Sudden Prey

Sandy. “Toast.”
    Sandy followed him down the hall and stepped into the kitchen. LaChaise went on, and she glanced back at Martin. He’d picked up his bow, but he was watching the television. Sandy stepped into the kitchen. She hadn’t done this because she suspected that the cops would kill anyone with LaChaise: but now she had no choice. She took the phone off the hook, punched in 911. When it was answered, she said, quietly, “Sandy Darling. They’re here.”
    She put the receiver down beside the phone, leaving the line open, and started banging around in the cupboard, looking for a frying pan. LaChaise came by a minute later, carrying an AR under his arm. He was pushing shells into a magazine as he walked, and he continued by into the living room. “Where’d you put your rifle?” he asked Martin.
    “Aw, shit, it’s probably on the floor in the backseat,” Martin said. “I just threw it . . .”
    He stopped, suddenly, at the sound: breaking glass down the stairs, then pounding feet. “They’re here,” Martin said. He pointed a pistol at the door, and LaChaise ran to the window and looked out. “Nothing on the street.”
    A man screamed through the door: “LaChaise, they know you’re here, they’re coming . . .” The screaming continued for a moment but they couldn’t make it out, and the feet pounded back down the stairs.
    “Aw, shit, aw, shit,” Martin yelled. “Down the back . . .”

25
    STADIC WAS UP, dressed but still groggy—he was a hundred hours behind on his sleep, he thought—and thinking about breakfast cereal when he heard the screaming on the radio.
    He threw on a parka and gloves, grabbed his gun, and ran for his car. He was five minutes from downtown: he made it in four. The parking lot outside the medical center looked like a used car lot, cops coming in from everywhere in their own cars. Light racks lit up the snowstorm.
    He paused, looking at the chaos, then went on by, and took a turn down Eleventh. Yes: Lights shone down from Harp’s apartment. Damnit: He went around the block, got a shotgun out of the trunk and loaded it. If he could flush them, unsuspecting, he could finish it. Dispatch said both men were hurt.
    He decided to wait a few minutes: if they’d been shot, maybe the woman would be going out for medical supplies. He could take her at the door, and then go right on in. Otherwise, the place was a fort.
     
     
     
    A DOCTOR CAME down the hall to the phones and said, “Are you Davenport?”
    “Yeah.” Lucas was on the phone with Roux. He said, “Hang on,” and looked at the doctor.
    “We got a picture, you might want to look at it.”
     
     
     
    “OKAY. ” OUT THE window, he could see the media vehicles piling up down the street. Cameramen orbited the building, their lights like little suns illuminating the night. “Gotta go, they got an X-ray on Del,” he said to Roux.
    “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said.
    Lucas followed the doctor back into the emergency room, where two other doctors were looking at an X-ray clipped to a lighted glass. Lucas could see the outline of the Formica where it pierced Del’s face.
    “He got lucky,” the doctor said, tapping the film. “It just penetrated into the base of the tongue. Didn’t quite make it through: we were afraid that it had penetrated the pal . . . the roof of the mouth, but it didn’t. It’s just sort of jammed in there. We’ll get it cleaned out.”
    “No damage?”
    “He’s gonna hurt like hell, but in a couple weeks, he’ll be fine. He’s gonna need a plastic guy on his neck, though. The thing looks nasty.”
    “How about his wife?”
    Cheryl had ripped some IV tubes loose when she’d crawled across to her husband, and had been bleeding. “That’s nothing,” the doctor said. “She’s fine.”
    “God bless,” Lucas said. “And Franklin?”
    “He’s okay.”
     
     
     
    TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER the firefight, Lucas was talking to a patrol captain, trying to figure out why they hadn’t found the car: “Christ, they were no more than thirty seconds ahead of you guys.”
    The captain was getting a little hot: “Look, a fuckin’ mouse couldn’t have gotten out of here on its hands and knees. We’re looking at every car parked in the loop, they must be in a parking garage, somewhere. We’ll get them . . .”
    Lucas was staring over his shoulder, his eyes defocused. He said, “Stay put,” and put his handset to his mouth and said, “I need a run on