Sudden Prey

only two stations on the radio, but they’re both country.”
    “That’s fine,” LaChaise said, looking around. Then he came back to Butters, his deep black eye fixing the other man like a bug: “Ansel, you ain’t owed me for years, if you ever did. But I gotta know something for sure.”
    Butters glanced at him, then looked out the window over the sink: “Yeah?”
    “Are you up for this?”
    Ansel glanced at him again, and away: it was hard to get Crazy Ansel Butters to look directly at you, under any conditions. “Oh yeah. I’m very tired. You know what I mean? I’m very tired.”
    “You can’t do nothin’ crazy,” LaChaise said.
    “I won’t, ’til the time comes. But I am getting close to my dying day.”
    The words came out with a formal stillness.
    “Well, that’s probably bullshit, Ansel,” LaChaise said, but he said it gravely, without insult intended or taken.
    Butters said, “I come off the interstate, down home, up an exit ramp at night, with pole lights overhead. And I seen an owl’s shadow going up the ramp ahead of me—wings all spread, six or eight feet across, the shadow was. I could see every feather. Tell me that ain’t a sign.”
    “Maybe it’s a sign, but I got a mission here,” LaChaise said. “We all got a mission now.”
    “That’s true,” Butters said, nodding. “And I won’t fuck you up.”
    “That’s what I needed to know,” LaChaise said.

4
    A CLERK NAMED Anna Marie knocked on Lucas’s office door, stuck her head inside, struggled for a moment with her bubble gum and said, “Chief Lester said to tell you, you know Dick LaChaise?”
    “Dick?”
    She paused for a quick snap of her gum: “Dick, who was married to that one woman who got shot, and was brother to the other one? Last week?”
    Lucas had one hand over the phone mouthpiece and said, “Yeah?”
    “Well, he escaped in Wisconsin and killed a guy. A prison guard. Chief Lester said you should come down to Homicide.”
    “I’ll be down in two minutes,” Lucas said.
    A HEAVYSET PATROL cop, with a gray crew cut, was walking down the hall when Lucas came out of the office. He took Lucas’s elbow and said, “Guy comes home from work and he finds his girlfriend with her bags packed, waiting in the doorway.”
    “Yeah?” The cop was famous for his rotten jokes.
    “The guy’s amazed. He says, ‘What’s going on? What happened?’ ‘I’m leaving you,’ says the girlfriend. ‘What’d I do? Everything was okay this morning,’ says the guy. ‘Well,’ says the girlfriend, ‘I heard you were a pedophile.’ And the guy looks at his girlfriend and says, ‘Pedophile? Say, that’s an awwwwfully big word for a ten-year-old . . . ’ ”
    “Get away from me, Hampsted,” Lucas said, pushing him off; but he was laughing despite himself.
    “Yeah, you’ll be tellin’ all your friends . . .”
     
     
     
    LESTER WAS TALKING to the homicide lieutenant, turned when Lucas came in, dropped his feet off the lieutenant’s desk and said, “Dick LaChaise cut the throat of a prison guard during the funeral of Candace and Georgia LaChaise, and vanished. About an hour ago.”
    “Vanished?” Lucas said.
    “That’s what the Dunn County sheriff said: vanished.”
    “How’d he cut the guy’s throat? Was there a fight?”
    “I don’t know the details,” Lester said. “There’s a cluster-fuck going on at the funeral home. It’s over in Colfax, ten, fifteen miles off I-94 between Eau Claire and Menomonie. Probably an hour and a half drive.”
    “Hour, in a Porsche,” the lieutenant said lazily.
    “I think you ought to send one of your group over there,” Lester said.
    “Hell, I’ll go,” Lucas said. “I’m sitting on my ass anyway. Do we have any paper on LaChaise?”
    “Anderson’s getting it now,” Lester said. “Anyway, the sheriff over there says LaChaise might be heading this way. LaChaise’s mama says he’s gonna get back at us for Candace and Georgia. ‘Eye for an eye,’ she says.”
    Lucas looked at the lieutenant. “Can I take Sloan?”
    “Sure. If you can find him.”
    Lucas picked up a half-pound of paper from Anderson, the department’s computer jock, beeped Sloan, and when he called back, explained about LaChaise.
    “You want to go?” Lucas asked.
    “Let me get a parka. I’ll meet you at your house.”
     
     
     
    LUCAS DIDN’T DRIVE the Porsche much during the winter, but the day, though bitterly cold and sullenly gray, showed no sign of snow. The highway