Wicked Prey

PUTNAM
    G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
    Publishers Since 1838
    Published by the Penguin Group
    Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
     
    Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
     
Copyright © 2009 by John Sandford
    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
     
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
     
    Sandford, John.
Wicked prey / John Sandford.
p. cm.
    eISBN : 978-1-101-05079-8
    1. Davenport, Lucas (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Minnesota—Minneapolis—
Fiction. 3. Minneapolis (Minn.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.A516W
813’.54—dc22
     

     

     
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
     
    While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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To Mom

1
    RANDY WHITCOMB WAS A HUMAN STINKPOT, a red-haired cripple with a permanent cloud over his head; a gap-toothed, pock-faced, paraplegic crank freak, six weeks out of the Lino Lakes medium-security prison. He hurtled past the luggage carousels at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, pumping the wheels of his cheap non-motorized state-bought wheelchair, his coarse red hair a wild halo around his head.
    “Get out of the way, you little motherfucker,” he snarled at a blond child of three or four years. He zipped past the gawking mother and tired travelers and nearly across the elegant cordovan shoe tips of a tall bearded man. “Out of the way, fuckhead,” and he was through the door, the anger streaming behind him like coal smoke from a power plant.
    The bearded man with the elegant cordovan shoes, which came from a shop in Jermyn Street in London, leaned close to his companion, a dark-haired woman who wore blue jeans and a black blouse, running shoes, and cheap oversized sunglasses with unfashionable plastic rims. He said, quietly, in a cool Alabama accent, “If we see yon bugger again, remind me to crack his skinny handicapped neck.”
    The woman smiled and said, “Yon bugger? You were in England way too long.”
    Brutus Cohn, traveling under the passport name of John Lamb, tracked the wheelchair down the sidewalk. There was no humor in his cold blue eyes. “Aye, I was that,” he said. “But now I’m back.”
    Cohn and the woman, who called herself Rosie Cruz, walked underground to the short-term parking structure, trailing Cohn’s single piece of wheeled luggage. As they went out the door, the heat hit them like a hand in the face. Not as bad as Alabama heat, but dense, and sticky, smelling of burned transmission fluid, spoiled fruit, and bubble gum. Cruz pushed the trunk button on the remote key and the taillights blinked on a beige Toyota Camry.
    “Ugly car,” he said, as he lifted the suitcase into the trunk. Cohn disliked ugly cars, ugly clothes, ugly houses.
    “The best-selling car in America, in the least attention-getting color,”