Easy Prey

convoy of two pickups and the two sheriff’s department Explorers. They went into Burnt River, then out the other side, then off on a side road for a hundred yards. Martin Scott lived in a small log cabin, with a stick-built garage across a wide, snow-covered drive. The snow had been driven on, but there was no sign of his truck at the house, and only a single lighted window. A pizza pan-sized satellite dish perched on the corner of the house, aimed at the satellite over Reno. A propane tank sat off on one side of the driveway, and next to the garage, a lean-to covered four or five cords of split wood. All of it was illuminated by a blue yard light.
    “He ain’t home,” Friar said, looking at the dark house. They’d all gotten out of the truck and gathered next to one of the Explorers.
    “How do you know?” Del asked. “Maybe he’s asleep.”
    “He burns wood, and the wood-stove ain’t going,” Friar said. “That smoke there”—he pointed at a thin stream of smoke burbling out of a four-inch-wide stack—“that’s from the propane burner. You only turn that on when you ain’t home, to keep the wood stove going.”
    “Why don’t you guys wait,” Lucas said to the sheriff. “Del . . .”
    Lucas and Del took out their pistols and walked up toward the house. Lucas knocked, then pounded on the door; no sign of life. He opened the storm door and tried the door knob. Locked. The sheriff came up and said, “Let’s look around back.”
    The house had a back porch, but the door apparently wasn’t used much: It hadn’t been shoveled since the last snow fall, and there were no tracks crossing it. Lucas stood up on the back porch and tried to peer through the window. “Want a flash?” the sheriff asked. He handed Lucas a flashlight. Lucas shined it in the window and saw a kitchen.
    Gold shirt had wandered over to the garage and pulled the center-opening doors far enough apart to see inside. “Truck’s gone,” he said.
    Lucas started down the far side of the house, Del and the sheriff trailing behind. One window showed a five-inch slit in the curtains. Lucas looked at Del and said, “If I boosted you up, could you look in there?”
    “I guess.”
    Lucas made a stirrup out of his hands, Del stood in it, and Lucas boosted him up the side of the house. The sheriff handed him a flashlight, and Del looked through the window. A minute later he said, “All right,” and Lucas let him down.
    Del handed the flashlight to the sheriff and said to Lucas, “This is the guy.”
    “What’d you see?” The four shirts and two deputies and the sheriff pressed around.
    “I’ll let you look,” Del said. “Could you pull one of those pickups up here?”
    Gold shirt ran back to his pickup, gunned it out of the driveway and up to the house. Lucas took the flashlight from Del, and they all scrambled into the truck bed. Lucas shined the light though the window.
    They were looking into what might have been a bedroom at one time; now it was a shrine. The walls were covered with the thousand faces of Alie’e Maison, all carefully cut out, all pasted flat to the wall, thousands of green eyes looking out at them from the wall opposite. In the center of the room sat a single lonely wooden chair, where a man might sit to look into the eyes.
    The sheriff took it in, muttered something under his breath, then turned to a deputy. “Go yank Swede out of bed and get a warrant. Tell him I need it right now. Tell him I need it ten minutes ago, because I’m already in the house.”
    And Lucas added, “Get this guy’s tag number and the make on his truck and call me. Quick as you can.”
    “Nineteen ninety-seven Dodge ram, metallic black in color, black-pipe running boards, impact bars on the front, and red script on the door that reads, ‘Martin Scott,’” gold shirt said.
    As they walked around the front of the house, Lucas called Rose Marie. “We ain’t got him, but we know who he is,” he said. “A deputy up here’s gonna call Dispatch, and we need to get a truck description and tag out on the streets.”
     
 
THE SHERIFF OPENED the house by the simple expedient of punching out the window on the front door, reaching inside, and unlocking it. He told the four shirts to hang around, but wouldn’t let them inside.
    The sheriff, Lucas, Del, and one other deputy went into the house. The house smelled bad from the first step, “like he’s been skinning some mink in here,” the sheriff said. They went back to the