Sudden Prey

forklift and a tool bench. The Coke box was just inside the door, an old-fashioned red top-opening cooler, with a dozen Coke Classic cans and a couple of white Diet Coke cans bathed in five inches of icy water.
    “Get one of them Diets,” Sand said, looking down into the water. He was watching his weight. LaChaise dipped into the cooler and got a regular Coke and a Diet, and when he turned back to the escort, Crazy Ansel Butters had stepped quietly out from behind the pile of awnings. He had a .22 pistol and he put it against Sand’s head and said, “Don’t fuckin’ move.”
    Sand froze, then looked at LaChaise and said, “Don’t hurt me, Dick.”
    “Gimme the keys,” LaChaise said.
    “You’re making a mistake,” Sand said. His eyes were rolling, and LaChaise thought he might faint.
    “Give him the keys or you’ll be making a mistake,” Butters said. Butters had a voice like a bastard file skittering down a copper pipe.
    Sand fumbled the keys out of his pocket and LaChaise stuck his hands out. When the cuffs came off, he rubbed his wrists, took the keys from Sand and opened the leg irons. “That deputy still out by his car?” he asked Butters.
    “He was when I come in,” Butters said. He slipped a Bulldog .44 out of his coat pocket and handed it to LaChaise. “Here’s your ’dog.”
    “Thanks.” LaChaise took the gun and stuck it in his belt. “What’re you driving?”
    “Bill’s truck. Around the side.”
    “Did Mama see you?”
    “Shit no. Nobody seen me.”
    LaChaise stepped close to the escort, and turned him a bit, and said, “All right, Wayne, I’m gonna cuff your hands. Now you keep your mouth shut, ’cause if you start hollering before we get out of here, we’ll have to come back and do something.”
    “I won’t say a thing,” Sand said, trembling.
    “You scared?” LaChaise asked.
    “Yeah, I am.”
    “That’s good; keep you from doing anything foolish,” LaChaise said. He snapped the cuffs over Sand’s hands, then said, “Lay down.”
    Sand got down awkwardly, and Butters stepped up behind him and threw a half-dozen turns of packaging tape around his ankles. When he was finished, LaChaise took the roll of tape, knelt with one knee in the middle of Sand’s back, and took three more turns around his mouth. When he was finished, LaChaise looked up at Butters and said, “Borrow me your knife.”
    Sand squirmed under LaChaise’s knee as Butters passed a black lock-back knife to LaChaise.
    LaChaise grabbed a handful of Sand’s hair and pried his head back and said, “Shoulda bought me them Big Macs.”
    He bounced Sand’s head off the concrete floor once, twice, then said, “You asshole.” He pulled his head straight back, leaned to the side so he could see Sand’s bulging eyes. “You know how they cut a pig’s throat?”
    “We gotta move along,” Butters said. “We can’t fuck around.” Sand began thrashing and squealing through the tape.
    LaChaise let him go for a minute, enjoying himself, then he cut Sand’s throat from one ear to the other. As the purple blood poured out on the concrete, Sand thrashed, and LaChaise rode him with the knee. The thrashing stopped and Sand’s one visible eye began to go opaque.
    “Gotta go,” Butters said.
    “Fuckhead,” LaChaise said. He dropped Sand’s head, wiped the blade on the back of Sand’s coat, folded the knife as he stood up and handed it to Butters.
    “Gonna be hell cleaning up the mess,” Butters said, looking down at the body. “I hate to get blood on concrete.”
    “We’ll send them some Lysol,” LaChaise said. “Let’s roll.”
    “Lysol don’t work,” Butters said, as they headed for the doors. “Nothing works. You always got the stain, and it stinks.”
     
     
     
    THEY WENT OUT the service drive on the back of the funeral home, Butters with his thin peckerwood face and long sandy hair sitting in the driver’s seat, while LaChaise sat on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
    When they turned onto the street, LaChaise unfolded a bit and looked over the backseat, through the cab window, through the topper, and out the topper’s rear window, down toward the funeral home. The deputy’s car was still sitting in the street, unmoving. Nobody knew yet, but they probably didn’t have more than a couple of minutes.
    “Are we going up to the trailer?” LaChaise asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “You been there?”
    “Yeah. There’s electricity for heat and the pump, and a shitter out back.