John Sandford: Silken Prey

• • •

BRADLEY AND STACK HEARD him coming. Stack whispered, “I’m going to hit the car lights.”

“Okay.”

Stack reached to the light switch, to the left of the steering wheel, and waited, waited, trying to judge the distance, and when it seemed that he might be close enough,

Flipped the switch.

And Dannon was there, covered with mud, clothes hanging wet from his body, a bloody patch on his head, mouth hanging open. He had a gun in his hand and as Stack stepped to the left of Bradley, he brought it up and Bradley screamed, “Drop the gun,” and he didn’t, he brought it higher . . .

The women shot him.

Later, it would turn out that they’d each fired four times, though neither was counting, and of the eight shots, had hit him five times.

Two of the shots would have been wounding; two of the shots would have killed him in seconds or minutes; one of them went through his throat and severed his spinal cord, and Dannon went down like Raggedy Andy.

CHAPTER 27

Lucas not only heard the gunfire, but saw it. He was at right angles to the confrontation, running back to the cars, saw the lights go on, and then behind the lights, the sound of the gunfire and the flicker of the muzzle flashes. The women were both shooting 9mm weapons, and the flashes were small, even in the dark night. He shouted, “Davenport coming in . . .”

Running as hard as he could, he was there in fifteen seconds. The two women were still by the cars, guns pointed at Dannon’s body. Lucas came up, and Bradley said, her voice cool, “He had a gun, he pointed it at us.”

Lucas nodded once, said into his handset, “You guys get to the closest road, he’s down.”

He did that as he stepped over to Dannon’s body and checked it. He was on his side; blood pooling around him, his gun still gripped in his hand.

Lucas backed away, and Jenkins ran up and looked at the body.

He said, “Who . . . ?”

Bradley said, “We did.”

“Jesus,” Jenkins said.

Del and Shrake came up and stopped beside Jenkins; all three of them were covered with mud, their trousers wet above the knees. Del had a scrape above one eye. Lucas said to Jenkins, “Get your flashers on, block the road. Figure out what county we’re in, and call the sheriff’s office and get some deputies down here.”

To Shrake: “Call the duty officer and get a crime-scene crew on the way. Tell them to bring lights—lots of lights. Tell them to hurry.”

And to Bradley and Stack: “You two put your guns away. Decock them but leave them in the same condition, don’t reload them. Stay around the car, don’t approach the body.”

To Del: “Come on. We’ve got to check on Carver.”

“Hope to hell Carver’s down there,” Del said. “Be a hell of a note if Dannon was out digging black dirt for his flower garden.”

• • •

THEY HURRIED ALONG THROUGH the night, turned the corner down the dirt track, to Dannon’s truck. They shone lights in the window, without touching the truck, but it was empty. They then stepped carefully through the brush back to the spot where they’d heard Dannon digging. There was a hole in the ground, and beside it, a bulky body with a plastic bag on the head. “That’s him,” Lucas said. “I’m not gonna touch the bag.”

“You think Tubbs is out here?” Del asked.

“I’d bet on it, but I’m not looking around here now,” Lucas said, shining the light down on his shoes. The ground was damp, but not actually swampy where he was standing.

“One thing about November,” Del said, shining his flash up into the sky. “No bugs.”

“Yeah, that’s one thing about it,” Lucas said. “Let’s go back and wait for the crime-scene people.”

• • •

THEY HAD THREE SHERIFF’S cars at the scene in twenty minutes, one blocking the road, the other down by the mouth of the dirt track, one with the BCA group. The crime-scene truck arrived a few minutes after three-thirty, and took charge of the scene, along with the sheriff’s deputies. They also took charge of the women’s pistols.

After they’d walked the crime-scene crew through the entire action, and marked the critical bits, Lucas ordered the two women and Shrake and Jenkins back to BCA headquarters: “I want full preliminary reports from everyone, start to finish, with timelines. Right now, tonight. When you’re done, cross-check them, then get some sleep. We’ll meet tomorrow at one o’clock in the afternoon and figure out the bureaucratics. Jane and Sarah, you did good. The guy murdered at least three people in cold blood, and if you hadn’t shot him, he’d have killed you and taken one of the cars. Nobody could have asked for more.”

Lucas called the BCA duty officer and asked him to send another crew to cover Dannon’s and Carver’s apartments. “Seal them off at a minimum.”

The four of them coughed and shuffled their feet and talked for a minute or two, before going to their vehicles, to trundle back up the road. By that time, both the area around Dannon and the area around Carver were bathed in work light, and one of the crime-scene people was making a movie of the shooting area.

Del asked, “We’re staying?”

“We might have to come back, but right now, we’re going to talk to Taryn Grant.”

“You think she knew about this?”

“I . . .” Lucas had to stop and think. “I’d give you six-to-five that she did. No better than that. We have nothing with her name on it. If she’s involved, we’ll have to find something in Dannon’s apartment. Probably not Carver’s.”

• • •

BY THE TIME THEY got back to town, it was after five o’clock, not even a hint of the dawn. They dropped off I-94 onto I-494 at the western edge of the metro area, then turned off and headed deeper west, into the lake neighborhoods. When they got to Grant’s house, they found the street deserted; no well-wishers, no TV trucks. There were a few lights in the house, and two security guards at the driveway.

Lucas and Del got out of Lucas’s truck and walked up the driveway. The guards moved down to block them, and Lucas pulled out his ID and said, “We’re with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We need to wake Ms. Grant. Now.”

One of the guards looked at the ID with his flashlight and said, “You got it . . . but I think she’s still awake. There are still some people here.”

Del asked, “Any more of you guys around?”

“Yeah, one guy behind the house, he moves back and forth across the yard.”

• • •

THEY WALKED UP TO the front door, rang the bell. Del scratched his neck and looked at the yellow bug light and said, “I feel like a bug.”

“You look like a bug. You fall down out there?”

“About four times. We weren’t running so much as staggering around. Potholes full of water . . . I see you kept your French shoes nice and dry.”

“English. English shoes . . . French shirts. Italian suits. Try to remember that.”

“Makes my nose bleed,” Del said.

The door opened, and Green looked out: she was still fully dressed, including the jacket that covered her gun and the fashionable shoes that she could run in.

She took a long look at Del, and asked, “Where’re Dannon and Carver?”

“Dead,” Lucas said. “Where’s Grant?”

“In the living room.”

“You want to invite us in?”

She opened the door, and they stepped inside, and followed her to the living room.

Grant was there, still dressed as she had been on the stage; she was curled in an easy chair, with a drink in her hand, high heels on the floor beside her. Schiffer was lying on a couch, barefoot; a couple of Taryn’s staff people, a young woman and a young man, were sitting on the floor, making a circle. Another man, heavier and older, was sitting in a leather chair facing Grant. Lucas didn’t recognize him, but recognized the type: a guy who knew where all the notional bodies were buried, a guy who could get the vice president on the telephone.