Sudden Prey

didn’t like guns.
    Roux watched the three of them, Lucas Davenport and his pals. Shook her head: maybe things were getting out of control. She dropped the cigarette on the floor, stepped on it and pushed through the door.
    The three turned to look at her, and she looked at Lucas and tipped her head toward the hall. Lucas followed her back through the door, and shut the door against the inquiring ears of Sloan and Sherrill.
    “The request for a uniform stop—when did you think of that?” Roux asked. Her words ricocheted down the marble halls, but there was nobody else to hear them.
    Lucas leaned against the cool marble wall. He smiled quickly, the smile here and then gone. The smile made him look hard, even too hard: mean. He’d been working out, Roux thought. He went at it hard, from time to time, and when he’d really stripped himself down, he looked like a piece of belt leather. She could see the shape of his skull under his forehead skin.
    “It seemed like a no-lose proposition,” he said, his voice pitched low. They both knew what they were talking about.
    She nodded. “Well, it worked. We released the voice tape from Dispatch and it’s taking the heat off. You’re gonna hear some firing-squad stuff from the Star Tribune , the editorial page. Questions about why they ever got inside—why you waited that long to move. But I don’t think . . . no real trouble.”
    “If we’d just taken them, it would have come to a couple of witnesses with bad records,” Lucas said. “They’d be back on the street right now.”
    “I know, but the way it looks . . .” She sighed. “If the LaChaises hadn’t shot this guy Farris, there’d be a lot more trouble.”
    “Big break for us, Farris was,” Lucas said, flashing his grim smile again.
    “I didn’t mean it that way,” Roux said, and she looked away. “Anyway, Farris is gonna make it.”
    “Yeah, a little synthetic cheekbone, splice up his jaw, give him a bunch of new teeth, graft on a piece of ear . . .”
    “I’m trying to cover you,” Roux said sharply.
    “Sounds like you’re giving us shit,” Lucas snapped back. “The Rice Lake bank people looked at the movies from the credit union security cameras. There’s no doubt—it was the LaChaises that did it over there. They looked the same with the panty hose, said the same things, acted the same way. And it was Candy LaChaise who killed the teller. We’re waiting to hear back from Ladysmith and Cloquet, but it’ll be the same.”
    Roux shook her head and said, “You picked a hard way to do it, though: a hard way to settle it.”
    “They came out, they opened up, we were all right there,” Lucas said. “They fired first. That’s not cop bullshit.”
    “I’m not criticizing,” Roux said. “I’m just saying the papers are asking questions.”
    “Maybe you oughta tell the papers to go fuck themselves,” Lucas said. The chief was a politician who had at one time thought she might be headed for the Senate. “That’d be a good political move right now, the way things are.”
    Roux took an old-fashioned silver cigarette case out of her pocket, popped it open. “I’m not talking politics here, Lucas. I’m a little worried about what happened.” She fumbled a cigarette out of the case, snapped the case shut. “There’s a feel of . . . setup. Of taking the law in our own hands. We’re okay, because Farris was shot and you made that call for a stop. But there were six or seven holes in Candy LaChaise. It’s not like you weren’t ready to do it.”
    “We were ready,” Lucas agreed.
    “. . . So there could be another stink when the medical examiner’s report comes out.”
    “Tell them to take their time writing the report,” Lucas said. “You know the way things are: In a week or so, nobody’ll care. And we’re still a couple of months from the midwinter sweeps.”
    “Yeah, yeah. And the ME’s cooperating. Still.”
    “The LaChaises started it,” Lucas persisted. “And they were sport killers. Candy LaChaise shot people to see them die. Fuck ’em.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Roux said. She waved at him and started back toward the chief’s office, shoulders slumped. “Send everybody home. We’ll get the shooting board going tomorrow.”
    “You really pissed?” Lucas called after her.
    “No. I’m just sorta . . . depressed. There’ve been too many bodies this year,” she said. She stopped, flicked a lighter, touched off the fresh cigarette. The tip glowed like a