Buried Prey

Sweat was running freely down his face by the time he turned into his driveway and pulled into the garage. He didn’t know why he was sweating—he wasn’t hurt that bad. There was some pain, but it was a dull ache, rather than agonizing.

He clambered out of the van and went inside, straight to the bathroom, pulled his shirt off, peeled the newspaper off his skin, and looked at the wound. Still bleeding, but not that much. All right. He dug through his medicine cabinet—got the tube of oxycodone, found another tube, from an ear infection, with some amoxicillin, two tabs. Not much else, besides some Band-Aids and a tube of Band-Aid antiseptic cream.

Then he remembered the first-aid kit that came with the van. He’d never bothered to open it, but wouldn’t that have some gauze in it? He went back out to the garage, found the kit, found four gauze pads inside it, and a roll of medical tape. He carried it back to the bathroom, wiped some antiseptic cream over the wound, then covered the wound with the gauze pads. He tried the tape, and managed to stick the pads on, but they wouldn’t hold, he thought. The tape was not long or strong enough, meant to go around fingers or toes. He got a bread bag, ripped off a piece of plastic large enough to cover the gauze pads, then taped it to his body with long strips of duct tape.

Not bad, he thought, looking in the mirror. He hurt, but he wasn’t going to die, unless he got infected. He popped an oxycodone and one of the antibiotic pills, then, on reflection, popped another one of each.

Still hurt, but there was nothing more he could do about it. He went into his living room and lay down on the couch, moved around until he was as comfortable as he could get, and turned on the TV, flipped around the channels.

Nothing. The news wasn’t up yet. Nobody was breaking in with a news flash—maybe nobody had been hit.

If he’d been really unlucky, somebody might have gotten his license tag numbers, but there was nothing he could do about that. And if they had, the cops would already be at his door . . . and they weren’t.

With that thought, he dozed; tired from the action, knocked down by the dope.

WHEN HE WOKE, he was disoriented for a moment, looked at the time. After nine-thirty. The news would be coming up.

He was anxious, waiting for it. Anxious to see what he’d done, where the coverage was. Anxious to see how he’d been described. To see what they knew . . .

He went out to the kitchen, got three wieners out of the refrigerator, and a jar of sauerkraut; slathered the wieners in the sauerkraut, stuck them in the microwave, got out three hot dog buns, got a bottle of horseradish-mustard out of the refrigerator, squirted the buns full of the mustard.

The microwave beeped and the meal was ready: he sat on the couch watching the end of a complicated cop drama, and the news came on.

A woman standing outside the Barker house: “A bearded gunman who may be the killer of the two Jones sisters struck again this evening, murdering a Minneapolis police office, wounding another police officer, and also wounding Todd Barker, the wife of Kelly Barker, who is believed to have been attacked by the same gunman in 1991 in Anoka. Officer Buster Hill is in guarded condition tonight, and Todd Barker is in critical condition at Fairview-Southdale Hospital in Edina. . . .”

The killer watched with dulled interest as the reporter recounted the shooting, and then interviewed a police spokesman, who said, “We believe Officer Hill wounded the gunman in the exchange of gunfire. We found traces of blood along what we presume to be the route the gunman took away from the house. The blood has been picked up by our crime-scene crews and will be taken to the BCA where we will . . .”

And then the police spokesman said the word that the killer hadn’t thought about, but knew quite well. The thing that had, really, pushed him to Thailand.

The officer said, “. . . process it for DNA. When we find him, we’ll then know that we have him for sure, and we think that finding him is now only a matter of time.”

The killer knew all about DNA. DNA seemed like a cloud, something that contaminated everything you touched. He’d been afraid that if he simply continued taking girls, that someday he’d be tagged by DNA. Now he sat up, staring at the TV, felt like screaming at it. Felt like throwing one of the Indian clubs through it, to shatter the screen, but didn’t.

Just stared, the chant going through his head: DNA, DNA, DNA . . .

Had to get out of here, he thought, looking around the house. Had to get away from the smell, the blinking lights on the porn servers, the junk that was scattered all over the place. Had to get away from this piece-of-shit life, had to find a den, had to get well. Had to heal.

Had to put a pillow over his head, shut out the world.

Hide.

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