Chosen Prey

other shit. So . . . if you’ve got to tackle him, tackle him hard. Don’t hurt him—we need him to talk to us.”
    They were all starting to breathe hard, feeling the rush: a critical point on the case, and with a crazy.
    “Come in last,” Del told Lucas. “If there’s no trouble, it won’t make any difference. If there is trouble, maybe it won’t rub off on you—but if there’s big trouble, you’ll be in position to lay some shit on him.”
    Lucas nodded. Randy had been a new guy on the block when one of his girls had spent some time with Lucas, talking. Randy had heard about it. He’d learned from the cheaper TV shows that the girl had to be taught a lesson for her disrespect, or he’d be disrespected himself. He’d taught her the lesson with a church key, cutting an average-looking hooker into a scholarly paper in a plastic surgery journal.
    Lucas had felt pressured by street ethics to repay the attack. He and Del had gone to arrest Randy at a bar, but everybody had known it would come to a fight—and it had. Lucas had gone a little further than he intended, had lost it a little, and Randy had ended that particular day in Hennepin General’s critical-care unit.
    After a long tangled series of arguments and legal maneuvers, Lucas had left the department under the cloud of possible excessive-force charges. He’d been back for a while, but Randy Whitcomb still could be a political problem.
    The hooker had left the streets after she got out of the hospital, and now worked at a Wal-Mart checkout. She looked okay from three feet, though a close inspection showed a plaid pattern of scars across both of her cheeks. She didn’t talk to Lucas anymore.
    They went to Randy’s door by walking along the face of the apartment building, five of them, led by Allport, followed by the hammer, then Del, then Lucas, with Marshall trailing. At the door, Allport spoke into a handset: “Ready?”
    The uniforms were in position, and Allport slipped his gun, nodded, and pushed the doorbell. No answer. He pushed it again and they heard feet on the stairs, and then the bolt rattled and the door opened, just a crack, with a chain across the crack. Through the crack, Lucas saw a slice of Randy’s face and one eye. Randy jerked back and screamed, “Shit,” as Allport stepped forward and Lucas said, “Watch it!” The door slammed and the bolt slammed with it, and Allport said, “Hit it.”
    Lucas stepped out of the way, and the uniform swung his sledge-hammer at the doorknob. The door blew open with the sound of a Cadillac hitting a picket fence. Allport did a quick peek, pulled back, said, “Let’s go,” and burst in onto the landing. He was turning for the stairs, Del two steps behind him, when the first shot BANGED overhead and Allport screamed, “GUN,” and he and Del both went down and scrambled back off the stairs and out the door.
    Lucas did a quick peek, saw nothing, and heard Allport screaming, “Gun,” into his handset, and at the same time saw Del rolling off the porch and onto his feet, and then he was onto the stairs, moving up, felt Del behind him as a shadow, shouted, “Watch along the railing, watch . . .” And they both watched the railing at the stop of the stairwell. . . .
    From up the stairs Lucas heard glass break, then another shot BANGED through the apartment, and he flinched and looked back and it wasn’t Del behind him but Marshall, a trooper’s long-barreled .357 revolver in his fist. He had no time to think when Marshall said, “I’ll go to the top, you peek over the rail,” and then Marshall was past him to the top of the stairs, and Lucas did a quick peek between the rails at the top and couldn’t see anything.
    Marshall scrambled out onto the carpet at the top, and he was shouting, “Living room is clear, I don’t see him.”
    Another BANG from the back, and Lucas shouted, “He’s in the back, it sounds like he went out.” He heard somebody screaming, “Watch it, watch it, coming your way, watch it . . .”
    Allport, he thought, and then he was at the top of the stairs and saw Marshall, now up and moving in a crouch, headed toward a hallway leading toward the back. He did a peek as Lucas came up and said, “Clear, I think.”
    Lucas did a peek and heard more shouting from the back, and ran down the hallway just in time to hear a fusillade of shots, and more yelling. He was coming up on a room to his right and a closed door on his left. He did a quick peek