Lucas said, ''Then what? After he was arguing with the guy?''
''I didn't hang around. I don't need Dick LaChaise seeing me and asking for a favor, if you know what I mean.''
''You worried about freebies?'' Del asked.
''I don't care about freebies,'' she said. She looked away, her lips still moving, then she shook her head and said, ''If Dick is here, some of his old
Seed buddies are probably around, too. You really don't want to fuck with them.''
''We did,'' Del said.
O'Donald nodded: ''I read about it-that thing where you guys killed his old lady and his sister.''
''Yeah?'' Del nodded.
''He's here to even the score on that,'' O'Donald said. ''If I were you guys,
I'd move to another state.''
Lucas looked at her. ''You think he'd come after cops?''
''Davenport, have you been listening?'' she asked impatiently.''Dick is a fuckin' fruitcake. You killed his woman and his sister. He's coming after you, all right. Eye for an eye.''
She frowned suddenly, then said, ''That guy he was talking to-at the laundromat.
I think he was a cop.''
Lucas said, ''What?''
''I don't know who, but I recognized the attitude. You know how you can always tell a cop? I mean, except for Capslock here, he looks like a wino
… Well, this guy was like that. A cop-cop.''
''Would you recognize a mug shot?''
She shrugged: ''Probably not. I didn't really look at him, I was sort of looking past him, at Dick. It was the way he stood that made me think cop.''
Del looked down at Lucas and said, ''That's not good.''
''No. That's not good.'' Lucas looked back through the dark house, the smoke-browned wallpaper, the crumpled Chee-tos bags on the floor, the stink of a cat, and he said, half to himself, ''Eye for an eye.''
SEVEN
MARTIN HAD BROUGHT A FOAM TARGET WITH HIM, A two-foot-square chunk of dense white plastic with concentric black circles around the bull's-eye. He'd nailed it to a wall beside the refrigerator, and was shooting arrows diagonally across the living room, into the kitchen. The shooting made a steady THUMM-whack from the bowstring vibration and the arrows punching into the target.
Form practice, he called it; he didn't care where the arrow went, if the form was correct. As it happened, the arrow always went into the bull's-eye.
LaChaise had been watching a game show. When it ended, he yawned, got to his feet and went to a window. The light had died. He looked out into the gloom, then let the curtains fall back and turned to the room. He cracked a smile and said, ''Let's saddle up.''
Martin was at full draw, and might not have heard. He held, released:
THUMM-whack.
Butters had been playing with their new cell phone. They'd bought it from a dealer friend of Butters's, who'd bought itfrom one of his customers, a kid with a nose for cocaine.
''Good for two weeks,'' the dealer had promised. Butters had given him a thousand dollars for the phone, and the dealer had put the money in his jeans without counting it. ''The kid's ma is a realtor. She's in Barbados on vacation, left him just enough money to buy food. The kid said his ma made fifty calls a day, so you can use it as much as you want; I wouldn't go calling Russia or nothing.''
They'd used it twice, once to call Stadic, once to call a used-car salesman.
When LaChaise said ''Saddle up,'' Butters put the phone down, opened the duffel by his foot, and took out two pistols. One was a tiny. 380, the other a larger nine-millimeter. He popped the magazines on both of them, thumbed the shells out and restacked them. Then he took a long, thin handmachined silencer out of the duffel and screwed it into the nine-millimeter: excellent. He unscrewed the silencer, picked up his camo jacket and dropped the silencer in the side pocket.
''Ready,'' he said simply. Butters had a thick blue vein that ran down his temple to his cheekbone: the vein was standing out in the thin light, like a scar.
''How about you?'' LaChaise asked Martin.
Martin was at full draw again, focused on form: THUMMwhack. ''Been ready,'' he said.
LaChaise parted the drapes with two fingers, looked out again. The streetlights were on and it was snowing. The snow had started at noon, just a few flakes at first, the weather forecasters saying it wasn't much. Now it was getting heavier. The closest streetlight looked like a candle.
LaChaise turned back into the room, stepped to a chair, and picked up three sheets of paper. The papers were Xerox copies of a newspaper article from the
Star Tribune. He'd outlined the relevant copy with a pen:
Officers Sherrill, Capslock, Franklin and Kupicek were removed from active duty pending a hearing before a weapons review board, a routine action always taken after a line-of-duty shooting incident. Deputy Chief Davenport and Officer Sloan did not discharge their weapons and will continue on active duty.
So Sherrill, Capslock, Franklin and Kupicek were the shooters.
''What?'' asked Martin. He opened his eyes and looked up at LaChaise.
''Eye for an eye,'' LaChaise said.
''Absolutely,'' Martin said. He was pulling on his coat. ''So let's go.''
MARTIN DROVE HIS TRUCK TO WEST END Buick-Oldsmobile. He'd called earlier, and asked for the salesman by name: ''I talked to you a couple of days ago about a
'91 Pontiac, that black one…''
''The Firebird?'' The salesman had sounded uncertain, since he hadn't talked to anyone about the Firebird.
''Yeah, that's the one. You still got it?''
''Still looking for an owner,'' the salesman had said. ''There's a guy coming around tonight, but nobody's signed anything yet.''
Martin had grinned at the car-sales bullshit. ''I'll come by in an hour or so.''
''I'll be looking for you,'' the salesman had promised.
Martin carried a Marine Corps combat knife with a fiveinch serrated blade. He'd bought it as a Christmas gift for himself, through a U.S. Cavalry catalog, and carried it in a sheath, on his belt. The knife was the only gift he'd gotten in the past few years, except that LaChaise had given him a bottle of Jim Beam the year before he went to prison.
Martin was thinking about the Jim Beam when he got to the Buick store. He parked across the street: he could see light from the windows, but the snow had continued to thicken, and the people on the other side of the glass were no more than occasional shadows.
He had ten minutes. He closed his eyes, settled in and thought about the other men he'd killed. Martin didn't worry about killing: he simply did it. When he was a kid, there was always something around the farm to be killed. Chickens, hogs, usually a heifer in the fall. And there was the hunting: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, doves, grouse, deer, bear.
By the time he killed his first man, he didn't much think about it. The man,
Harold Carter, was owed money by LaChaise, that LaChaise had borrowed to set up his motorcycle parts store. Carter was talking about going to court. LaChaise wanted him to go away.
Martin killed Carter with a knife on the back steps of his own home, carried the body out to his truck and buried the man in the woods. Nothing to it; certainly not as hard as taking down a pig. A pig always knew what was coming, and fought it. Went squealing and twisting. Carter simply dropped.
His second killing had been no more trouble than the first. His third, if he did it right, should be the easiest yet, because he wouldn't have to deal with the body. Martin closed his eyes; if he were the type to sleep, he might have.
LACHAISE, DRIVING ELMORE'S TRUCK, DROPPED BUTTERS at the Rosedale Mall. Butters carried both pistols, the short. 380 in his left jacket pocket, and the nine-millimeter, with the silencer already attached, in a Velcroed flap under his arm.
He cruised past TV Toys. A tall woman talked to a lone customer, and a thin balding man in a white shirt stood behindthe counter. Butters stepped to a phone kiosk, found the paper in his pocket, and dialed the number of the store. He watched as the man in the white shirt picked up the phone.