Wicked Prey by John Sandford Read Free Book Online Page A

baseboard.
    Lucas watched for a minute, then said, “I need an assistant.”
    Shrake, without looking up from the ball, said, “Take Jenkins. He’s a born assistant.” He chipped it and the ball clinked off the side of the glass.
    “Take both of them,” said a dark-haired woman from the DNA lab. She was sitting at a table with a New York Times and an egg-salad sandwich. “That clinking sound is driving me crazy. It’s like water dripping on my forehead.”
    Shrake said to Lucas, “I’ve got a date. If I go out with you, God only knows when we’ll get back. Jenkins ain’t doing shit.”
    “Not entirely true,” Jenkins said.
    Shrake said to Jenkins, “I’ll cancel your debt on this game, today’s game, if you go with him.”
    Lucas asked Shrake, “You’re not still dating Shirley Knox?”
    “Yeah, he is,” Jenkins said. “He’s in love.”
    “Aw, for Christ’s sakes, Shrake, she’s in the Mafia,” Lucas said.
    Shrake chipped again, but this time missed the cup entirely, and the ball tocked against the baseboard. “You made me jerk at the ball,” he said.
    “Honest to God, it’s driving me nuts,” the woman said. “I can’t stand that sound.”
    “She’s not in the Mafia,” Shrake said. “I asked her. She said no, she wasn’t, and I believe her.”
    Lucas said to Jenkins, “He’s lost his grip. She’s in the fuckin’ Mafia.”
    “His grip was never that good in the first place,” Jenkins said.
    “Have you tried talking to him about it?” Lucas asked.
    “I did. I says, ‘Shrake, the chick is in the Mafia,’ but then he says the woman could suck a golf ball through a water hose. So—how do I answer that?”
    “Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” the DNA woman said, “I heard that. Am I invisible or something?”
    Jenkins turned to her and said, “Shut up.” Then to Shrake, “Cancel today’s debt and half of the rest and I’ll go with Davenport.”
    “Done,” Shrake said, and Jenkins asked Lucas, “Where’re we going?”
    “See some gun guys,” Lucas said.
    “Thank God,” said the woman with the egg-salad sandwich.

    THEY TOOK Jenkins’s new Ford CVPI, for which he’d had to get a special authorization from the head of the agency. “I can’t believe you bought another one of these things. It’s like riding in a Boston Whaler. You’d lose a drag race to a John Deere,” Lucas said.
    “Not once I get this baby rolling,” Jenkins said, and, “You won’t see anybody doing moonshiner turns with one of those cheap-ass front-wheel drives. The tranny would be all over the street. This baby . . .” He patted the dashboard. “Which way we going?”
    * * *
    THE FIRST STOP was a shop on Arcade at East Seventh, a hole-in-the-wall with a hand-painted steel sign that said, “Terry’s Sports.” Inside the front window, behind a steel mesh screen, was a pump twelve-gauge shotgun with the butt cut down to a pistol grip.
    “Seven-Eleven special,” Jenkins said, as they walked past it.
    “I could never figure out why it’s a federal crime to saw the barrel off a shotgun, but it’s okay to cut off the butt,” Lucas said. “Same effect—you can carry it under your jacket.”
    “Lawyers,” Jenkins said. “They make laws, they got no idea.”
    * * *
    THEY RATTLED THE DOOR and the owner buzzed them in; the shop smelled of cigarette smoke and gun-cleaning solvent. Terry was a nervous, dried-out man of fifty, the fingers of his right hand stained amber with nicotine. He nodded when they came in, recognized them as cops, and said, “Officers.”
    “How much you want for the cop killer in the window?” Jenkins asked, getting the interview off on the right foot.
    “Self-defense gun,” Terry said with a placating smile, showing teeth as yellow as his fingers. “Sell them mostly to women.”
    “Right,” Lucas said. He took the photos of Justice Shafer and Brutus Cohn out of his pocket, unfolded them, with Cohn’s picture on top. “You seen this guy?”
    Terry looked at