Wicked Prey

One guy got the shit scared out of him, he almost ran right into that fuckin’ machine gun, but he made it out.”
    “That’s the guy we’re looking for. I’m not absolutely sure there were three, but I’m almost sure.”
    Larkin said, “There were. The clerk in the hotel says one guy held people in the chapel, as they came in. That was Cohn, I think. One guy drilled boxes and the woman watched the desk. They killed a guy in the hotel. Cold blood. Did it to prove that they’d do it.”
    “Ah, Jesus.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So what’ve we got around this garage?” Lucas asked.
    “We’re sealing it off now, for two blocks in every direction. Skyways, alleys, streets. We’re checking everything that moves, getting ready for a sweep. We can have five hundred cops here in two hours. If we can make him hide, we’ll get him.”
    “If he exists,” Lucas said. “Let’s start with the parking garage. Look under every car, don’t let anybody out. Remember, the guy’s got a machine gun.”
    * * *
    LANE HAD grown up in the countryside, had followed twisted-up creeks for miles down to the river, had navigated mile-long corn-fields with the corn so high that you couldn’t see beyond your hands. He didn’t get turned around easily, and he’d been pretty sure he was right about the exit; and hadn’t been unhappy that Cohn had disagreed. If Cohn ran into the cops . . .
    Lane made it out of the garage, looked around, and dashed up the street, beginning to hope, now, that he might again see his wife and daughters. He spotted the street car, groped and found the emergency key under the bumper, opened the car, threw the jewel bag in, slid into the seat, jabbed the key at the ignition a couple of times before getting it in, and he was rolling.
    He turned at the first block, saw no cops, accelerated, turned again, saw a couple of cops standing on a street corner, cruised by them without looking, turned again, and was now on a major street.
    In fact, he knew exactly where he was. He’d both walked and driven it, when he was scouting the hotel. He peeled off his gloves, let himself relax just a notch. If he went straight, he’d go down in a valley, then up a bridge above some railroad tracks, and if he made a right turn at the end of the bridge . . .
    He wouldn’t hit another streetlight until he got to Chicago.
    That was almost halfway home.

26
    ON SUNDAY, WEATHER SLEPT IN, until 7:30. Lucas usually got up with her, but this day, after the long week, he groaned and sat up, and Weather looked at him and patted him on the head and said, “Go back to sleep. You deserve it.”
    He dropped back on his pillow and was gone. When he finally did get up, a few minutes before nine o’clock, the house was unnaturally silent. He showered and shaved, put on fresh jeans—ironed, he thought, but not dry-cleaned—and wandered out to the kitchen in his stocking feet, carrying his shoes.
    The place was empty, but a note dangled from the middle of the kitchen doorway, on the end of a strip of Scotch tape.
    8:45. Gone to bakery w/ Ellen+Sam. Letty still asleep. Back in hour—W.
    * * *
     
    HE YAWNED, stretched, put a teaspoon of instant coffee in a cup, filled it with water and stuck it in the microwave, got a box of Honey Nut Cheerios from the cupboard and a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, carried it to the breakfast nook and went back to get the coffee when the microwave beeped.
    As he took it out, Letty appeared, clutching her bathrobe, her hair a blond tangle, her eyes still sleepy; she was wearing bunny-rabbit slippers.
    “Got more coffee?”
    “This is instant.”
    “Okay . . .” She shuffled over to the counter and got down a cup, and repeated Lucas’s ritual with the Folgers, complete with the yawn and stretch.
    “Finish that Mockingbird essay?” Lucas asked.
    “Yeah.”
    She carried the coffee over to the table.
    “Is it any good?” he asked.
    “I don’t want to talk about that,” she said. “I need to talk to you about something when Mom isn’t here.”
    Lucas looked at her for a second, then said, “I don’t keep much from your mom.”
    “You might keep this,” she said. “It’s for her own good.”
    “So . . . what?”
    She took a sip of coffee and then said, “I didn’t tell you the truth about the other night, with Juliet.”
    Lucas looked at her over his cup. “So what’s the truth?”
    “I was there—I just got there—when they came out of the house. Randy was yelling at Juliet and