Sudden Prey

the big black pizza guy was there, and a gun pointed at the bridge of Duane’s nose.
    “Don’t even fuckin’ scratch,” Franklin said, in his pleasant voice, which wasn’t very pleasant. “Just sit tight.” He reached across, flipped the shift lever into park, killed the engine, pulled the keys from the ignition and let them fall on the floor. “Just sit.”
    And then there were more guys, all on the passenger side of the car. But Duane, as interested as he was in the muzzle of Franklin’s gun, turned to look at the door of the credit union.
    He’d heard the shot: the sound was muffled, but there wasn’t any doubt.
    “Shit,” said the black man. He said, loudly, “Watch it, watch it, we got a shot.”
    “ GO, ” SCREAMED GEORGIE . She was smiling, like a South American revolutionary poster-girl, her dark hair whipping back, and she covered the inner door while Candy exploded through the outer door onto the stoop and then Georgie was through behind her and the van was right there.
    And the cops.
    They heard the shouting, though Candy never could isolate a word. She was aware of Georgie’s gun coming up behind her and she felt her hand loosen on the bag and the bag falling off to the left, and her own gun coming up. She started squeezing the trigger before the gun was all the way up and she saw the thin slat-faced man, and his nose might have been about the size of a Campbell’s soup-can lid and her pistol came up, came up . . .
     
     
     
    LUCAS HEARD THE shot inside and he went sideways and saw Franklin reflexively crouch. Off to the left, Sherrill was propped over the top of Kupicek’s car, her pistol leveled at the door and Lucas thought, Hope they don’t look out the window . . .
    Then the door flew open and the two LaChaise women were on the stoop and their guns were coming up and he shouted, “No, don’t, no, don’t,” and he heard Del yelling, and Candy LaChaise started firing and he saw Sherrill’s gun bucking in her hand . . .
    CANDY SAW THE man with the yellow teeth and the black hole at the end of his pistol and the woman with the dark hair and maybe—if she had time—she thought, Too late . . .
    She felt the bullets go through, several of them, was aware of the noise, of the flash, of the faces like wanted posters, all straining toward her, but no pain, just a jostling feel, like rays of light pushing through her chest . . . then her vision went, and she felt Georgie falling beside her. She was upside down, her feet on the stoop, her head on the sidewalk, and she waited for the light. The light would come, and behind it . . .
    She was gone.
     
     
     
    LUCAS WAS SHOUTING, “Hold it, hold it,” and five seconds after the two women burst from the credit union, there was no reason to fire his own weapon.
    In the sudden silence, through the stink of the smokeless powder, somebody said, “Jesus H. Christ.”

2
    THE MINNEAPOLIS CITY hall is a rude pile of liverish stone, damp in the summer, cold in the winter, ass-deep in cops, crooks, politicians, bureaucrats, favor-seekers, reporters, TV personalities and outraged taxpayers, none of whom were allowed to smoke inside the building.
    The trail of illegal cigarette smoke followed Rose Marie Roux down the darkened marble halls from the chief’s office to Homicide. The chief was a large woman, getting larger, her face going hound-dog with the pressure of the job and the passing of the years. She stopped outside homicide, took a drag on the cigarette, and blew smoke.
    She could see Davenport inside, standing, hands in his pockets. He was wearing a blue wool suit, a white shirt with a long soft collar and what looked like an Hermès necktie—one of the anal numbers with eight million little horses prancing around. A political appointee, a deputy chief, his sideline software business made him worth, according to the latest rumors, maybe ten million dollars. He was talking to Sloan and Sherrill.
    Sloan was thin, pasty-faced, serious, dressed all in brown and tan—he could lean against a wall and disappear. He could also make friends with anyone: he was the best interrogator on the force. Sloan hadn’t taken his gun out that afternoon and was still on the job.
    Sherrill, on the other hand, had fired all six shots from her revolver. She was still up, floating high on the release from the fear and ecstasy that sometimes came after a gunfight. Roux, in her few years on the street, before law school, had never drawn her pistol. She