Stolen Prey

After they read them their rights, Lucas asked Waters, “Why’d you say, ‘Thank God’?”

“Because I’m still on parole,” she said. “They’ll send me back to Shakopee. That’s the best place I ever been. Warm dorms, nice beds, good food. I’d live there the rest of my life, if I could. I had a job in the cafeteria.”

Bird said, “Got good medical, too. Maybe I can get my teeth fixed.”

Lucas looked at them and said, “Well, shit.”

Flowers started laughing, clapped him on the back and said, “Revenge is sweet, huh?”

The stable owner wanted the Ford out of his yard, and finally Flowers suggested that they let Bird drive the truck back to the farm, and from there, the sheriff’s deputies would take over. Bird agreed to do it, and Flowers tapped him on the chest and said, “If you go anywhere but the farm, we’ll bust your ass and pile some more time on you. You’re not running anywhere with that truck.”

Bird said, “Be lucky if we don’t run out of gas.”

They made it back to the farm, and the two were turned over to sheriff’s deputies. The sheriff came over and said, gleefully, “Boy oh boy, this is the biggest bust since old Marilyn Snow went off the rails and shot up the Hot Spot. I’m smelling like…” He sniffed and asked, “What smells like horse shit?”

Bird raised a hand.

They were at the farm when Letty called. She was screaming at him: “Dad, Dad, we’ve got a problem, Dad…”

Lucas listened for one moment and said, “I’m coming, honey, I’m coming, hold on….”

Lucas left Flowers and the sheriff without a word, sprinting in his ruined shoes across the farm lawn, down the driveway. A moment later the Porsche fishtailed past the driveway and they could hear it accelerate off into the distance, ripping through the gears.

“That don’t sound good,” said Richie, the sheriff.

“No. It doesn’t,” Flowers said.

22

Letty turned the corner and walked down toward the house, when her hot-chick spider-sense kicked up: the feeling that somebody was watching her. She’d mentioned the spider-sense to Lucas one time, and he’d said, “Yep. It’s there. Ask anyone who’s done surveillance.”

It came, he said, because when people are watching someone, they tend to lock their heads in place; instead of wobbling here and there, making subtle changes each and every second, their head goes still. Even when the watcher points his head in another direction, and watches from the corner of his eye, the head freezes. That’s picked up by the human social sense, which can find even the most subtle of cues.

People doing surveillance learn not really to watch the target at all, in a specific sense. They look past the target at something else, or at nothing at all … and keep the head moving.

“When somebody’s watching you from a car, they almost always slow the car down, to keep you in sight for a longer time. Once the target picks up on that, you’re cooked,” Lucas said.

That’s what she picked up on: the car was moving too slowly, as though keeping her in sight. Could be a couple of guys from school, she thought. A girlfriend had passed along the results of a dirty, rotten sexist jock-o poll in which Letty’s ass had ranked among the top five at the school.

She was insulted to be the subject of something so low. Sort of.

So she picked up on the car…

As she turned up the sidewalk, she used her key to go through the front door. Heard Weather in the kitchen and called, “Hi, Mom,” and Weather called back, “Sam’s playing with his Leapster, and he probably needs a diaper change. Could you get him? Could you get him?”

Letty said, “Sure,” but before she did that, she stopped and peeked through the palm-sized door window.

The car was in the driveway, and Martinez and a short Mexican man were getting out. Letty recognized them instantly: she’d been working at Channel Three, and Martinez’s picture was everywhere. Martinez had a gun in her hand, and the short man was carrying what might have been a log. They were coming, she thought, for Dad, but they wouldn’t leave anybody alive.

Letty turned to the kitchen and screamed, “Mom: run upstairs. The Mexicans are here and they’ve got guns. Mom, run upstairs!”

Weather, sounding confused, called, “What?”

Letty screamed, “Run! Run! Get up in the apartment, block the door, block the door, the Mexicans, the Mexicans…”

And she turned and ran up the stairs to the second floor, screaming, “Run, run….”

Martinez had cracked at five o’clock, or thereabouts, an hour after a call with the Big Voice.

The Big Voice didn’t believe her. “We have seen this video. They say you have the gold, Ana.”

“I have no gold.”

“So they are lying on TV, these police.”

“Yes, they are lying. It’s this Davenport, he’s the one. He does this to split us apart.”

The Big Voice sighed and said, “I understand. So, tonight, if you will run to Des Moines, we will have a van for you, and a driver. He can hide you in the van, and you will be back tomorrow night.”

To Martinez, it had been quite clear. They were fifty-fifty on whether she was telling the truth. In her shoes, they would have taken the gold. They understood that Davenport might be lying, but then again, he might not be. Once the Criminales had their hands on her, they would get the truth.

Martinez might not survive the process, but then, she just wasn’t that important at the moment. Whatever importance she had once had, had diminished when Rivera went down, and wouldn’t come back until she knew her new assignment with the Federales. If she was shuffled off to a clerical job, the LCN would no longer be interested. If she was attached to another inspector, or even a higher rank, then she might be important again.

But for now…

And if the Federales got her, they would get their own truth, and that would not help the Criminales either: she had far too much personal information on them.

The fact of the matter was, Martinez realized as she took a turn around the living-room carpet, she might now be considered a liability to the LCN. They would kill her, perhaps with a twinge of regret, but not too much. Any American police agency would drop her in jail, forever; and the Federales…

She shuddered when she thought what the Federales might do.

She went round and round with it, grew angrier and angrier.

No way out. There was no way out.

At five o’clock, she cracked, and growled at Tres: “Get your gun.”

Tres had been watching the television: “?Que?”

“We go to kill this cop,” she said. “This cop who lies about us, who has done this.”

Tres made a moue, then said, “Okay.” He was going to die anyway, pretty soon. The saints had told him so, and one day was as good as the next.

As they came up to Davenport’s house, she saw his Lexus truck in the driveway and said, “He’s there.”

“We will do it?”

“We will do it right now.”

The door was a stout one, a cop’s door, but gave way before the battering ram, a four-by-four that Tres scavenged from a parking lot.