That was Thursday. He went to the games group that night, and played. Elle asked him about the shotgun. It was gone, he said. He hadn’t felt its touch since the shootout. He felt fine, he said, but he thought he might be lying.
Everything should have been fine, but it didn’t feel quite right. He felt as though he were in the last hours of a prolonged journey on speed, in the mental territory where everything has more contrast than it does in real life, where buildings overhang in a threatening way, where cars move too fast, where people talk too loud, where sideways looks in bars can mean trouble. That lasted through the weekend, and began to fade early in the next week.
A little more than three weeks after the shootout, on a Saturday afternoon, Lucas sat in an easy chair and watched an Iowa-Notre Dame football game. Notre Dame was losing and no amount of prayer would help. It was a relief when the phone rang. He picked it up and heard the hiss of the long-distance satellite relay.
“Lucas?” Lily, her voice soft and husky.
“Lily? Where are you?”
“I’m at home. I’m looking out the window.”
“What? Out the window?” He flashed on the first time he’d seen her in the hallway at the police station: her dark eyes, her hair slightly askew, strands of it falling across her graceful neck . . . .
“David and the boys are down in the street, loading the van. They’re leaving for Fort Lauderdale, on a father-son big-game fishing trip. First time for the boys . . .”
“Lily . . .”
“Lucas, Jesus, I’m starting to cry . . . .”
“Lily . . .”
“They’ll be gone for a week, Lucas—my husband and the boys,” she groaned. “Ah, fuck, Davenport, this is so fuckin’ miserable . . . .”
“What? What?”
“Can you come to New York?” Her voice had gone rough, sensual, dark. “Can you come in tomorrow?”
In the End . . .
Leo climbed the dark side of Bear Butte, through the loose rubble, through the fine black sand, slipping at times, using his hands, moving steadily toward the peak.
The night still gripped the world when he reached the top. He eased himself down on a convenient hump, took the blanket-roll off his shoulders and wrapped the rough army wool around himself.
To the south, he could see the lights of Sturgis and I-90, and beyond that, the Stygian darkness of the Black Hills. In every other direction, the only break in the night came from yard lights on the scattered ranches.
The sunrise was spectacular when it came.
In the west, the stars were as bright and as profuse as ever; in the east, there was a growing pale light at the knife-edged horizon. Suddenly, with the unexpectedness of a shooting star, there was a flame at the horizon, a flowing golden presence as the world turned into the sun.
The sunlight touched the top of the butte long before it flooded the flatlands, so from the top he could watch the dawn racing toward him, rippling over the empty countryside below. Leo sat with the blanket around his shoulders, his eyes half closed. When the light crossed through the base of the butte, he sighed, turned and looked west, watching the day chase the night into Wyoming.
There was a lot to do.
A lot of talk about the Crows and about Shadow Love.
Legends to build.
Leo said a quick prayer and started down. The last of the stars were going and he looked up at them as he dropped over the crest.
“See you guys,” he said. “Flatheaded motherfuckers.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
EYES OF PREY
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1991 by John Sandford
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
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ISBN: 1-101-14623-0
A BERKLEY BOOK®
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Berkley and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
Electronic edition: May, 2002
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER
1
Carlo Druze was a stone killer.
He sauntered down the old, gritty sidewalk with its cracked, uneven paving blocks, under the bare-branched oaks. He was acutely aware of his surroundings. Back around the corner, near his car, the odor of cigar smoke hung in the cold night air; a hundred feet farther along, he’d touched a pool of fragrance, deodorant or cheap perfume. A Mötley Crüe song beat down from a second-story bedroom: plainly audible on the sidewalk, it had to be deafening inside.
Two blocks ahead, to the right, a translucent cream-colored shade came down in a lighted window. He watched the window, but nothing else moved. A vagrant snowflake drifted past, then another.
Druze could kill without feeling, but he wasn’t stupid. He took care: he would not spend his life in prison. So he strolled, hands in his pockets, a man at his leisure. Watching. Feeling. The collar of his ski jacket rose to his ears on the sides, to his nose in the front. A watch cap rode low on his forehead. If he met anyone—a dog-walker, a night jogger—they’d get nothing but eyes.
From the mouth of the alley, he could see the target house and the garage behind it. Nobody in the alley, nothing moving. A few garbage cans, like battered plastic toadstools, waited to be taken inside. Four windows were lit on the ground floor of the target house, two more up above. The garage was dark.
Druze didn’t look around; he was too good an actor. It wasn’t likely that a neighbor was watching, but who could know? An old man, lonely, standing at his window, a linen shawl around his narrow shoulders . . . Druze could see him in his mind’s eye, and was wary: the people here had money, and Druze was a stranger in the dark. An out-of-place furtiveness, like a bad line on the stage, would be noticed. The cops were only a minute away.
With a casual step, then, rather than a sudden move, Druze turned into the darker world of the alley and walked down to the garage. It was connected to the house by a glassed-in breezeway. The door at the end of the breezeway would not be locked; it led straight into the kitchen.