Secret Prey Read Free Page B

dark circle below the hood was the objective end of the scope and the scope was pointed his way, so the barrel . . . ah, Jesus.
    JESUS WENT THROUGH KRESGE’S MIND AT THE SAME instant the bullet punched through his heart.
    The chairman of the board spun off the bench—feeling no pain, feeling nothing at all—his rifle falling to the ground. He knelt for a moment at the railing, like a man taking communion; then his back buckled and he fell under the railing, after the rifle.
    He saw the ground coming, in a foggy way, hit it face first, with a thump, and his neck broke. He bounced onto his back, his eyes still open: the brightening sky was gone. He never felt the hand that probed for his carotid artery, looking for a pulse.
    He would lie there for a while, head downhill, would Daniel S. Kresge, a hole in his chest, with a mouth full of dirt and oak leaves. Nobody would run to see what the gunshot was about. There would be no calls to 911. No snoops. Just another day on the hunt.
    A real bad day for the chairman of the board.

TWO

    LOOKING AS THOUGH HE’D BEEN DRAGGED through hell by the ankles, a disheveled Del Capslock stumbled out of the men’s room in the basement of City Hall, fumbling with the buttons on the fly of his jeans. Footsteps echoed in the dark hallway behind him, and he turned his head to see Sloan coming through the gloom, a thin smile on his narrow face.
    ‘‘Playing with yourself,’’ Sloan said, his voice echoing in the weekend emptiness. Sloan was neatly but colorlessly dressed in khaki slacks and a tan mountain parka with a zip-in fleece liner. ‘‘I should have expected it; I knew you were a pervert. I just didn’t know you had enough to play with.’’
    ‘‘The old lady bought me these Calvin Kleins,’’ Dell said, hitching up the jeans. ‘‘They got buttons instead of zippers.’’
    ‘‘The theory of buttons is very simple,’’ Sloan began. ‘‘You take the round, flat thing . . .’’
    ‘‘Yeah, fuck you,’’ Del said. ‘‘The thing is, Calvin makes pants for fat guys. These supposedly got a thirtyfour waist. They’re really about thirty-eight. I can’t get them buttoned, and when I do, I can’t keep the fuckin’ things up.’’
    ‘‘Yeah?’’ Sloan wasn’t interested. His eyes drifted down the hall as Del continued to struggle with the buttons. ‘‘Seen Lucas?’’
    ‘‘No.’’ Del got one of the buttons. ‘‘See, the advantage of buttons is, you don’t get your dick caught in a zipper.’’
    ‘‘Okay, if you don’t get it caught in a buttonhole.’’ Del started to laugh, which made it harder to button the pants, and he said, ‘‘Shut up. I only got one more . . . maybe you could give me a hand here.’’
    ‘‘I don’t think so; it’s too nice a day to get busted for aggravated faggotry.’’
    ‘‘You can always tell who your friends are,’’ Del grumbled. ‘‘What’s going on with Lucas?’’ He got the fly buttoned finally and they started up the stairs toward Lucas’s new first-floor office.
    ‘‘Fat cat got killed,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘Dan Kresge, from over at Polaris Bank.’’
    ‘‘Never heard of him.’’
    ‘‘You heard of Polaris Bank?’’
    ‘‘Yeah. That’s the big black-glass one.’’
    ‘‘He runs it. Or did, until somebody shot his ass up in Garfield County. The sheriff called Rose Marie, who called Lucas, and Lucas called me to ride along.’’
    ‘‘Just friends, or overtime?’’
    ‘‘I’m putting in for it,’’ Sloan said comfortably. He had a daughter in college; nothing was ever said, but Davenport had been arranging easy overtime for him. ‘‘Great day for it—though the colors are mostly gone. From the trees, I mean.’’
    ‘‘Fuck trees. Kresge . . . it’s a murder?’’
    ‘‘Don’t know yet,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘This is opening day of deer season. He was shot out of a tree stand.’’
    ‘‘If I was gonna kill somebody, I might do it that way,’’ Del