Night Prey

it,” and he meant it. Koop turned away, and the bondsman swallowed and wondered why they’d let an animal like that out of jail once they had him in.
     
     
     
    KOOP HAD NOT decided what to do. Not exactly. But he knew for sure that he wouldn’t be going back to jail. He couldn’t handle that. Jail was death. There would be no deals, nothing that would put him inside.
    There was an excellent chance he’d be acquitted, his attorney said: the state’s case seemed to be based entirely on Schultz’s testimony. “In fact, I’m surprised they bothered to arrest you. Surprised,” the attorney said.
    If he was convicted, though, Koop’d have to do some small amount of time—certainly not a year, although technically he could get six years. After the conviction, the state would continue bail through a presentencing investigation. He’d be free for at least another month. . . .
    But if he was convicted, Koop knew, he’d be gone. Mexico. Canada. Alaska. Somewhere. No more jail. . . .
     
     
     
    THE ATTORNEY HAD told him where he could get the truck. “I checked, and they’re finished with it.” He needed the truck. The truck was his , gave him security. But what if the cops had him on some kind of watch list? What if they tagged him to the bank, where he had his stash? He needed to get at the stash, for the money to pay the bondsman.
    Wait, wait, wait. . . .
    The trial wasn’t even going to be for a month. He didn’t have to do anything in the next fifteen minutes. If they were watching him, he’d spot it. Unless they’d bugged the truck. Koop put his hands to his head and pushed: holding it together.
     
     
     
    HEGOT THE truck back—it was all routine, clerical, the bureaucrats didn’t give a shit, as long as you had the paper—and drove to his house. Two of the neighborhood cunts were walking on the street and stepped up on a lawn when they saw him coming, wrenching a baby buggy up on the grass with them.
    Bitches, he mouthed at them.
    He pushed the button on the garage-door opener when he was still a half-block away, and rolled straight into the garage stall, the door dropping behind him. He took ten minutes to walk around the house. The cops had been all over the place. Things were moved, and hadn’t been put back quite right. Nothing was trashed. Nothing was missing, as far as he could tell. The basement looked untouched.
    He walked through the front room. An armchair sat facing the television. “Cocksucker,” he screamed. He kicked the side of it, and the fabric caved in. Koop, breathing hard, looked around the room, at the long wall reaching down toward the bedrooms. Sheetrock. A slightly dirty, inoffensive beige. “Cocksucker,” he screamed at it. He hit the wall with his fist; the sheetrock caved in, a hole like a crater on the moon. “Cocksucker.” Struck again, another hole. “Cocksucker . . .”
    Screaming, punching, he moved sideways down the hall, stopped only when he was at the end of it, looked back. Nine holes, fist-size, shoulder height. And pain. Dazed, he looked at his hand: the knuckles were a pulp of blood. He put the knuckles to his mouth, licked them off, sucked on them. Tasted good, the blood.
    Breathing hard, blowing like a horse, Koop staggered back to the bedroom, sucking his knuckles as he went.
    In the bedroom, the first thing he saw was the bottle of Opium, sitting on the chest. He unscrewed the top, sniffed it, closed his eyes, saw her.
    White nightgown, black triangle, full lips . . .
    Koop put some Opium on his fingertips, dabbed it under his nose, stood swaying with his eyes closed, just visiting. . . .
    Finally, with the dreamlike odor of Sara Jensen playing with his mind, and the pain in his hand helping to reorder it, he got a flashlight and went back out to the garage. He began working through the truck, inch by inch, bolt by bolt, sucking his knuckles when the blood got too thick. . . .

32
    LUCAS HOVERED IN the men’s accessories, next to the cologne, behind a rotating rack of wallets, keeping the top of Koop’s head in sight. He carried a fat leather briefcase. Koop loitered in the men’s sportswear, his hands in his pockets, touching nothing, not really looking.
    Connell beeped. “What’s he doing?”
    “Killing time,” Lucas said. A short elderly lady stopped to look at him, and he turned away. “Can you see him?”
    “He’s two aisles over.”
    “Careful. You’re too close. Sloan?”
    “Yeah, I got him. I’m going over to the north