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  The Prey Series Virgil Flowers Heat Lightning The Kidd Series Other Novels Etcetera | Heat Lightning Heat Lightning contains strong language and scenes of
graphic violence and sex, and it may thus be inappropriate or offensive to some
readers. The excerpt below is the complete first chapter of Heat
Lightning, and it has not been censored in any way. If you are offended by
this sort of material, or will get in trouble for reading it (e.g. if your
parents think it would be inappropriate for you), do not continue.
Thank you. The midnight shift: The shooter was going to work. He jogged through the night in a charcoal-colored nylon rain
suit and black New Balance running shoes, with a brilliant reflective green
strap over his shoulders, like a bandolier. With the strap, he jumped out at
passing cars; nothing furtive here, nobody trying to hide anything... He ran carefully, taking his time. The old sidewalk, probably
laid down in the first decades of the 20th century, was cracked and shifting
underfoot. A wrong step could leave him with a sprain, or worse. Not good for a
man with a silenced pistol in his pocket. The night was hot, cloudy, humid. Lightning flickered way off
to the north, a thunderstorm passing by. The tempest would miss by ten miles:
no relief from the heat, not yet. He ran through the odor of summer flowers,
unseen in the darkness – nice houses here, well maintained, flourishes of
Victorian gingerbread, fences with gardens, flower heads pale in the dim
ambient light. Stillwater, Minnesota, on the bluff above downtown, above the
St. Croix River. Third Street once had so many churches that it was called
Church Street by the locals. The churches that remained pushed steeples into
the night sky like medieval lightning rods, straining to ward off the evil that
men do... The shooter passed the front of the red brick historic
courthouse, which was guarded by a bronze Civil War infantryman with a fixed
bayonet and a plaque. He paused next to a hedge, behind a tree trunk, bent over
with his hands on his knees, as if catching his breath, or stretching his
hamstrings, like runners do. Looked around. Said quietly, "On point." Dark, silent. Waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.
After a last look around, he pulled off the reflective strap and stuffed it in
a pocket. When he did that, he vanished. He was gone; he was part of the fabric
of the night. Across from the courthouse, just downhill, a metal spire
pushed up from a vest-pocket park. Ten-foot granite slabs anchored the foot of
the needle. On the slabs were more bronze plaques, with the names of the local
boys who didn't make it back from all the wars fought since Stillwater was
built. A blank plaque awaited names from Iraq and Afghanistan. The shooter slipped across the street, shadowed the edge of
the memorial. The brilliant light made the nearby shadows even darker. He
disappeared into one of them, like an ink drop falling into a coal cellar.
Before he went, he pulled back the sleeve of the running suit and checked the
luminous dial of his combat watch. If Sanderson stuck to his routine – or the dog's routine,
anyway – he'd walk down the west side of Third Street sometime in the next
ten minutes. Big German shepherd. Shame about the dog... Chuck Utecht had been the first man on the controller's list.
He'd been a smooth white egg of a man, whose insides, when he cracked, flowed
out like a yellow yolk. He'd given up three names. He'd given them up
easily. "I only did one bad thing in my life," he cried. "I've been
making up for it ever since." His final words had been, "I'm sorry," not for what he'd done,
but because he knew what was coming and had peed his pants. The scout could only extract so much information from a man
who accepted his own execution, who seemed to believe that he deserved it. They
had not been in a place where the scout could use pliers or knives or ropes or
electricity or water-boards. All he had was the threat of death and Utecht had
closed his eyes and had begun mumbling through a prayer. The scout had seen the
resignation; he looked at the shooter and nodded. The shooter shot him twice in the back of the head, halfway
through the prayer. Now he waited for Sanderson and the dog. They needed two more names. The scout said in the shooter's ear, "He's
coming." Bobby Sanderson strolled down Third Street with the dog on the
end of its lead, a familiar nighttime sight. The dog was as regular as a quartz
watch: took a small dump at eight o'clock in the morning, and a big one at
eleven o'clock at night. If it wasn't out on the street, it'd be somewhere in
the yard, and Sanderson would step in it the next day, sure as God made little
green apples. So, twice a day, they were on the street. Sanderson was preoccupied with an argument he'd had with his
girlfriend. Or maybe not an argument, but he didn't know exactly what else you
could call it. She didn't want him out at night; not for a while. Not until
they found out whether something was going on. "If you're scared enough that you have meetings, then you
ought to be scared enough to stay inside at night," she'd said. She'd been in
the kitchen, drying the dishes with an old square of unbleached muslin. She
smelled of dishwashing liquid and pork chop grease. "You know what happens with the dog if he don't get his walk,"
Sanderson said. "Besides, who's going to mess with Mike?" But before he'd gone, he'd skipped up the stairs, as though
he'd forgotten something, had taken the .38 out of the bed stand, and slipped
it in his pocket. He was not the kind of guy to be pushed. If somebody pushed,
he'd push back, twice as hard. Sanderson was fifty-seven, five-six, a hundred and sixty
pounds. A short man, with a short-man complex. You don't fuck with me. You
don't fuck with the Man. He thought like that. He thought like a TV show. The shooter was waiting behind a rampart of limestone blocks,
next to the monument. Not tense, not anything – not thinking, just
waiting, like a rock, or a stump, or a loaded bullet. Waiting...Then a word in
his ear, one word: "Coming." He first heard the click of the dog's toenails on the
sidewalk. The animal probably went a hundred pounds, maybe even one-twenty. Had
to take him smooth... Close now. The shooter's hand was at his side, with the pistol dangling
from it. When they'd scouted Sanderson on a previous walk, they noted that the
dog was always on a long lead – there'd be some distance between the dog
and Sanderson. The dog didn't seem particularly nervous, but might well sense a
man waiting in the night. Comes the dog. The shooter went into his routine, squaring his feet, the deep
breath already taken. He exhaled slowly, held it, and the dog was there, ten
feet out, turning his big head toward the shadow – the alarm, or
curiosity, or something, in his eyes, he knew
something... The shooter was in his shooting crouch, arms extended, and the
gun recoiled a bit. There was a fast snap sound, like an electrical spark, and
a mechanical ratcheting as the gun cycled. The dog dropped, shot between the
eyes, and the shooter vaulted from the shadows, moving fast, right there in
Sanderson's face in a quarter-second. This was no TV show, and you do fuck with the Man.
Sanderson's eyes just had time to widen and his hand went to his pocket –
he never really thought he'd need the pistol. Never really thought. The shooter had reversed the pistol in his hand and now held
it by the silencer, so that it functioned as a hammer. He chopped Sanderson on
the left ear and Sanderson staggered, falling, and put down his gun hand, no
gun in it, and the gun pocket hit the ground with a clank and the
shooter, realizing that he hadn't hit him quite hard enough, hit him again, and
this time, Sanderson went flat. Not a killing blow. They needed two more names. The shooter was trained, the shooter was a killing machine,
but he was still human. Now, breathing hard, he tasted blood in his mouth like
you might after a tough run; and all the time, he was looking for lights, he
was looking for an alarm, a cry in the dark. He said into the mouthpiece, "Come now." He yanked the dog-lead off Sanderson's wrist, dragged the
dog's body into the darkness under the limestone blocks. Moved Sanderson next,
the man twitching, trying to come back, but the shooter, gripping him by the
shirt collar, moved him effortlessly into the dark. Another look around. The scout came, all of a sudden, like a vampire bat dropping
from the sky. He took a loop of rope from his pocket. The rope was a short
noose, with a twisting handle, like the handle on a lawn mower starter-rope. He
slipped the noose around Sanderson's neck, twisted the handle until the rope
was not quite choking the semi-conscious man. He knelt, then, his knees weighing on Sanderson's chest,
pinning him, and he shined an LED penlight into Sanderson's eyes. Sanderson
moaned, trying to come back, then turned his head away from the burning light,
his feet drumming on the ground. "Listen to me," the scout said. "Listen to me. Can you hear
me?" It took a moment. Though the shooter had been careful, even a
mild concussion is, nevertheless, a concussion. "Mr. Sanderson. Can you hear
me?" Sanderson moaned again, but his eyes were clearing. The scout
turned the choke rope, so that Sanderson could feel it, so that he couldn't cry
out. Slapped him, hard: not to do further injury, but to sting him,
bring him up. He put his face next to Sanderson's, while the shooter watched
for cars, or another runner. The scout said, "Utecht, Sanderson, Bunton, Wigge.
Who were the other two? Who? Who is Carl? Mr. Sanderson..." Sanderson's pupils narrowed: he was coming back. "Mr. Sanderson, who is Carl?" The scout's voice was soft, and
he loosened the noose. Sanderson took a rasping breath. "It wasn't me. It
wasn't me. Not me. Not me." "Who is Carl? We know Ray Bunton, we know John Wigge, but
who's Carl?" "Don't know his name..." The desperation was right there, on
the surface. The scout could hear it. "But you knew Utecht," the scout said, persisting, pressuring.
"Bunton and Wigge were at your house two days ago. I watched you argue. Who was
the man in the car?" "Some pal of Wigge's. I don't know, I don't know." He strained
for air, feet beating on the ground again. "There was a sixth man. Who was the sixth man?" "Don't..." Then Sanderson's eyes reached up toward the scout's
and he seemed to recognize him, what he was, why he was there; with the
realization came the knowledge that he would die. "Ah, shit," he said, the
sadness thick in the words. "We were remodeling the house." The scout saw the death in Sanderson's eyes. Nothing more
here. He stood up, shook his head. The shooter extended the gun and without a
further word, shot Sanderson twice in the forehead. He caught the ejected .22
shells in his off-hand. The shooter could smell the blood. The odor of blood sometimes
nauseated him, now. Didn't happen before. Only the last couple of years. He
slipped a lemon from his pocket, scraped it with a fingernail, and inhaled the
odor of the lemon rind. Better. Better than blood. Then he bent, pushed down Sanderson's jaw, shoved the lemon
into his dead mouth. |
13 May 2008 The Prey series, the Virgil Flowers series,
the Kidd series, The Night Crew, Dead Watch, The Eye
and the Heart: The Watercolors of John Stuart Ingle, and Plastic
Surgery: The Kindest Cut are copyrighted by John Sandford. All excerpts are
used with permission. All original content on the website (excluding the message
board and some other specifically disclaimed text) is copyright © 2008 by
Roswell Anthony Camp. Please do not steal anything from these pages. If you
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