Night Prey

to the rearview mirror again. “Got your game face on,” he said to Connell in his casual drawl.
    They clattered across a small board bridge over a drainage ditch and Lucas hooked the door handle with the fingers of his right hand as Beneteau drove them into the junkyard’s parking lot. The other car went a hundred feet down the road, to the end of the lot, while the panel truck hooked in short. There were four deputies in the van, armed with M-16s. If somebody starting pecking at them with a fifty, the M-16s would hose them down.
    The gravel parking lot was stained with oil and they slid the last few feet, raising a cloud of dust. “Go,” Beneteau grunted.
    Lucas was out a half second before Connell, headed toward the front door. He went straight through, not quite running, his hand on his belt buckle. Two men were standing at the counter, one in front of it, one in back, looking at a fat, greasy parts catalog. Startled, the man behind the counter backed up, said, “Hey,” and Lucas pushed through the swinging counter gate and flashed his badge with his left hand and said, “Police.”
    “Cops,” the counterman shouted. He wore a white T-shirt covered with oil stains, and jeans with a heavy leather wallet sticking out of his back pocket, attached to his belt with a brass chain. The man at the front of the counter, bearded, wearing a railway engineer’s hat, backed away, hands in front of him. Connell was behind him.
    “You Joe?” Lucas asked, crowding the counterman. The counterman stood his ground, and Lucas shoved his chest, backing him up. An open doorway led away to Lucas’s right, into the bowels of the buildings.
    “That’s Bob,” Beneteau said, coming in. “How you doing, Bob?”
    “What the fuck do you want, George?” Bob asked.
    A cop out front yelled, “We got runners . . .” and Beneteau ran back out the door.
    “Where’s Joe?” Lucas asked, pushing Bob.
    “Who the fuck are you?”
    “Keep them,” Lucas said to Connell.
    Connell pulled her pistol from her purse, a big stainless-steel Ruger wheelgun, held with both hands, the muzzle up.
    “And for Christ’s sake, don’t shoot anybody this time, unless you absolutely have to,” Lucas said hastily.
    “You’re no fun,” Connell said. She dropped the muzzle of the gun toward Bob, who had taken a step back toward Lucas, and said, “Stand still or I’ll punch a fuckin’ hole right through your nose.” Her voice was as cold as sleet, and Bob stopped.
    Lucas freed his gun and went through the door into the back, pausing a second to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The walls were lined with shelves, and a dozen freestanding metal parts racks stood between the door and the back wall. The racks were loaded with bike parts, fenders and tanks, wheels, stacks of Quaker State oil cans, coffee cans full of rusty nails, screws, and bolts. Two open cans of grease sat on the floor, and two open-topped fifty-five-gallon drums full of trash were at his elbow. A metal extrusion that might have been a go-cart chassis was propped against them. The only light came from small dirty windows on the back wall, and through a door at the back right. The whole place smelled of dust and oil.
    Lucas started toward the door, gun barrel up, finger off the trigger. Then to the left, between a row of metal racks, he saw a scattering of white. Beyond it, an open door led into a phone booth-size bathroom, the brown-stained toilet directly in front of the door. He stepped toward the smear of white, which had broken out of a small plastic bag. Powder. Cocaine? He bent down, touched it, lifted his finger to his nose, sniffed it. Not coke. He thought about tasting it: for all he knew it was some kind of powdered bike cleaner, something like Drāno. Put a tiny taste on his tongue anyway, got the instant acrid cut: speed.
    “Shit.” The word was spoken almost next to his ear, and Lucas jumped. The rack beside him lurched and toppled toward him, boxes of odd metal parts sliding off the shelf. Something heavy and sharp sliced into his scalp as he put an arm out to brace the rack. He pushed the rack back, staggering, and a man bolted out from behind the next row, ran down to the right toward the door, and out.
    Lucas, struggling with the rack, aware of a dampness in his hair, fought free and went after him. As he burst through the door into the light, he heard somebody yell and looked right, saw Beneteau standing in an open field, pointing. Lucas looked left, saw