Sudden Prey

The salesman had sounded uncertain, since he hadn’t talked to anyone about the Firebird.
    “Yeah, that’s the one. You still got it?”
    “Still looking for an owner,” the salesman had said. “There’s a guy coming around tonight, but nobody’s signed anything yet.”
    Martin had grinned at the car-sales bullshit. “I’ll come by in an hour or so.”
    “I’ll be looking for you,” the salesman had promised.
    Martin carried a Marine Corps combat knife with a five-inch serrated blade. He’d bought it as a Christmas gift for himself, through a U.S. Cavalry catalog, and carried it in a sheath, on his belt. The knife was the only gift he’d gotten in the past few years, except that LaChaise had given him a bottle of Jim Beam the year before he went to prison.
    Martin was thinking about the Jim Beam when he got to the Buick store. He parked across the street: he could see light from the windows, but the snow had continued to thicken, and the people on the other side of the glass were no more than occasional shadows.
    He had ten minutes. He closed his eyes, settled in and thought about the other men he’d killed. Martin didn’t worry about killing: he simply did it. When he was a kid, there was always something around the farm to be killed. Chickens, hogs, usually a heifer in the fall. And there was the hunting: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, doves, grouse, deer, bear.
    By the time he killed his first man, he didn’t much think about it. The man, Harold Carter, was owed money by LaChaise, that LaChaise had borrowed to set up his motorcycle parts store. Carter was talking about going to court. LaChaise wanted him to go away.
    Martin killed Carter with a knife on the back steps of his own home, carried the body out to his truck and buried the man in the woods. Nothing to it; certainly not as hard as taking down a pig. A pig always knew what was coming, and fought it. Went squealing and twisting. Carter simply dropped.
    His second killing had been no more trouble than the first. His third, if he did it right, should be the easiest yet, because he wouldn’t have to deal with the body. Martin closed his eyes; if he were the type to sleep, he might have.
     
     
     
    LACHAISE, DRIVING ELMORE’S truck, dropped Butters at the Rosedale Mall. Butters carried both pistols, the short .380 in his left jacket pocket, and the nine-millimeter, with the silencer already attached, in a Velcroed flap under his arm.
    He cruised past TV Toys. A tall woman talked to a lone customer, and a thin balding man in a white shirt stood behind the counter. Butters stepped to a phone kiosk, found the paper in his pocket, and dialed the number of the store. He watched as the man in the white shirt picked up the phone.
    “TV Toys, this is Walt.”
    “Yes, is Elaine there?”
    “Just a moment.”
    The man in the white shirt called over to the tall woman, who smiled and said something to her customer and started toward the counter. Butters hung up and glanced at his watch.
    Five-twenty. LaChaise should be getting to Capslock’s place.
     
     
     
    CAPSLOCK’S WIFE WAS a nurse at Ramsey General Hospital, according to her insurance file. She finished her shift at three o’clock.
    LaChaise stopped at a Tom Thumb store, bent his head against the storm, punched in her phone number—the insurance forms had everything: address, employer, home and office phones—and waited for an answer.
    Like Butters, LaChaise carried two pistols with him, but revolvers rather than automatics. He didn’t care about the noise he made, so he didn’t have to worry about a silencer; and he liked the simplicity of a revolver. No safeties or feed problems to think about, no cocking anything, just point and shoot.
    Cheryl Capslock answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
    “Uh, Mrs. Capslock?” LaChaise tried to pitch his voice up, to sound boyish, cheerful. “Is Del in?”
    “Not yet. Who is this?”
    “Terry—I’m at the Amoco station on Snelling. Del wanted, uh, he wanted to talk to me and left a number. Could you tell him I’m around?”
    “Okay, your name is Terry?”
    “Yeah, T-E-R-R-Y, he’s got the number.”
    “I’ll tell him,” Cheryl Capslock said.
     
     
     
    MARTIN WALKED ACROSS the street to the car lot. The Firebird was in a display stand, forty feet from the main side window on the dealership. He walked once around the car, then again, then bent to look in the side window.
    As he rounded the car the second time, he saw a