Free Gathering Prey by John Sandford Page B

life.
    Most of the victims had been chosen because they were the invisible people in the world. Street people, travelers, illegal aliens. You could stop by a Home Depot early in the morning and pick out anyone you wanted to play with. They’d jump right in the car, and the other wetbacks thought them
lucky.
    He’d made one mistake, though. He’d once acted out of a powerful impulse, rather than calculation.
    He’d been cruising down Sunset, stopped at a light, middle of the day, minding his own business. Okay, a little whacked on Skywalker OG. Then this blond chick, probably an actress, pulls up behind him in a BMW convertible, top down, sunglasses, red lipstick, white blouse, the whole bit. The light turned green and swear to God, she honked her horn like one split second after the light changed. He was a little doggy off the line, so what’d she do next? Dropped the hammer on the bimmer and,
BOOM!
, she was around him like he was a tourist and gone.
    Pissed him off so badly that he had to hold on to the steering wheel with both hands to keep himself from shaking to pieces.
    Took it as a sign.
    The next sacrifice would be a woman.
    A blonde. Most definitely an actress. They picked her up outside a yoga center on Melrose, hauled her up into the hills. They had a lot of fun with her before she died, begging them not to hurt her anymore.
    But then . . . then the shit had hit the fan. They’d been lucky to get out of that one clean.
    •   •   •
    HE WOKE UP when Kristen said, “Look at this.”
    They were dropping headlong into a deep, broad river valley, with a small town on the far side. “The Mississippi River,” Pilate said, in his most solemn voice. “The zipper on the United States of America.”
    They went on a bit, and a sign said: “Missouri River.” Kristen glanced at him, but didn’t correct him. He said, “I meant, Missouri,” but still, it ruined it for him.
    They stopped on the other side of the Missouri for a root beer and a cheeseburger, then pushed on into the evening, across the Minnesota line, camped out overnight at the Walmart Supercenter in Worthington.
    From Worthington they went north on Highway 60 and then 71, running up a very long state, and pulled into Bemidji at two o’clock on a fine, sunny afternoon, ate more cheeseburgers and got some pork chops and beer and potato chips and headed north again, still on 71, to the intersection of 72, and then north all the way to Highway 11, where they ran out of state.
    “That’s Canada, right there,” Kristen said, pointing out the window.
    “Never been there,” Pilate said. “The USA is good enough for me.”
    They took Highway 11 into Baudette, stocked up on food and beer, then turned around on Highway 11 and ran back east a few miles on the two-lane, following behind Chet on land that was as flat as a tabletop, but dark: dark trees, dark fields, past marshes, shallow lakes, small farms. Fifteen minutes out of town, Chet swerved off on a dirt track past a rusty mailbox that led through a narrow crack in the roadside tree line. Two hundred yards back, they came to a dirty white house surrounded by a dirt patch on which two dirty old Chevy pickups were parked.
    Chet got out of the car and an old man came to the front door of the house, pushed the screen door open, and stepped out. He had a mustache over a three-day beard, watery blue eyes behind plastic-rimmed glasses. He was wearing overalls and rubber boots, and carrying a pump shotgun, a 12-gauge. He asked Chet, “Where’n the hell you been? And what do you want?”
    “Been in Los Angeles, Pap. Worked on some movies.”
    The old man looked at the other cars in the caravan and said, “Must not of made any money on them. What do you want, anyway?”
    “We was hoping to use the campground for a couple of days, rest up,” Chet said. “We’ve been on the road for a while.”
    “Well . . . Go on ahead.” The old man waved at a farther track that led away from the house