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  The Prey Series Virgil Flowers Rough Country The Kidd Series Other Novels Etcetera | Rough Country Rough Country 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 Rough
Country, 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 August heat was slipping away as the sun slid lower in the
northwest sky; a full moon would be coming over the horizon at eight o'clock,
and the view across Stone Lake would be spectacular. A trick of the light, McDill thought. Her father had told her that. A full moon on the horizon was
no larger than a full moon overhead, that the larger apparent size was all an
optical illusion. She hadn't believed him, so he'd proven it, by taking a
photograph of a harvest moon on the horizon, the biggest, fattest, yellowest
moon of the year, then comparing it to another shot of the moon when it was
overhead. They were the same size. He took pride in his correctness; he was a scientist, and he
knew what he knew. McDill ran an advertising agency, and she knew her father
was both right and wrong: technically he was correct, but you wouldn't make any
money proving it. You could sell a big fat gorgeous moon coming over
the horizon, shining its ass off, pouring its golden light on whatever product
you wanted to sell, and screw the optical illusion... McDill slipped across the water in almost complete silence.
She was paddling a fourteen-foot Native Watercraft, a canoe-kayak hybrid
designed for stability with light weight. Good for a relatively small woman,
with soft hands, who wasn't all that familiar with boats. She didn't really need the stability this evening, because the
lake was glassy-flat, at the tag-end of a heat wave. The forecasters were
predicting that the wind would pick up overnight, but nothing serious. No rain
in sight. She could hear the double-bladed paddle pulling through the
water, first right, then left, and distantly, probably from another lake,
either an outboard or a chain saw, but the sound was so distant, so
intermittent, so thready, that it was like aural smoke – a noise on the
edge of nothingness. Aquatic insects were hatching around her: they'd come to
the surface, and from there, take off, leaving a dimple in the water. A mile out from the lodge, she paddled toward the creek that
drained the lake. The outlet was a dimple in a wall of aspen, across a lily-pad
flat, past a downed tree where turtles lined up to take the sun. The turtles
plopped off the log when they spotted her, and she smiled at the sight and
sound of them, paddled into the creek, and around a turn to a wider spot,
rimmed with cattails. The pond, as she called it, was perhaps a hundred and fifty
yards long, and fifty wide. At the end of it, where the creek narrowed down and
got about its real business – running downhill – a white pine stood
like a sentinel among the lower trees. A bald eagles' nest was built high in
the tree, and on most evenings, she'd see one or both of the eagle pair, coming
or going from the nest. From down the lake, a few minutes earlier, she'd seen one of
them leaving, looking for an evening meal, she thought. She idled down toward
the pine, hoping she'd see the bird coming back, then leaned back in the seat,
hung the paddle in the side-mounted paddle holder, spread her legs and let her
feet dangle over the side of the boat into the warm water. Felt the sun on her back. Dug in a polypro bag, found a
cigarette and a lighter, lit the cigarette, sucked in a lungful of smoke. Perfect. Perfect, if only her mind would stop running. McDill ran an advertising agency, Ruff-Harcourt-McDill, in
Minneapolis. Ruff was dead, Harcourt retired; and Harcourt, two weeks earlier,
had agreed to sell his remaining stock to McDill, which would give her
seventy-five percent of the outstanding shares. And absolute control. So excellent. She'd toyed with the idea of a name change –
Media/McDill, or McDill Group, but now had decided that she would, for the time
being, leave well-enough alone. Advertising buyers knew RHM, and the name
projected a certain stability. She would need the sense of stability as she
went about weeding out the... Might as well say it: weeds. The agency, over the years, had accumulated foot-draggers,
time-wasters, slow-witted weeds more suited for a job, say, in a
newspaper, than in a hot advertising agency. Getting rid of them – she
already had a list of names – would generate a twenty-two percent increase
in the bottom line, with virtually no loss in production. Bodies were
expensive. Some of them seemed to think that the purpose of
the agency was to provide them with job. They were wrong, and were about to
find that out. When she got the stock, when she nailed that down, she'd
move. The question that plagued her was exactly how to do
it. The current creative director, Barney Mann, was smart, witty, hard-working,
the kind of guy she wanted to keep – but he had all kinds of alliances and
friendships among the worker bees. Went out for drinks with them. Played golf
with them. Even lent some of them money. He was loved, for Christ's
sakes. He was the kind of guy who could turn a necessary managerial
evolution into a mud-slinging match. And he'd done an absolutely brilliant job on the Mattocks
Motor City campaign, no question about that. Dave Mattocks thought Mann was a
genius and the Motor City account brought in nine percent of RHM's billings in
the last fiscal year. Nine percent. If you lost an account of that size, you
lost more than the account – other buyers would wonder why, and what
happened, and might think that RHM was losing its edge... McDill wanted to keep Mann, and wondered how much of a saint
he really was. Suppose she took him to dinner, and simply put it on him: a
partnership, options on ten percent of the stock, a million bucks up front, and
no fuss when the ax came down. In fact, he might usefully soften the blow to the people who
were... remaindered. Maybe if somehow could be put in charge of an
amelioration fund, little tax deductible money gifts to be parceled
out as needed, to keep any pathetic tales of woe out of the
newspapers... McDill drifted, thinking about it. And her thoughts eventually drifted away from the agency, to
the upcoming evening, about her sneaky date, and about Ruth. She'd outgrown
Ruth, regretfully. Ruth seemed to be settling into middle-aged hausfrau mode,
her mind going dull as her ass got fatter. She was probably at home right now,
baking a pumpkin pie or something. In a way, she thought, the takeover of the agency changed
everything. Everything. The agency was hot, she was hot. Time to shine, by
god. The eagle came back. She saw it coming a half-mile out, unmistakable in its size, a
giant bird floating along on unmoving wings. Perhaps a thousand feet away, it suddenly carved a turn, like
a skier on a downhill, and banked away. McDill wondered why: the eagles had never been bothered by her
presence before. She was further away now than she had been last night, when
she coasted right up to the tree trunk. Huh. Had the eagle sensed something else? McDill turned and scanned the shoreline, and then, in her last
seconds, actually saw a bit of movement, and frowned, sat forward a bit. And the killer shot her in the forehead. |
19 April 2009 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
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