Sudden Prey

the middle of the road. Although the air was clear, the fresh snow flattened everything: he couldn’t see the edge of the road, or where the ditches started. He crawled along, past the big rural mailboxes, hunting for the fire signs in the beam of a six-cell flashlight.
    And he found it, just like the fireman had said he would.
    The Darling house sat back from the road, and showed a sodium vapor yard light at the side of a three-car pole barn. The inverted mushroom shape of a satellite TV antenna sprouted at the side of the pole barn, pointing south. The house was two stories tall, white and neat. A white board fence led off into the dark and snow.
    A fresh set of tire tracks led to the garage: with the snow coming down as it had been, there must have been a recent arrival. Stadic continued a half-mile down Kk to the next driveway, turned around and headed back.
    LaChaise had given him a local phone number in the Cities, and another man had answered when he called. So at least two of them were down there—and after the fight, they were probably all three hanging together.
    He wasn’t sure what he’d find at this place: but if they were friends of LaChaise, they might know where he was . . . and they might know Stadic’s name.
    Just short of the Darlings’ driveway, he turned off his headlights and eased along the road with the parking lights. He turned into the end of the driveway and, keeping his foot off the brake, killed the engine and rolled to a stop.
    He had a shotgun in the back, on the floor. He picked it up, jacked a shell into the chamber, zipped his parka, put on his gloves and cracked the door. He’d forgotten the dome light: it flickered, and he quickly pulled the door shut. Watched. Nothing. He reached up, pushed the dome light switch all the way to the left, and tried the door again. No light. He got out, and headed down the drive, the shotgun in his hand.
    A shaft of light fell on the snow outside the kitchen. Stadic did a quick-peek, one eye, just a half-second, past the edge of a yellowed pull-down shade. A gray-faced man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, with a bare-neck farmer haircut, sat alone at a kitchen table. He was eating macaroni out of a Tupperware bowl, washing it down with a can of beer. He was watching CNN.
    Stadic ducked under the window and, walking light-footed, testing the snow for crunch, continued past the house to a detached garage, and down the side of the garage to a window. He flicked his pocket flash just long enough to see the truck inside. He checked the plates: Q-HORSE2. So they had two vehicles. There were probably no more than two people inside the house, because that was the nominal capacity of the truck. And there was probably only one person inside, the one he could see, because the other truck was gone.
    He stepped back to the house, checked the window again. The man—Elmore Darling?—was still there, eating. Stadic moved to the back door. The door opened onto a small three-season porch. He pulled open the aluminum storm door a half-inch at a time. Tried the inner door: the knob turned under his hand. Nobody locked anything in the country. Assholes. He opened the inner door as carefully as he had the storm door, a half-inch at a time, taking care not to let the shotgun rattle against the door frame.
    Inside, on the porch, he was breathing hard from the tension, his breath curling like smoke in the dimly lit air. He could hear the TV, not the words, but the mutter. The porch smelled of grain and maybe, a bit, of horse shit: not unpleasant. Farm smells. The porch was almost as cold as the outside. He eased the storm door shut.
    The door between the porch and the house had a window, covered with a pink curtain. He peeked, quickly: still eating. He’d have to move before Darling sensed him here, Stadic thought. He took a breath, reached out and tried the doorknob. Stiff.
    All right. He backed away a step, lifted the shotgun to the present-arms position, cocked his leg.
    Took a breath and kicked the doorknob.
    The door flew open, the screws of the lock housing ripping out of the wood on the inside. Darling, a soup-spoon of macaroni halfway to his face, fell out of his chair and onto the linoleum floor, and tried to scramble to his feet.
    Stadic, moving: “Freeze . . . Freeze.” Stadic was on top of Darling, leaning toward him, the barrel of the shotgun following his face. Stadic shouted, “Police,” and “Down on the floor, down on the floor . . .”
    With