Sudden Prey

firefly in the semidark. “Too many people are getting killed. You oughta think about that.”
     
     
     
    WEATHER KARKINNEN WAS doing paperwork in the study when Lucas got home. She heard him in the kitchen, and called down the hall, “In the study.”
    A moment later, he leaned in the door, a bottle of beer in his hand. “Hey.”
    “I tried to call you,” she said.
    Weather was a small, athletic woman with wide shoulders and close-cut blond hair. She had high cheekbones and eyes that were dark blue and slightly slanted in the Lapp-Finnish way. Her nose was a bit too large and a little crooked, as if she’d once lost a close fight. Not a pretty woman, exactly, but men tended to drift toward her at parties. “I saw a TV story on the shooting.”
    “What’d they say?” He unscrewed the beer cap and took a sip.
    “Two women were shot and killed after a robbery. They say it’s a controversial shooting.” She was anxious, brushing hair out of her eyes.
    Lucas shook his head. “You can’t pay any attention to TV.”
    He was angry.
    “Lucas . . .”
    “What?” He was defensive, and didn’t like it.
    “You’re really steamed,” she said. “What happened?”
    “Ah, I’m taking heat from the media. Everybody seems to worry about whether it was a fair fight. Why should the fight be fair? This isn’t a game, it’s law enforcement.”
    “Could you have taken them? Arrested them? Gone to trial, with the people at the other banks in Wisconsin?”
    “No.” He shook his head. “They were always masked, and always used stolen cars. There was a case down in River Falls, two years ago, where Candy LaChaise was busted for armed robbery. The guy she robbed, the car dealer, was mugged and killed two weeks later, before the trial. There weren’t any witnesses and she had an alibi. The River Falls cops think her old nutcake pals helped her out.”
    “But it’s not your job to kill them,” Weather said.
    “Hey,” Lucas said. “I just showed up with a gun. What happened after that, that was their choice. Not mine.”
    She shook her head, still distressed. “I don’t know,” she said. “What you do frightens me, but not the way I thought it would.” She crossed her arms and hugged herself, as she would if she were cold. “I’m not so worried about what somebody else might do to you, as what you might be doing to yourself.”
    “I told you . . .” Getting angrier now.
    “Lucas,” she interrupted. “I know how your mind works. TV said these people had been under surveillance for nine days. I can feel you manipulating them into a robbery. I don’t know if you know, but I know it.”
    “Bullshit,” he snapped, and he turned out of the doorway.
    “Lucas . . .”
    Halfway down the hall, the paperwork registered with him. She was doing wedding invitations. He turned around, went back.
    “Jesus, I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you,” he said. “Sometimes . . . I don’t know, my grip is getting slippery.”
    She stood up and said, “Come here. Sit in the chair.”
    He sat, and she climbed on his lap. He was always amazed with how small she was, how small all the parts were. Small head, small hands, little fingers.
    “You need something to lower your blood pressure,” she said.
    “That’s what the beer’s for,” he said.
    “As your doctor, I’m saying the beer’s not enough,” she said, snuggling in his lap.
    “Yeah? What exactly would you prescribe . . . ?”

3
    CRAZY ANSEL BUTTERS waited for the rush and when it came, he said, “Here it comes.”
    Dexter Lamb was lying on the couch, one arm trailing on the floor: he was looking up at the spiderweb pattern of cracks on the pink plaster ceiling, and he said, “I told you, dude.”
    Lamb’s old lady was in the kitchen, staring at the top of the plastic table, her voice low, slow, clogged, coming down: “Wish I was going . . . Goddamnit, Dexter, where’d you put the bag? I know you got some.”
    Ansel didn’t hear her, didn’t hear the complaints, the whining. Ansel was flying over a cocaine landscape, all the potentialities in his head—green hills, pretty women, red Mustangs, Labrador retrievers—were compressed into a ball of pleasure. His head lay on his shoulder, his long hair falling to the side, like lines of rain outside a window. Twenty minutes later, the dream was all gone, except for the crack afterburn that would arrive like a sack of Christmas coal.
    But he had a few minutes yet, and he mumbled, “Dex, I got