Secret Prey

the season opened, the forest was still gray to the eye; in the next few minutes, it seemed to grow miraculously brighter. Then he heard a single, distant shot: nobody here on the farm.
    Another shot followed a minute later, then two or three shots over the next couple of minutes: hunters jumping the gun. He glanced at his watch. Two minutes. Nothing moving out over the swamp.
    • • •
    THROUGH THE SCOPE, THE TARGET LOOKED LIKE AN oversized pumpkin, fifteen or twenty feet up the tree. His body from the hips down was out of sight, as was his right arm. The killer could see a large part of his back, but not the face. The crosshairs of the low-power scope caressed the target’s spine, and the killer’s finger lay lightly on the trigger.
    Gotta be him. Damn this light, can’t see. Turn your head. Come on, turn your head. Look at me. Have to do something, sun’s getting up, have to do something. Look at me. There we go! Keep turning, keep turning . . .
    THIRTY SECONDS BEFORE THE SEASON OPENED, THE crackle of gunfire became general. Nothing too close, though, Kresge thought. Either the other guys were holding off, or nothing was moving beneath them.
    What about the deer that had settled off to his left?
    He turned on the bench, moving slowly, carefully, and looked that way. In the last few seconds of his life, Daniel S. Kresge first saw the blaze-orange jacket, then the face. He recognized the killer and thought, What the hell?
    Then the face moved down and he realized that the dark circle below the hood was the objective end of the scope and the scope was pointed his way, so the barrel . . . ah, Jesus.
    JESUS WENT THROUGH KRESGE’S MIND AT THE SAME instant the bullet punched through his heart.
    The chairman of the board spun off the bench—feeling no pain, feeling nothing at all—his rifle falling to the ground. He knelt for a moment at the railing, like a man taking communion; then his back buckled and he fell under the railing, after the rifle.
    He saw the ground coming, in a foggy way, hit it face first, with a thump, and his neck broke. He bounced onto his back, his eyes still open: the brightening sky was gone. He never felt the hand that probed for his carotid artery, looking for a pulse.
    He would lie there for a while, head downhill, would Daniel S. Kresge, a hole in his chest, with a mouth full of dirt and oak leaves. Nobody would run to see what the gunshot was about. There would be no calls to 911. No snoops. Just another day on the hunt.
    A real bad day for the chairman of the board.

TWO

    LOOKING AS THOUGH HE’D BEEN DRAGGED through hell by the ankles, a disheveled Del Capslock stumbled out of the men’s room in the basement of City Hall, fumbling with the buttons on the fly of his jeans. Footsteps echoed in the dark hallway behind him, and he turned his head to see Sloan coming through the gloom, a thin smile on his narrow face.
    ‘‘Playing with yourself,’’ Sloan said, his voice echoing in the weekend emptiness. Sloan was neatly but colorlessly dressed in khaki slacks and a tan mountain parka with a zip-in fleece liner. ‘‘I should have expected it; I knew you were a pervert. I just didn’t know you had enough to play with.’’
    ‘‘The old lady bought me these Calvin Kleins,’’ Dell said, hitching up the jeans. ‘‘They got buttons instead of zippers.’’
    ‘‘The theory of buttons is very simple,’’ Sloan began. ‘‘You take the round, flat thing . . .’’
    ‘‘Yeah, fuck you,’’ Del said. ‘‘The thing is, Calvin makes pants for fat guys. These supposedly got a thirtyfour waist. They’re really about thirty-eight. I can’t get them buttoned, and when I do, I can’t keep the fuckin’ things up.’’
    ‘‘Yeah?’’ Sloan wasn’t interested. His eyes drifted down the hall as Del continued to struggle with the buttons. ‘‘Seen Lucas?’’
    ‘‘No.’’ Del got one of the buttons. ‘‘See, the advantage of buttons is, you don’t get your dick caught in a zipper.’’
    ‘‘Okay, if you don’t get it caught in a buttonhole.’’ Del started to laugh, which made it harder to button the pants, and he said, ‘‘Shut up. I only got one more . . . maybe you could give me a hand here.’’
    ‘‘I don’t think so; it’s too nice a day to get busted for aggravated faggotry.’’
    ‘‘You can always tell who your friends are,’’ Del grumbled. ‘‘What’s going on with Lucas?’’ He got the fly buttoned finally and they started