Hidden Prey

“Roy Hopper, down in Hibbing.”
    Lucas took the phone and said, “Hi.”
    Hopper was breathing hard, and Lucas could hear sirens: “Bill, uh, the guy we’ve got sitting outside of Walther’s. He just heard two shots. He’s going in.”

     27 
    G RANDPA PUSHED THE door shut on the cop, and waited. Would the cop come in after him? No. Instead, the cop seemed to laugh at him, turned, and walked back toward the other two, motioned, and they all went back out toward their car.
    Let him laugh. But now there was no exit, now the endgame was critical. In a way, he felt a certain satisfaction because he’d seen it coming.
    He pushed Grandma into the front room, facing the TV. She lifted her head when she saw it, and her face seemed to loosen, as though she were relaxing with the familiarity of home.
    Grandpa rubbed the top of her head, something he used to do when she was still with them; he would do it before he went out, a kind of good-bye and good luck and I love you. And he leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead and said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
    He went into the kitchen, got the walkie-talkie from the drawer,buzzed it. A minute passed, and he buzzed it again. If Carl wasn’t home, that could be a setback. Another minute, then “Yeah?”
    A growing knot in his stomach suddenly unwrapped. “Instructions. Write this.”
    “Let me get a pencil.” A few seconds. “Okay.”
    “Number one. Recover this walkie-talkie before police do.”
    “What?” No code. Carl was confused.
    “I’m going to take this walkie-talkie and put it under Mrs. Kriegler’s garbage can, between the bricks they stand on, back in the alley. Get it there.”
    “Why—?”
    “No questions. Just write. Number two. You are a child. Act like one.
    You must remember! Act like a child.”
    “I don’t—”
    “No questions! Remember. Will you remember?”
    “Yes.”
    “The instructions will be clear, soon enough. They were here this afternoon, and my endgame proceeds.”
    “Should I come over?”
    “No! Not until you must. Be a child. Act like a child. And when you must come over, you will know it’s time.”
    “Okay . . .”
    “Now we need silence. Good-bye.”
    “Good-bye.”
     
    G RANDPA SIGHED , got his jacket and a piece of newspaper, crumbled it into a ball, put it in his pocket with the walkie-talkie. They might be watching; maybe he couldn’t get rid of the walkie-talkie. He would see.
    He went out the back door, shuffled down the block, around the corner, back up the alley. Hadn’t seen anyone. Came up to the Krieglers’garbage can, took the walkie-talkie and the ball of paper out of his pocket, stooped, slipped the walkie-talkie between the bricks that held the can off the ground, then stood, lifted the top off the can, and tossed the ball of paper inside. Hoped any watcher would think he’d picked up the paper and was dumping it into the can. Or, if they didn’t believe that, that they would look at the trash.
    Continued up the alley. Thought about Carl as he shuffled along. He hadn’t had enough time with the boy. He needed two more years. He wasn’t ready for what Grandpa was putting on him—but then, Grandpa hadn’t been ready when he was pushed out into the world, either.
    Maybe that’s all it would take—to be pushed into the real world.
     
    B ACK HOME  . Preparing the endgame, such as it was, would take only a few minutes. Before he did it, Grandpa went to his favorite chair, turned it to look out over the front lawn, closed his eyes, and remembered.
    His first memory, the earliest he’d had, came from the countryside near Moscow. In the fall, he thought, because the memory was of a gray-and-tan landscape. He was standing with his father, maybe looking out a window, and a man was walking through a field not far from them. The man had a cigarette dangling from his lip, and a gun over his shoulder. His father must have known the man, because the man smiled and held up a dead rabbit, dangling the furry body by its tail . . . There were other scattered childhood memories: watching four men trying to push a car out of a muddy ditch, groaning and swearing; sitting in a cold outhouse with an older man—an uncle?—as they talked and shared space in a three-holer. He remembered looking down the holes, into the mysterious pit below. And he remembered the smell of a country kitchen, and the big round cold purple beets sitting on the counter, ready for the soup . . .
    He