Naked Prey

alongside a snowmobile rally in the adjoining ditches, a couple of dozen sleds making a fast run south.
    “Canadians call them snow machines,” Del said, shaking himself out of a slumber, and looking out the window at the riders. They were in Lucas’s new Acura SUV, which Lucas had begun to suspect was a disguised minivan.
    “What?”
    “They call them snow machines, instead of snowmobiles. Or sleds.”
    “Fuckin’ Canadians.”
    “They are the spawn of the devil,” Del agreed, yawning. “Want me to drive for a while?”
    “If we stop, those goddamn flatfeet are gonna pull that Dodge off the road, and then they’re gonna get stuck, and then it’ll take another half hour to get down there, and we’ll all be freezing and our socks will be wet.”
    “Good. I didn’t want to drive. Wake me up when we get there.”
    S ORRELL’S HOME WAS eight miles outside of Rochester on a rolling piece of country that might have made a decent golf course. Though the driveway was open, Lucas had the feeling that they’d triggered security sensors when they crossed between the two stone pillars that marked its entrance. The driveway leading to the hilltop house was blacktopped, carefully plowed, and though it seemed to pass through a woodlot, the trees were too aesthetically pleasing to be natural.
    The house itself seemed modest enough from the bottom of the drive, a kind of Pasadena bungalow of redwood and brick, with a wing. Only when they got closer did Lucas realize how big the place was, and that what looked like a wing was a garage.
    “I could put the Big New House in the garage,” Lucas said, as they neared the crest of the hill.
    “You paid what, a million-five for that?” Del said. Del had been trying to worm the price out of him.
    “Nothing near that,” Lucas said. “But this place—this place would go for a million-five.”
    “Or maybe six million-five . . . ”
    The driveway disappeared around the corner of the wing, apparently to hide the utilitarian commonness of garage doors. They stopped in front of the house, got out, waited until Jenkins and Shrake joined them. Jenkins parked his car beside Lucas’s SUV, effectively blocking the driveway. They walked as a group, blowing steam inthe cold air, up the steps of the low front porch. The porch had a swing, as did Lucas’s Big New House, and a stone walkway along the front, under an overhanging eave.
    Lucas looked at Jenkins and Shrake, said, “Ready,” and Jenkins said, “Unless you want me around back.” Lucas shook his head. “Let’s everybody be polite,” he said.
    “Probably at work anyway,” Shrake said. “The place feels empty.”
    Lucas pushed the doorbell and heard the empty echo. Shrake was right: there was something weird about houses—they felt either occupied or empty, and even without looking inside, most street cops could feel whether there were people inside.
    One of Lucas’s old friends with the Minneapolis police force, Harrison Sloan, theorized that people who were tiptoeing, or even breathing, gave off vibrations that the house amplified, and that you could subconsciously feel the vibrations. Lucas told him he was full of shit, but secretly thought he might be onto something.
    He pushed the doorbell again, and then a third time. Jenkins moved down the walkway to a line of windows, and tried to see inside, trying one window after another. Halfway down, he stopped and moved his head up and down, his hand against the glass of the storm window, blocking reflections. Then he shook his head and said, “I’ll be right back.”
    He went out to the Dodge, popped the trunk, and fished out a twenty-pound, yellow-handled maul. As he climbed back up the porch, Lucas said, “What are you doing?”
    “Gonna knock the door down,” Jenkins said.
    “What are you talking about?” Del asked.
    Jenkins sighed, as if instructing a slow student. “If you look through that window, you’ll see a hand and an arm. Just a hand and an arm, sticking out of a hallway into the kitchen. It looks to me like a dead hand, but I can’t be sure.It might still be a live hand, that dies while we stand here bullshitting. So if you’ll stand back . . . ”
    Lucas turned to Del who said, “Oh, boy,” and to Shrake, who said, gloomily, “There goes the fuckin’ playoff game.”
    J ENKINS HAD A nice smooth wood-chopping swing, and the edge of the maul hit just above the doorknob, blowing the door open. Jenkins stepped back, and Lucas slipped