Broken Prey

field, they’ll be hard to track. They can be five miles away in an hour, if they can run.”
    “Where’s the lab? You said meth lab?” Lucas asked.
    “Yeah, I could smell it, but I didn’t look. The barn, I think. We’ve had a rash of them.”
    “Manufacture of a controlled substance, resisting arrest, assault on a cop. I bet we can get Bobby fifteen years in Stillwater, if he doesn’t have any priors. If he’s got priors, then, whoops, I guess it’s gonna be bye-bye,” Lucas said. He kicked Clanton in the ass a third time.
    Clanton staggered, caught himself, looked at Youngie, “You always torture your suspects?”
    “Fuck you,” Youngie said, but when Clanton was turned back toward the barn, he looked at Lucas and shook his head: no more ass kicking. Lucas nodded, touched the side of his nose. Everything felt solid, but there was an arcing pain when he pushed left to right, familiar from his hockey and uniform days. Maybe not busted, but cracked. He was still bleeding, bubbling blood, spitting, wiping his chin.
     
    WHEN THEY GOT BACK to the farmyard, they put Clanton facedown on a patch of grass and then Youngie said, “Got another one.” Down the hill, the two young cops were marching the fourth man out of the cornfield. Then another sheriff’s car, leaving a plume of gravel dust behind it, turned in at the drive and Youngie said, “Keep an eye on Bobby; I’ll put these guys on the road.”
     
    LUCAS SAT ON THE GRASS next to Clanton and tipped his head back, sniffing against the leaking blood. “You better talk to us, Bobby,” he said. Blood trickled into his mouth and he spit again. Clanton didn’t reply.
    Lucas dabbed at his face with his knuckles, trying to keep the blood off his suit. “You better talk, Bobby, because you are in some serious shit. Look at me. You’re gonna be as old as I am when you get out of Stillwater. You’re gonna spend your young life in a cell the size of a fucking Volkswagen. You need me to go to court and tell them you cooperated.”
    Nothing.
    Lucas: “You think you’re tough. Maybe you are. I give you that. But you’re stupid, too. Think how long it’s been since last summer, everything you’ve done since then. Think about being locked up for fifteen times that long. Think about being locked up forever, if we put you with Charlie Pope.”
    Clanton twitched. Lucas turned his head down just for a second, snorted blood, but saw that Clanton had started to cry. “Better talk, Bobby.”
     
    YOUNGIE CAME BACK with a big gauze first-aid pad and said, “Here. You’re still bleeding.” Lucas took it as another cop car pulled into the yard. “We’ll start pushing the field as soon as we have enough people.”
    Lucas said, “Ah,” through the pad.
    The two young cops arrived with the fourth man and put him on the grass a few yards from Clanton. “You shot?” one of them asked Lucas.
    “Nuh-uh,” Lucas said. The fire in his face was transforming itself into a first-class headache.
    “Got punched in the face by the fat guy,” Youngie said. He looked down at the fourth man. “Who’s this asshole?”
    “Sandy Martin, cousin to one of the Martin brothers. Says he doesn’t know anything about a meth lab, he just came up to check the farmhouse.”
    “Must be why he ran when he saw us coming,” Youngie said.
    “Goddamn this hurts,” Lucas said.
    The two cops from the new car came over and one asked Lucas, “You shot?”
     
    YOUNGIE AND THREE of the other cops cleared the barn. Lucas and the youngest of the deputies sat on the lawn next to the captives. “Take it easy in there,” Lucas said, as the cops went in with drawn guns.
     
    THEY WERE BACK OUT in ten minutes. Youngie, positively cheerful, said, so Clanton and Martin could hear him, “My, my, my. That’s the biggest and best meth lab I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a few. Bobby, Sandy, if I were you guys, I would do anything I could to cut down the time, because right now, you’re gonna do a stretch in Stillwater and then the feds are gonna want to talk to you.”
    “I want a fuckin’ lawyer,” Clanton said.
    “I didn’t do anything, I was just here to check the property,” Martin wailed.
    “Not giving us any help at all, are they?” Youngie said to Lucas. “I mean, we put them with Charlie Pope, that’d be a murder charge to go with the drugs.”
    Silence, then “Who the fuck is Charlie Pope?” Clanton asked. His face was still wet with tears. “This asshole”—he