Hidden Prey

parents were killed in that car wreck, but that’s not what it was—there was always something else, and I always wondered if Burt didn’t have something to do with it. Not physical. Psychological.”
    “Well. Burt was a spy,” Lucas said. “If he was recruiting familymembers, and they’d all grown up here where everybody’s got a flag and supposed to be a good American . . . there’d be a lot of stress.” He looked over his shoulder at Nadya. “Isn’t that right?”
    She nodded. “This is widely recognized in the community. Family stress is a very big problem.”
    Wolfe nodded, looking out the window. “Just . . . messed up, Roger was. Never saw the man really happy, except maybe at his wedding. Wonder where he is now?”
     
    T HE M AGNUSON HOUSE was a half mile down a gravel road from Wolfe’s place, set in a deep patch of woods along a small muddy river. There was a chain on the gate, and they could see a long track down through the trees to where the house must be, but they couldn’t see the house. “There’s a spot over there where you can get in, where they cut the brush out for the power line,” Wolfe said, pointing down the road. “You might scratch your car . . .”
    Magnuson wouldn’t care, Wolfe said, he was a good ol’ boy.
    The sheriff’s GMC led the way through, and they stopped halfway down to Magnuson’s house, at the point where the driveway came closest to Wolfe’s. Lucas gathered the three deputies around him, and they went over the approach. They took a couple of flash-bangs and some tear gas, and just as they were about to start into the woods they heard a distant banging sound, metal on metal, from the direction of Wolfe’s place.
    “Somebody there,” Wolfe said. “It’s gotta be him.”
    “Let’s go,” Lucas said.
     
    C ARL HAD GOTTEN into the house with a rock through the kitchen window. He cleared out the glass, boosted himself inside, turnedon the water pump and the electricity, pushed the thermostat from fifty to seventy-two, found a local station on the satellite, got the gun and a box of shells out of the hideaway.
    All right. Get something to eat. He rummaged through the kitchen, found a couple of cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, heated it up, and sat at the kitchen table gobbling it down, the gun on the table.
    The movement kept him preoccupied. Only when he put the bowl in the sink did he begin to feel alone—nobody to tell him to wash the bowl and put it away, nobody to tell where he was going, no Grandpa to talk to. No place to go, not with the cops looking for him.
    In fact . . . the Chevy was outside, in plain sight. If anybody came down the drive, it would be the first thing they’d see. If the cops were looking for him, somebody could come down the drive, spot the car, and sneak away to report him, and he’d never know.
    He picked up the gun, went outside, checked the garage. It was locked, but with a cheap padlock, enough to keep out kids. He looked around, found a hand-sized field stone, and beat on the lock until the hasp pulled out. He went inside, checked the four-by-four for keys—there were none, they were probably hung on the back of the bookcase—and lifted the overhead door.
    With the door up, he moved the Chevy inside, then went back to the house. A local news program was on. He got a Coke from the refrigerator, perched on the couch. He thought about the Honda in the garage. Maybe later, he’d go out and scout around. For the moment, he’d just see what they were saying about him. Maybe, he thought, nobody had noticed he was gone.
     
    E IGHT HUNDRED YARDS , through second-growth timber, the ground soft and marshy underfoot. The banging continued, off and on, for the first three or four minutes of the march, and then stopped. Theycrossed a rise a few seconds later, and Wolfe whispered, “When you come across that next little rise, there, you can see the place.”
    They crossed a wet depression, and one of the sheriff’s deputies whispered, “Nettles,” and Lucas raised his hands over his head—he hated nettles—and warned Nadya. She nodded, and a minute later, they climbed out of the wet ground, through some scrubby maples, and looked down at Carl Walther’s Chevy.
    Carl was just walking out of a metal pole barn. A rifle lay on the hood of the Chevy and he picked it up, got in the car, started it, and rolled it into the pole barn.
    “Broke into the pole barn to hide the car,” Wolfe