Stolen Prey

truck. They were dressed in overalls, a tall, tough woman and the skinny man; when the man looked at them, and tried to smile, Lucas realized he’d lost all his teeth.
    Lucas recognized them instantly, and said to them, “Yup. You’re them.”
    The woman said, “Who?”
    “The two who took five hundred dollars off me up in St. Paul this spring and broke my wrist,” Lucas said. He held up his ID. “I’m a cop. You’re under arrest.”
    The couple looked at each other for a moment, and the man’s shoulders slumped. The woman had a push broom in her hands and said, “Thank God,” and tossed the broom on a pile of lumpy manure.
    The man said, “Fuck me. What’s gonna happen to my truck?”
    “Probably sold for restitution,” Lucas said. “Okay. You have the right…”
    A FTER THEY read them their rights, Lucas asked Waters, “Why’d you say, ‘Thank God’?”
    “Because I’m still on parole,” she said. “They’ll send me backto Shakopee. That’s the best place I ever been. Warm dorms, nice beds, good food. I’d live there the rest of my life, if I could. I had a job in the cafeteria.”
    Bird said, “Got good medical, too. Maybe I can get my teeth fixed.”
    Lucas looked at them and said, “Well, shit.”
    Flowers started laughing, clapped him on the back and said, “Revenge is sweet, huh?”
    T HE STABLE OWNER wanted the Ford out of his yard, and finally Flowers suggested that they let Bird drive the truck back to the farm, and from there, the sheriff’s deputies would take over. Bird agreed to do it, and Flowers tapped him on the chest and said, “If you go anywhere but the farm, we’ll bust your ass and pile some more time on you. You’re not running anywhere with that truck.”
    Bird said, “Be lucky if we don’t run out of gas.”
    They made it back to the farm, and the two were turned over to sheriff’s deputies. The sheriff came over and said, gleefully, “Boy oh boy, this is the biggest bust since old Marilyn Snow went off the rails and shot up the Hot Spot. I’m smelling like…” He sniffed and asked, “What smells like horse shit?”
    Bird raised a hand.
    T HEY WERE at the farm when Letty called. She was screaming at him: “Dad, Dad, we’ve got a problem, Dad…”
    Lucas listened for one moment and said, “I’m coming, honey, I’m coming, hold on….”
    Lucas left Flowers and the sheriff without a word, sprinting in his ruined shoes across the farm lawn, down the driveway. A moment later the Porsche fishtailed past the driveway and they could hear it accelerate off into the distance, ripping through the gears.
    “That don’t sound good,” said Richie, the sheriff.
    “No. It doesn’t,” Flowers said.

22
    L etty turned the corner and walked down toward the house, when her hot-chick spider-sense kicked up: the feeling that somebody was watching her. She’d mentioned the spider-sense to Lucas one time, and he’d said, “Yep. It’s there. Ask anyone who’s done surveillance.”
    It came, he said, because when people are watching someone, they tend to lock their heads in place; instead of wobbling here and there, making subtle changes each and every second, their head goes still. Even when the watcher points his head in another direction, and watches from the corner of his eye, the head freezes. That’s picked up by the human social sense, which can find even the most subtle of cues.
    People doing surveillance learn not really to watch the target at all, in a specific sense. They look past the target at something else, or at nothing at all … and keep the head moving.
    “When somebody’s watching you from a car, they almost always slow the car down, to keep you in sight for a longer time. Once the target picks up on that, you’re cooked,” Lucas said.
    That’s what she picked up on: the car was moving too slowly, as though keeping her in sight. Could be a couple of guys from school, she thought. A girlfriend had passed along the results of adirty, rotten sexist jock-o poll in which Letty’s ass had ranked among the top five at the school.
    She was insulted to be the subject of something so low. Sort of.
    S O SHE picked up on the car…
    As she turned up the sidewalk, she used her key to go through the front door. Heard Weather in the kitchen and called, “Hi, Mom,” and Weather called back, “Sam’s playing with his Leapster, and he probably needs a diaper change. Could you get him? Could you get him?”
    Letty said, “Sure,” but before