John Sandford - The Fool's Run

"I've already been in, so entry is no problem," I said. "And it seems like the payoff potential would be bigger."

"Yeah, it would be. I'll outline a frame, just in case. But we should take a run at their files and see what we can find," Dace said.

LuEllen and I looked at each other, and LuEllen said, "I don't like the frame."

I nodded. "Okay. We can't take more than two or three days to look, but let's try it. And first we hit the systems programmer's place, so I can get into the system."

"When are you going to Chicago?" LuEllen asked. I wanted one last talk with Anshiser, to get the final go-ahead.

"If I can get into the system soon-like tonight-I'll go tomorrow or the next day."

"Are you still planning to bring this Maggie back?"

"If she wants to come."

"It makes me nervous, another outsider knowing our faces. My face," LuEllen said. "I hope she's all right."

I shrugged. "No guarantees. There's not much choice, either, if we want to get paid."

Maggie sounded good on the phone, her voice low and husky. She laughed once, and it brought back the memory of her scent, the iris and vanilla, and the feel of the day we met on the sandbar.

"We have to make one more entry," I said. "We'll try it this afternoon. How's Anshiser?"

"He's worse. We're going ahead, but he's not so good."

"Can I talk to him when I come in?"

"Sure. He's functional, if that's what you're asking. When are you coming?"

"Day after tomorrow, if everything works out. If we get in this afternoon."

"Be careful."

"Always."

The last target was in an exclusive suburb in the Virginia countryside. The sprawling lawns were shaded by full-sized trees. Swimming pools were standard equipment and a few yards had tennis courts, screened by lilacs and honeysuckle. Most of the houses had small signs posted by the driveways: this house protected by acme alarms. LuEllen scanned the target, looking especially at the phone line coming out.

She was spooked. "What is it?" I asked. "The security?"

"No. We can get past that, if they have it. But something's not right," she said. "These people aren't important enough for this house. You say this guy makes seventy-five or eighty thousand? These places must start at three hundred and fifty and go up from there."

"Maybe Papa had money."

"Maybe," she said, but she wasn't happy about it. The neighborhood was quiet. We rolled through it three times, from different directions, without seeing anything obviously threatening.

"Let's go make the calls," LuEllen said finally. "But if we can't get them at work, I want to wait."

We got them, though, virtually on the first rings. LuEllen dug some coke out of her purse, and took a hit while I called the house, cut the line, tossed the phone receiver in the backseat, and drove back to a neighborhood park.

We ambled down to the house in three or four minutes, taking our time, LuEllen miming a cough to cover a couple of additional hits on the cocaine. We could hear the faint ringing of the phone as we walked up the driveway. There was no security sign outside, but that meant nothing.

"When I pop it, you step right inside the door behind me, and stand there. Don't do anything until I tell you," she said as we walked up to the front door. She took a pair of wire cutters out of her tennis bag and slipped them into the pocket of her shorts. "I'm going to be running around like a rat for a couple of minutes."

At the door, she rang the bell and blew hard on the dog whistle. There was no response. She dipped into the bag for the bar, and I covered her with my body while she cracked the door. We stepped into a dark-paneled entry hall; the kitchen was to the left, the living room straight ahead. Hanging on the entry wall was an eye-popping Egon Schiele drawing of two women, nude except for calf-length silk stockings, making love. It was worth a good fraction of the house's value. I began to understand LuEllen's misgivings. That drawing belonged in a museum, or a millionaire's bedroom, not in a suburban house in Virginia.

LuEllen launched herself into the house, literally running, ripping open the front hall closet, pivoting, going into the kitchen, pulling open the cabinets one after another.

The Doberman pinscher caught her on her knees halfway down the kitchen. He came around the corner from the dining room-black and brown and rippling with muscle, running like a leopard.

I was looking at the Schiele drawing when I heard the dog's toenails on the kitchen floor, and LuEllen screamed "No" and I turned, and the dog was coming. He must not have seen me behind LuEllen, because he leaped toward her snarling, and she half stood, her hands in front of her. I took two steps toward them, and as he hit her upper arms and she started to go down, I kicked him in the throat. LuEllen's arm pulled out of his mouth as he tumbled over and down, then he scrabbled his legs under him, recovering, and I took another step and he was almost on his way again, and I kicked him in the head and he went down again.

He was still alive and still trying, and I kicked him again in the ribs without doing much damage except to roll him over, and then LuEllen pushed by me, lifting the crowbar over her head and bringing it down like a baseball bat. The dog rolled his head, and the bar bounced off; she flailed at him again, and this time connected squarely. Blood spattered across the floor, and the dog's legs started to run in a death kick, and she hit him again, and again, and I grabbed her and pulled her off.

"Let go," she said. "I'm okay." She dropped the bar and began flinging open the doors of the kitchen cabinets and raced into the dining room and looked down the stairs, and then went out through the garage door.

The phone was still ringing in the background. I hunted it down and pulled it off the hook, and rehung it. In the sudden silence I could hear the dog's bubbling breath as he died.

"Get that fuckin' dog and stuff it in the hall closet," LuEllen snarled as she came back in the house.

I went back to the kitchen and dragged the dog by its collar into the hallway, and pushed it into the closet. "What happened with the whistle?"

"Some dogs are trained to ignore them. In fact, they go on alert when they hear one. I don't think there's an alarm, by the way. The dog was it." She was examining her upper arm, and there was blood on her shirt. "There's no entry alarm. There's no motion or sound detectors I can see. I thought maybe they had a direct-call alarm, but I couldn't see anything on the phone lines. I cut them anyway. Let's get this done in a hurry."

"How bad are you?"

"He got me, but it doesn't look too bad."

"Let me see." I pulled the neck of her shirt down over her shoulder, and found four gashes, each an inch long, ragged and deep. They were bleeding profusely.

"Hurts like hell," she said. "I have to find a different shirt and something to soak up this blood."

We went down the hall, and she suddenly stopped and said, "Whoa." The living room had been done by the Marquis de Sade. Scarlet flocked wallpaper set off a two-inch-deep wool pile carpet as black as India ink. The furniture included a walnut-colored baby grand piano and an inky-blue overstaffed living room suite of velvet. A candelabra mounting six black candles sat on the piano. The room smelled of incense and marijuana, and something else, something from the locker room or the bedroom. Sweat. Human juices. Something.

On the walls, at eye level, were groupings of small, high-quality art photographs and engravings, all expensively framed, all pornographic.

"I don't believe these things," LuEllen said, as she examined one of the engravings.

"Everybody needs a hobby," I muttered, looking around. "Let's find that fucking computer."