Easy Prey

on the floor, facedown. She was screaming, “There’s nobody else, for God’s sakes, there’s nobody else.”
    They took the house slowly, five minutes to work through it. When Lucas came back up the basement stairs, his pistol reholstered, he found the woman sitting on the couch, her hands cuffed behind her. The second sheriff’s deputy was standing over her.
    “We got him,” the deputy said. “There was no way he was gonna run away from Rick.”
    “He runs in marathons,” the blonde said.
    “So does Rick,” the deputy said.
    Del came out of the back of the house and said, “We’re all clear. Office in the back.”
    Lucas followed him to the office. A paper Rolodex sat on the back of the desk, and Del started going through it while Lucas cranked up the computer. The phone rang, and Lucas picked it up and said hello.
    “Hey . . . is this Jim?”
    “He’s out back,” Lucas said. “Can I have him call you?”
    “Yeah. Tell him to call Lonnie? Is this Steve?”
    “Naw, this is Lucas.”
    “Okay, whatever. I need to talk to him pretty quick.”
    “You got a number?”
    “He’s got it.”
    “Just in case?”
    “Yeah, okay. . . .”
    Lucas copied down the phone number and said, “We’ll get back to you.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Very nice,” Del said. He was looking at the Rolodex. “He’s gotta have two hundred names in here.”
    “But nobody from the party list.”
    “Not so far. But you know what? I’ll bet you a buck that we find at least one. If he’s dealing high-end. There were a lot of high-end dopers there.”
     
 
THE PHONE RANG again, and a woman’s voice said,
    “Lucas?”
    The name startled him; he didn’t pick up on it right away. “Yeah?”
    “This is Rose Marie,” the woman said.
    “Jesus, I thought I was talking to a fuckin’ psychic or something--”
    She broke in. “Listen. I hate this—but Sherrill’s been shot.”
    Lucas didn’t understand for a minute. “What? What?”
    Del looked at him, straightened.
    “Sherrill’s been shot. She’s on her way to Hennepin.”
    “Aw, Jesus Christ, is she bad?”
    “She’s bad. She’s bad.”
    “I’m going.”
    He threw the phone back at the receiver and started running, and Del shouted, “What?”
    Lucas shouted back, “Sherrill’s been shot. You stay here, take this.”
    “Fuck that, Larry can take it.” He was right behind Lucas, and together they ran through the front room, and Lucas shouted at Cohen, who was talking to the blonde, “Larry, you gotta take it, Sherrill’s been shot, we’re going, you know what to do. . . .”
    On the sidewalk, the sheriff’s deputy, wet up to his hips, was pulling a handcuffed man up the lawn, a short, slender man with a dude’s haircut and a small tight mouth; the dude was soaked from head to foot. The deputy said, “Fell in the fuckin’ lake.”
    But Lucas and Del ran past him and piled into Lucas’s Porsche and they were gone, streaking through the slow streets of North Oaks past a soccer field and south toward Minneapolis.

15
    LUCAS FOCUSED ON driving, blowing past cars as Del gave a running commentary on gaps in the traffic: “Go left behind this red one, move over left, go, go . . .” Down the ramp and around the corner onto I-35W, squeezing between an old Bronco and a generic Chevy pickup.
    Halfway back, Lucas said, “We’ve done this before.” “That fuckin’ Sherrill, she’s always got her face in it,” Del said. “Last time she goddamned near bled to death.”
    “Rose Marie said it’s bad,” Lucas groaned. “She said it’s bad. . . .”
     
 
A PALE-FACED, BLOOD-SPATTERED Jael Corbeau was standing in the hallway just inside the emergency room door, with two uniformed cops, when Lucas and Del burst in. “Where is she?” Lucas asked.
    “They’re operating,” Jael said, stepping toward him. “They rushed her right in.”
    Lucas headed for the hall to the operating rooms. Rose Marie was standing there with Lester. Lester grabbed Lucas’s arm and said, “Slow down,” and Rose Marie said, “You can’t see anything down there, Lucas.” Lester added, “She’s already under, man, they’ve already got her asleep.”
    Lucas slowed down, realized Del was right behind him. “How bad?” Del asked, and Lucas asked, “Is she gonna make it?”
    “She was hit twice,” Lester said. “Once in the left arm, once in the left side of her chest. Busted a lung. She might’ve died except that she rolled up on her left side . . . they said