Read Secret Prey for Free Online

Krause said grimly. Then: ‘‘Look, I’m the new guy up here. I was with the highway patrol for twenty-five years, and then last fall I got myself elected sheriff. The office is about fifty years out of date, full of deadwood, and all the deadwood is related to somebody. I’m cutting it down, but it takes time. I’ll take any help I can get.’’
    ‘‘Whatever we can do,’’ Lucas said.
    Krause nodded. ‘‘Thanks.’’ He’d been prepared to dislike the Minneapolis guys, but it hadn’t turned out that way. Actually, he sort of liked them, for city people. Sloan especially, but even Davenport, with his shoe tassels and expensive clothes. He glanced at Davenport again, quickly. From a little bit of a distance you might think pussy . You didn’t think that when you got closer to him. Not after you’d seen his smile.
    He added, ‘‘I don’t think I’m gonna get too far up here. Matter of fact, I don’t think I’m going to get anywhere— everything about this shooting was set up in the Cities.’’
    They were coming up to the porch, and Sloan said, quietly, ‘‘So let’s go jack up these city folks. See if anybody gets nervous.’’

THREE

    THE FOUR SURVIVING HUNTERS SAT ON THE PORCH in the afternoon sunlight, in rustic wooden chairs with peeling bark and waterproof plastic seat cushions. They all had cups of microwaved coffee: Wilson McDonald’s was fortified with two ounces of brandy. James T. Bone sat politely downwind of the others, smoking a cheroot.
    The sheriff’s investigator perched on a stool at the other end of the porch, like the class dummy, looking away from them. If one of the bankers suddenly broke for the woods, what was he supposed to do? Shoot him? But the sheriff had told him to keep an eye on them. What’d that mean?
    And the bankers were annoyed, and their annoyance was not something his worn nerves could deal with. He could handle trailer-home fights and farm kids hustling toot, but people who’d gone to Harvard, who drove Lincoln and Lexus sport-utes and wore eight-hundred-dollar apre`s-hunt tweed jackets, undoubtedly woven by licensed leprechauns in the Auld Country—well, they made him nervous. Especially when one of them might be a killer.
    ‘‘DAVENPORT IS THE BAD DOG,’’ BONE SAID FROM downwind, as they watched Krause lead his parade down through the woods toward the cabin. He bit off a sixteenth- inch of the cheroot and spit it out into the fescue at the bottom of the porch. ‘‘He oughta be able to tell us something.’’
    ‘‘Mean sonofabitch, by reputation,’’ O’Dell said. She said it casually, looking through the steam of the coffee. She wasn’t impressed. She was surrounded by mean sonsofbitches. She might even be one herself.
    ‘‘Just another c-cop,’’ Robles stuttered. Robles was scared: they could smell it on him. They liked it. Robles was the macho killer, and his fear was oddly pleasing.
    ‘‘I talked to him a couple of times on the transfers with his IPO—you all know he used to be Davenport Simulations?’’ Bone said. They all nodded; that was the kind of thing they all knew. ‘‘He sold the company to management and walked with better’n ten, AT.’’ He meant ten million dollars, after taxes.
    ‘‘So why doesn’t he quit and move to Palm Springs?’’ Robles asked.
    ‘‘ ’Cause he likes what he does,’’ Bone said.
    ‘‘I wish he’d get his bureaucratic ass down here and do what we have to do; I wanna get back to town,’’ McDonald grumbled. Back to a nice smooth single-malt; but he’d stay here as long as the others did. Sooner or later, they’d start talking about who’d be running the bank. ‘‘No point in keeping us here. We’ve told them everything we know.’’
    ‘‘Unless one of us killed him,’’ Bone said lazily.
    ‘‘Gotta be an accident,’’ Robles said, nervously. ‘‘ Opening day of deer season . . . I bet there’re twenty of them. Accidents.’’
    ‘‘No, there