Sudden Prey

Anything?”
    “Maybe one,” said Lucas. He was thinking about the laundromat: a place to start.
     
     
     
    SANDY DROVE WHILE Butters leaned against the window on the passenger side. Elmore followed in Sandy’s truck. Elmore hadn’t wanted to go at first, and Butters agreed: Butters wanted Sandy, not her husband.
    “I’m not going,” Sandy had said.
    Butters said, “I ain’t got time to argue, Sandy. You’re going.” There was no doubt that she was going: he didn’t bother to show her a gun, but it was there. Butters had an affable, southern-boy line of bullshit, but beneath it, he was as cold as Martin. When she went to get her coat, Butters went with her.
    “Are you guarding me?” she asked.
    “I’m making sure that you come along,” Butters said. “I know you don’t want to.”
    “You gonna tell me what happened? Who shot him?”
    “No,” Butters said. He’d told them that LaChaise had been shot in a fight. Sandy and Elmore had been feeding the stock, and hadn’t seen any television.
    When it was clear that Sandy was going, Elmore insisted that he go along too. Butters finally agreed, because he didn’t want to waste time arguing: “But you come down in the van—Sandy goes with me,” Butters said. “We’re still gonna need both trucks for a while.”
    They stopped at the old folks’ home, where Sandy still filled in when somebody was sick. A big first-aid kit in the nurse’s office gave up bandages, needles and thread, razor blades and antiseptic. A large illegal bottle of Tylenol-3 was kept stashed in the bottom desk drawer, for the miscellaneous aches and pains of old age, and she emptied it. What else? Surgical scissors, a couple of Bic disposable razors, tape. Saline. There was a stock of sterile saline in the storeroom. She took five liters.
    The nurses each had a personal drawer in a row of filing cabinets. Nobody bothered to lock them, and Sandy dug around in Marie Admont’s drawer and found the bottle of penicillin pills. Marie had gotten them after a crazy old lady had raked her with her fingernails. Marie had only used a few of the pills, and a half-dozen remained in the bottle. Sandy took them.
     
     
     
    THE DRIVE TO St. Paul seemed to last forever, the dark strip through Wisconsin, then the winding road out to the interstate on the Minnesota side. Butters said a half-dozen words during the trip, Sandy four or five. Both were caught in their own thoughts.
    Once in the Cities, Butters guided them down the interstate, then back into the narrow ice-clogged streets of Frogtown. They parked behind Martin’s truck, and got out. Elmore parked behind them, and hurried through the snow, white-faced, and said, “I want to talk to Sandy. One minute. Before we go in there.”
    Butters said, “Get your asses in there, goddamnit.”
    “I’m going to talk to Elmore,” Sandy said, her voice like the ice in the streets. “I’ll get to Dick when I get to him.”
    “Listen . . .”
    “Are you going to shoot me, Ansel? That’d help Dick a lot.”
    Butters backed off, and Sandy took Elmore twenty yards down the street. “What?”
    Elmore was visibly trembling.
    “I been listening to the radio,” he rasped. “They been down here killing cops’ families. That’s all they’re talking about on the radio, every station I could get. They killed two people and there’s a third one might die. Everybody in the goddamned world is looking for them, Sandy.”
    Sandy looked at him, then turned and looked at Butters, who stood silently waiting. “Oh my God,” she said.
    “We got to get out,” Elmore said.
    “Let’s go see Dick,” Sandy said. “I’ll work us out of here. But you’re right. We’ve got to see John.”
    They walked down the driveway together, Butters lingering just out of earshot. Martin waited at the door.
    “Come on in,” he said to Sandy. He looked at Elmore and nodded, and Elmore looked away.
    The house had one couch, a broken-down wreck in the living room. Martin had pulled the cushions off and thrown them on the floor, and LaChaise was lying on them, his head propped up with a pillow. Martin had covered him with a blanket, and LaChaise grinned at Sandy when she came in.
    “How bad?” she asked.
    “Not too bad,” LaChaise said. “It’s more like . . . it’s gotta be cleaned up.”
    “Let me see,” Sandy said. “I need a light.”
    They peeled the blanket off and LaChaise rolled onto his side. The pain had subsided somewhat, and he lifted his