Sudden Prey

couch with his wife. Palin was sputtering, angry, then dumbfounded.
    “Nothing here,” Franklin said. “Can I split?”
    “Yeah, take off,” Lucas said. “You coming back to the office?”
    “Soon as I get the stuff to my old lady,” Franklin said. He nodded at Palin. “Arne,” he said, and he was gone.
    “What the hell?” Palin asked Lucas. “What the hell?”
    “Last night you called in a routine make on a Wisconsin pickup that belonged to an Elmore and Sandy Darling. Why’d you do that?”
    Palin’s wife looked at him, and Palin’s mouth opened and shut, and then he turned his head, thought for a moment, then looked up at Lucas and said, “I never did that.”
    “We got you on tape, Arne.”
    “I never,” Palin protested.
    “Elmore Darling was shot to death last night and Sandy Darling is running, maybe, with LaChaise and these other nuts. We know you ran their tags . . .”
    “You wanna fuckin’ listen to me?” Palin screamed. He started to stand up but Lucas held a hand out toward his chest. He sat down again and shouted, “I didn’t run no Wisconsin plates, and you ain’t got it on tape because I never did it.”
    Sloan said, his soft act, “Arne, you might want to get a lawyer . . .”
    “I don’t need no fuckin’ lawyer,” Palin shouted, bouncing on the couch. “Bring the fuckin’ tapes in here. Bring the fuckin’ tapes in here.”
    Lucas looked at him for a long beat, then at his wife, who was weeping. “All right,” he said. “Why don’t you get your coat on? Let’s go downtown and listen to the tapes, and see if we can figure out what’s going on.”
    “I want to come, too,” Palin’s wife said.
    Lucas nodded. “Sure, that’d be fine.” He’d been about to tell her to get her coat, as well. He didn’t want anyone left behind, if they were talking to LaChaise.
     
     
     
    STADIC LOOKED AT the body of Sell-More. Sell-More’s head was bent against the curb, twisted hard to the right, and his legs had apparently been crushed by the car that hit him. There was no visible blood.
    “Shit,” he said to Harrin, the homicide cop. “I just talked to him, a few hours ago. Davenport’s gonna freak out. This is LaChaise’s work. Wonder what the hell’s going on.”
    Lucas took the call from Stadic on the way back to the office: Sell-More? Why in the hell would somebody hit Sell-More? Because he was asking questions?
     
     
     
    FRANKLIN LIVED IN North Minneapolis, in a single-story rambler in a neighborhood of mixed housing styles and ages. Across the street, a brick four-square looked across at him, while to his left, a white clapboard split-level crowded his driveway. Franklin drove slowly down toward his house, tired, feeling the day. There was a little drifting snow around, from the squalls that had come through during the night.
    Maybe he ought to get the snowblower out and blast his driveway clean, before it got too deep, or run over too much by the paper delivery guy. He had an insulated jumpsuit in the front closet, along with some pacs; he could clean it out in ten minutes. But had he gassed up the snowblower?
     
     
     
    LA CHAISE AND MARTIN had cruised Franklin’s house, then the side streets.
    “If there’s anybody around, they sure gotta be inside,” Martin said. “Can’t see shit out here.”
    “I been thinking about it,” LaChaise said. “No point in both of us taking him on. So, you drop me up the block, where I can walk back. Then you find a place to park—you see that streetlight?”
    LaChaise pointed at a streetlight on the corner two houses up from Franklin’s.
    “Yeah?”
    “You park where you can see the light. If you can see it, then you can see his car lights when he shows up. As soon as you see him turn in, you come on down. I’ll take him as soon as he gets out of his car.”
    “What if he goes in the garage, stays in the car, drops the door without getting out?”
    “Then I’ll go right up next to his car window and fill him up from there,” LaChaise said. “That might even be easier.”
    “Wish we had a goddamn AR,” Martin said again.
    “The ’dog’ll do, and the forty-five.”
    “You’ll freeze out there . . .”
    “Not that cold,” LaChaise said. “We’ll wait for an hour. I can stand an hour.”
     
     
     
    THEY’D BEEN WAITING twenty minutes when Franklin showed, Martin a block and a half down the street, LaChaise ditched behind a fir tree across the street from the mouth of Franklin’s