Sudden Prey

working nights at the nursing home, days at the ranch. Made the mistake of sleeping with him, the second man she’d slept with.
    Then Elmore had fallen off a stairwell and wrenched his back: the payoff, twenty-two thousand dollars, would buy some stock and a used Ford tractor. And there wasn’t anybody else around. And she was fond of the man.
    Sandy often walked down the drive when life got a little too unhappy, when Elmore got to be too much of a burden. The ranch, she’d thought, was the only thing she wanted in life, and she’d do anything to get it. When she’d gotten it—and when the breeding business actually started to pay off—she found that she needed something else. Somebody else. Even if it was just somebody to talk to as an equal, who’d understand the business, feel the way she did about horses.
    Elmore was an emotional trap she couldn’t find a way out of. There was the man in Montana; he was married now, but she thought about him all the time. With somebody like that . . .
    She brushed the thought away. That’s not who she had.
    She turned, circling, crunching through the snow: prison for life. And she got around to the north, and saw the first slinky unfolding of the northern lights, watched as they pumped up to a shimmering curtain above the everlasting evergreens, and decided that she might have to talk to someone about Dick LaChaise.
    “But not quite yet,” she told Elmore when she was back inside. “Just a couple of more days—we let it ride. Maybe they’ll take off. Anyway, we gotta build a story. Then maybe we talk to old John.”
     
     
     
    ANDY STADIC WENT into the laundromat and sat down. The place smelled of spilt Tide and ERA and dirty wash water, and the hot lint smell of the dryers.
    A woman glanced at him once, and again. He was just sitting there, a well-dressed white man, and had nothing to wash. She started to get nervous. He sat in one of the hard folding chairs and read a two-week-old copy of People. The woman finished folding her dry clothes, packed them in a pink plastic basket, and left. He was alone. He walked over to the door, turned the Open/Closed sign to Closed, and locked the door.
    Stadic watched the windows. A blond-haired hippie strolled by, a kid who might have been the southern boy who’d jumped Daymon Harp. A minute later, a hawk-faced white man walked up to the door, stuck his head inside.
    “You Stadic?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Sit tight.”
    Damn right. He’d told them he wouldn’t go anyplace private. He’d told them Harp would be watching.
    Another minute passed, and then a bearded man came around the corner, Pioneer seed-corn hat pulled low over his eyes. He walked like a farmer, heavy and loose, and had a farmer’s haircut, ears sticking out, red with the cold, and a razor trim on the back of his neck. The farmer took his time getting inside. Stadic recognized the eyes beneath the bill.
    LaChaise.
    “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Stadic said. He wanted to get on top of the guy immediately.
    “Shut up,” LaChaise said. His voice was a tough baritone, and his eyes fixed on Stadic’s.
    “You don’t tell me to shut up.” Stadic was on his feet, squared off.
    LaChaise put his hand in his pocket, and the pocket moved. He had a gun.
    “Go for your gun,” LaChaise said.
    “What?” As soon as he said it, a temporizing word, uncertain, Stadic felt that he’d lost the edge.
    “Gonna give me trouble, go for your gun, give me some real trouble. I already killed one cop, killing you won’t be nothing.”
    “Jesus Christ . . .”
    LaChaise was on top, knew it, and his hand came off the gun. “Where’re the records?”
    “You gotta be nuts, thinking I’d give you those things.”
    “I am nuts,” LaChaise said. His hand was back on the gun. “You should know that. Now, where’re the records?”
    “I want to know what you’re gonna do with them.”
    “We’re gonna scare the shit out of a lot of people,” LaChaise said. “We’re gonna have them jumpin’ through hoops like they was in a Russian circus. Now quit doggin’ me around: either give them to me, or tell me you don’t have them. You don’t have them, I’m gone.”
    When they’d set up the meeting, by phone, LaChaise had said that if he didn’t bring the papers, the next call would be to Internal Affairs.
    Stadic let out a breath, shook his head. “Scare the shit out of them? That’s all?”
    “That’s all,” LaChaise said. He was lying and Stadic