Sudden Prey

opened the gun safes so the weapons could be inventoried, and they’d found fifty handguns, two dozen rifles and as many shotguns. Del was playing with a derringer, snapping it at a wall target, and Lucas was looking at the butt of the Model 70, when a plainclothes cop came halfway down the stairs and said, “We’re sending Winter downtown. You got anything else you want to ask him?”
    “Naw. I kind of think he’s telling the truth,” Lucas said.
    “So do I, but he should have called us,” the cop said. He grinned and said, “Now he claims he tried to call out, but his phone was screwed up and he was afraid to go out. Says he didn’t know the phone was off the hook down here, just that it didn’t work.”
    “Not bad, if he sticks to it,” Lucas said.
    The cop said, “We got guys walking the neighborhood, checking about the car.” Winter had said LaChaise, Martin and Darling were in a big brown car, but he didn’t notice what kind because he wasn’t thinking about it. Maybe a Lincoln or a Buick. The cop went on, “The media are swarming in.”
    “Jesus, that was quick,” Del said.
    “They’re monitoring everything . . .”
    “Can’t let them know that there was a tip,” Lucas said.
    “LaChaise’ll know where it came from and he’ll kill the woman.”
    “What’ll I tell them? They’ll want to know.”
    Lucas scratched his head, formulating the lie: “Tell them that Winter called us. Tell them that we used an entry team because we were concerned it might be some kind of ambush, and Winter was known to be a gun dealer with heavy weapons . . . Get that word out quick, so we don’t get anybody speculating about tips . . . I’ll get my chief to back us up, and we’ll talk to Winter’s lawyer about keeping Winter’s mouth shut.”
    “All right.” The cop nodded, and hurried back up the stairs.
    Lucas turned to Del and said, “Look at this.”
    Del came over and Lucas knelt by the gun safe and said, “See the dust?”
    There was a faint patina of dust on the floor of the middle safe, where Winter said he’d kept the stolen guns.
    Del nodded. “Yeah?”
    “Three guns were taken out of here. See? You can just barely see the outlines . . .” Lucas traced the dust outlines in the air, his finger a half-inch above them.
    “Yeah?”
    “Watch this . . .” He put the Model 70 in a rack-slot on the opposite end of the gun safe, and wiggled it in place. When he picked it up, he’d left in the dust an almost imperceptible outline of the gun butt.
    “Doesn’t look the same,” Del said. “Too fat.”
    “But he said a Model 70 and this is a Model 70.” He turned to the Minnetonka cop doing the inventory. “Give me one of those ARs, would you?”
    The cop handed him an AR, a legal, unmodified rifle, and Lucas printed the butt in the dust next to the Model 70 imprint. The two prints were distinctly different—but the AR’s print matched the dust shadows of the three stolen guns.
    “They took the ARs out of here,” Del said.
    “And they’re modified,” Lucas said. “That’s why he laid that rap on us about Martin modifying guns. He wanted us to know that they’re running around with machine guns, but he didn’t want to say they came from him.”
    “I’m getting pretty fuckin’ tired of this machine gun shit,” Del said.
    “Let’s get a photographer down here and see if we can get some shots of this,” Lucas said, tapping the edge of the safe. “I don’t know if we can get Winter or not. He’s a smart guy. But maybe we can fuck with him a little.”
    “Why’d they come out for more guns? They’ve got guns.”
    “Because of Franklin,” Lucas said. “If they’d shot Franklin with an AR, it would’ve gone through that vest like it was cheese.” He took a slow turn around the basement, looking up at the ceiling: the ceiling was neat, just the way the rest of the basement was. Lucas’s basement joists were full of cobwebs, which he had every intention of leaving alone.
    “Say they took three ARs off Winter. And he says they took three vests. I’d say they’re gonna make a suicide run.”
    “On what? The hotel?”
    “Maybe,” Lucas said, but then shook his head. “I really think it’s gonna come somewhere else. They gotta figure that none of us are hanging around home, not after Franklin. They can’t get at the hotel, we’ve made that pretty clear.”
    “They’re gonna hit the hospital,” Del said, suddenly white-faced. “They’re going back in