weekend. There'd be a whole group, a half-hour apart, more or less. But whoever it is doesn't leave a message on the answering machine. The machine answers and they hang up."

"Everybody does that-hangs up on machines," Lucas said.

"Yeah, but this is a little different. It's the first time it's happened, for one thing, a bunch of calls. And she has an unlisted number. If it was a friend, you'd think he'd leave a message instead of calling over and over."

"It's like somebody's checking on her," said the tall cop.

"Can't trace them?"

"It's two rings and click, he's gone."

"Maybe we ought to change the machine," said Lucas.

"Maybe. She's due home in, what, an hour and a half?"

"Something like that."

"We could do it then. Set it for five rings."

Lucas went back to the mattress and the two cops started the gin game again.

"What do I owe you?" asked the tall cop.

"Hundred and fifty thousand," said the short one.

"One game, double or nothing?"

Lucas grinned, closed his eyes, and tried to think about Alan Nester. Something there. Probably the fear that the netsuke purchase would be discovered and questioned. The purchase bordered on fraud. That was almost certainly it. Damn. What else was there?

Half an hour later, the cop radio burped again.

"This is Davey," a voice said, carrying an edge of excitement. "It's showtime, folks."

Lucas rolled to his feet and the tall cop reached back and grabbed the microphone.

"What do you got, Davey?"

"We got a single white male dressed in dark slacks, dark jacket, dark gloves, watch cap, dark shoes, on foot," Davey Johnson said. Johnson had been on the street for years. He didn't get excited without reason, and his voice was crackling with intensity. "He's heading your way, coming right down the street toward you guys. If he's heading for McGowan's, he'll be in sight of the side of the back-lot house in one minute. This dude's up to something, man, he ain't out for no country stroll."

" York with you?"

"He's gone on foot, behind this guy, staying out of sight. I'm staying with the unit. God damn, he's walking right along, he's crossing the street, you other guys out on the wings, start moving up, goddam-"

"We see him out the side windows of our house," said a new voice.

"That's Kennedy at the other post," the tall cop said to Lucas.

Lucas turned and headed for the stairs. "I'm going."

"He's going in the alley," he heard Kennedy call as he ran down the first few steps. "He's in her yard. You guys move…"

Lucas ran down the three flights of steps to the front door and brushed past the white-haired architect who stood in the hallway with a newspaper and a pipe, and ran out into the yard.

The maddog parked five blocks from McGowan's house, facing the Interstate. Checked the street signs. Parking was okay. Lots of cars on the same side of the street.

The weather had turned bad early in the morning. A cold rain fell for a while in the afternoon, died away, started again, stopped. Now it felt like snow. The maddog left the car door unlocked. Not much of a risk in this neighborhood.

The sidewalk was still damp, and he walked along briskly, one arm swinging, the other holding a short, wide pry bar next to his side. Just the thing for a back door.

Down one block, another, three, four, onto McGowan's block. A car started somewhere and the maddog turned his head in that direction, slowed. Nothing more. He glanced quickly around, just once, knowing that furtiveness attracts attention all by itself. His groin began to tingle with the preentry excitement. This would be a masterpiece. This would set the town on its ear. This would make him more famous than Sam, more famous than Manson.

Maybe not Manson, he thought.

He turned into the alley. Another car engine. Two cars? He walked down the alley, reached McGowan's yard, glanced around again, took a half-dozen steps into the yard. A car's wheel squealed in deceleration a block away, the other end of the alley.

Cops.

In that instant, when the turning wheels squealed against the blacktop, he knew he had been suckered.

Knew it. Cops.

He ran back the way he had come.

Another car, down the block. A tremendous clatter behind him; one of the cars had hit something. More cops. A door slammed. Across the street. Another one, behind McGowan's.

He turned out of the alley, the pry bar slipping from beneath his jacket and falling to the grass, and he ran across the yard one house down from McGowan's, through bridal wreath, running in the night, hit a lilac bush, fell, people shouting, "Hold it hold it hold it…"

The maddog ran.

The rookie Cochrane was at the wheel, and tires squealed as he slowed and cranked left into the alley, an unintended squeal, and his partner blurted "Jesus!" and quick as a turning rat, they saw the maddog run into the alley ahead of them. Cochrane wrenched the car straight in the alley, smashed through two empty garbage cans, and went after him.

The maddog was running between houses when the other wing car burst into the alley toward them and Cochrane almost hit it. The other car's doors flew open and the two cops inside leapt out and went after the maddog. Cochrane's partner, Blaney, yelled, "Go round, go round into the street…" and Cochrane swung the car past the other unit toward the street at the end of the alley.

Sally Johnson jumped out of her car and saw Lucas coming from across the street, running in a white shirt, and she turned and ran after her partner, Sickles, between houses as Cochrane's car cranked around her car and went out toward the street.

The maddog had already crossed the next street, and Sally Johnson snatched her radio from her belt carrier and tried to transmit, but couldn't find words as she ran fifteen feet behind Sickles, Sickles with his gun out. Another cop, York, came in from the side and behind her, gun out, and Sally Johnson tried to get her gun out and saw the maddog go over a board fence across the street and dead ahead.

The maddog, fear and adrenaline blinding him to anything but the tunnel of space in front of him, space with no cops, sprinted across the street, as fast as he had ever run, hit the board fence, and vaulted it in a single motion. He could never have done it if he'd thought about it, the fence four feet high, as high as his chest, but he took it like an Olympian and landed in a yard with an empty swimming pool, a small boat wrapped in canvas, and a dog kennel.

The dog kennel had two separate compartments with rugs for doors and inside each compartment was a black-and-tan Doberman pinscher, one named July and the other named August.

August heard the commotion and pricked up his ears and poked his head out and just then the maddog came sailing over the fence, staggered, sprinted across the yard, and went over the back fence. Either dog could have taken him, if they'd had the slightest idea he was coming. As it was, July, exploding from her kennel, got his leg for an instant, raked it, and then the man was gone. But there was more business coming. July had no more than lost the one over the back fence than another came over the front.

The maddog never saw the Doberman until it was closing in from the side. And a good thing, because he might have hesitated. He saw it just as he hit the fence, a dark shadow at his feet, and felt the ripping pain in his calf as he went over the back fence.

Carl Werschel and his wife, Lois, were almost ready for bed when the dogs went crazy in the backyard.