Sudden Prey

knocked her to the floor, as Martin had earlier in the evening. Butters and Martin sat impassively, watching, as she struggled to her hands and knees.
    She could taste blood in her mouth. She looked up at him and thought about getting a gun. She should have killed him the night she found out that he’d murdered the cop. She couldn’t do it then. She could do it now.
    “You gonna shut up?” LaChaise asked.
    “Let me go home, Dick,” she said. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.
    “Fuck that. You’re staying here,” he said.
    But he didn’t mention Elmore again that night.
    ELMORE TOLD STADIC everything he knew, and only lied in a few spots. “Sandy’s not in it at all,” he said. “They showed up, and there wasn’t anything we could do. They got all the guns in the world.”
    “Who are the other guys?” Stadic asked.
    “Martin, who’s like this crazy queer from Michigan who walks around with a bow and arrow, and Ansel Butters. He’s from Tennessee and he comes up and goes hunting with Martin.”
    “Is Butters a fag?” Stadic and Darling sat in wooden chairs, across the kitchen table from each other. The shotgun’s barrel rested on the table, pointing at Darling’s chest. Stadic had closed the outer door, and the house was getting warm again. The kitchen was a pleasant place, with just enough chintz and country pottery to make it homey. Darling had a nice wife, Stadic thought.
    “No, Butters is straight, but he takes a lot of drugs,” Darling said. “Martin, now, everybody says he’s a fag and he’s in love with Dick, but he never does anything homosexual or nothing . . . it’s just a thing.”
    “And that’s all,” Stadic said. “There’s just the four.”
    “Just the three—you can’t count Sandy,” Elmore said. “I’d tell you where they were at, but I don’t know. I mean, I kinda know . . .”
    Darling was holding this one piece back, lying. He was an excellent liar, but Stadic was a professional interrogator. He wasn’t sure that Darling was lying, but he also knew that he had no way to control the man. He couldn’t take him with him, couldn’t hold him. And if Darling got in touch with LaChaise, LaChaise would recognize Stadic’s description. A problem.
    He sat in the kitchen chair with the barrel of the gun pointing at Darling’s chest.
    “Tell me again,” Stadic said. “You get off at Lexington . . .”
    “And it must be about six blocks up the road. North. Then right. Just a little house.”
    “You didn’t see the number or the street name.”
    “Nope. I was just following behind.” He brightened. “But I’ll tell you—my truck is on the street. So is Martin’s. You could look for my truck, it’s got a license plate says, Q-HORSE.”
    Stadic nodded. “So six or seven blocks.”
    “No more than that,” Darling said. “We could find it. I’d go down there with you.”
    Stadic thought for another moment, then shook his head.
    “Nah,” he said.
    “What, then?” Darling asked, his eyebrows going up as if mystified, a stupid smile on his face. Stadic shrugged, and pulled the trigger.
    The 00s in the three-inch Magnum shell blew Elmore Darling completely off his kitchen chair.
     
     
     
    SANDY HUDDLED IN the bedroom, just to be away from them.
    LaChaise went to sleep in his chair, and Martin and Butters sat in the living room, the television turned down, talking quietly about the kills.
    Martin said, “I had my hands on him and when the knife went in, he kind of rose up, and shook. Like when you cut the throat on a deer, they make that last little try to get goin’ . . . you know?”
    “Sure, they push up, try to get their feet under them . . .”
    “Damn good time to get hurt,” Martin said. “There’s one old boy, Rob Harris over to Luce County, got down on a spike buck like that, stuck him in the throat with his knife, and that buck rose up and stuck one of them spikes right in Rob’s eye. Blinded the eye.”
    “What happened to the buck?” Butters asked.
    “Run off. Rob says it must’ve been a brisket hit ’cause there was blood all over hell,” Martin said. “Probably out there to this day . . .”
    “Yeah, well, this Sherrill dude sure ain’t.”
    “Not when I get that close,” Martin said. “When I get that close, the boy’s a goner . . .”
    They both turned and looked at LaChaise, thinking they might have given offense, but LaChaise was unconscious.
    “This Kupicek, she never even twitched,” Butters