Naked Prey by John Sandford

From the Publisher

Lucas Davenport investigates the lynching murder of an interracial couple in a small Minnesota town.

The Washington Post - Patrick Anderson

Naked Prey is vintage Sandford, which is to say it is all but impossible to put down. As the story races along, Sandford finds time for various digressions, some more inspired than others. Brash young Letty West becomes Davenport's new best pal; she is handy with a .22, takes no guff from anyone and inevitably finds herself in deadly peril. The author introduces a publicity-hungry civil-rights activist who barges in to denounce the supposed lynching, then just as abruptly returns to Chicago.

Publishers Weekly

Sandford gets back to basics in this stellar 14th installment of his hugely popular Prey series, focusing on the long-standing duo of Davenport and Capslock. As the novel begins, the indomitable Lucas Davenport (now happily married, a contented father and bored out of his mind) is slogging through the northern tundra of Broderick, Minn., to inspect the naked dangling corpses of a white woman and black man ("They were frozen. Like Popsicles.") that have shocked the locals as well as Minnesota's governor with the ugly specter of a lynching. Davenport, now more or less a free agent for the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension ("I kick people's asses"), is unleashed by the governor, giving Davenport and his scruffy sidekick, Del Capslock, a chance to escape their square city lives and catch the villain(s) while staving off the media vultures, Sandford's trademark subplot. As in previous novels, the original crime (rendered in a truly horrific opening sequence) is merely the gateway to a deeper, more insidious criminal enterprise, this one an international labyrinth of stolen cars, drugs, gambling and kidnapping. Some truly vicious familial machinations in the small town contrast well with Davenport's staid and stable home life. Another pleasant surprise is the precocious Letty West, whose awakening teenage sensibilities make an impression on Davenport. Sandford's usual background details (readers will learn how to run a muskrat trapline and how an Indian casino operates) are deftly woven into the fabric. This latest installment in a series now a decade and a half old is vintage Sandford. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Lucas Davenport (Mortal Prey) is now Director of Regional Studies in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is a fancy name for the job of investigating difficult crimes as quickly as possible and answering to the governor of the state. Known for his ability to solve the unsolvable, he goes to a remote area of the state to discover why a black man and a white woman were hanged in a groove of trees. They were found by Letty West, a precocious 12-year-old trapper who helps Davenport and his partner, Del Capslock, understand the dynamics of the rural communities of Broderick and Armstrong and in so doing, places herself in harm's way. Fast paced and full of surprises, this may be Sandford's best novel yet. The plot twists and turns reveal the complexity of the characters and the well-concealed motivation for the crimes. Most public libraries should buy several copies to meed popular demand. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03; BOMC, Literary Guild, and Mystery Guild main selections.]-Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

By the time a series gets appreciably past its salad days, the signs of writer fatigue are usually unmistakable. Which is what makes this 14th outing from Sandford so remarkable: the brilliant Prey series goes bopping along, taking steps two at a time, acting like your basic spring chicken. Series hero Lucas Davenport (Mortal Prey, 2002, etc.), self-styled "richest cop in Minnesota"-with a fortune derived from the design of beautifully complex computer games-has a new job, crime-solving for Governor Elmer Henderson: that is, taking on those hot-potato assignments deemed political dynamite. When Deon Cash, a black man, and Jane Warr, a white woman, are found naked and dead, dangling from a tree in backwater Broderick, the Governor's men hurriedly summon Lucas, the word "lynching" much in the air. But it's not a lynching. To begin with, Broderick, a six-hour drive from St. Paul, simply doesn't have that kind of problem. Moreover, it doesn't take long for the real motive to surface: vengeance. Cash and Warr, it turns out, kidnapped and killed the young daughter of prominent Minnesota businessman Hale Sorrell. Acting as judge, jury, and hangman, Sorell has meted out vigilante justice, and savvy Lucas nails him for it-but before Sorrell can be arrested, he, too, is gunned down. Now Lucas surmises that more than Cash and Warr were involved in the kidnap plot. Back to Broderick he goes, where the evidence leads in an unforeseen direction. And where 12-year-old Letty West, freckled and gritty ("she might have been a female Huckleberry Finn") does a lot to capture a sociopathic killer-as well as Lucas's unexpectedly susceptible heart. Nonstop drive, dialogue that amuses and surprises, deftcharacterizations. But most notable of what Sandford continues to do-better, perhaps, than anyone in crime fiction-is humanize his monsters: that makes for a special kind of creepiness.

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Product Details

• ISBN: 1413293174
  
• ISBN-13: 9781413293173
• Format: Paperback
• Pub. Date: January 2007
• Edition Description: Bargain
• Series: Lucas Davenport Series, #14

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

1

THURSDAY NIGHT, pitch black, blowing snow. Heavy clouds, no moon behind them.

The Buick disappeared into the garage and the door started down. The big man, rolling down the highway in a battered Cherokee, killed his lights, pulled into the driveway, and took the shotgun off the car seat. The snow crunched underfoot as he stepped out; the snow was coming down in pellets, rather than flakes, and they stung as they slapped his warm face.

He loped up the driveway, fully exposed for a moment, and stopped just at the corner of the garage, in a shadow beneath the security light.

Jane Warr opened the side door and stepped through, her back turned to him as she pulled the door closed behind her.

He said, "Jane."

She jumped, her hand at her throat, choking down a scream as she pivoted, and shrank against the door. Taking in the muzzle of the shotgun, and the large man with the beard and the stocking cap, she screeched: "What? Who're you? Get away . . ." A jumble of panic words.

He stayed with her, tracking her with the shotgun, and he said, slowly, as if speaking to a child, "Jane, this is a shotgun. If you scream, I will blow your heart out."

She looked, and it was a shotgun all right, a twelve-gauge pump, and it was pointing at her heart. She made herself be still, thought of Deon in the house. If Deon looked out and saw them . . . Deon would take care of himself. "What do you want?"

"Joe Kelly."

They stood for two or three seconds, the snow pellets peppering the garage, the big man's beard going white with it. Then, "Joe's not here." A hint of assertion in her voice-this didn't involve her, this shotgun.

"Bullshit," the big man said. He twitched the muzzle to the left, toward the house. "We're going inside to talk to him, and he's gonna pay me some money. I don't want to hurt you or anybody else, but I'm gonna talk to Joe. If I have to hurt the whole bunch of you, I will."

He sounded familiar, she thought. Maybe one of the guys from Missouri, from Kansas City? "Are you one of the Kansas City people? Because we're not . . ."

"Shut up," the big man said. "Get your ass up the steps and into the house. Keep your mouth shut."

She did what he told her. This was not the first time she'd been present when an unfriendly man flashed a gun-not even the second or third time-but she was worried. On the other hand, he said he was looking for Joe. When he found out Joe wasn't here, he'd go. Maybe.

"Joe's not here," she said, as she went up the steps.

"Quiet!" The man's voice dropped. "One thing I learned down in Kansas City-I'll share this with you-is that when trouble starts, you pull the trigger. Don't figure anything out, just pull the trigger. If Joe or Deon try anything on me, you can kiss your butt good-bye."

"All right," she said. Her voice had dropped with his. Now she was on the stranger's side. She'd be okay, she told herself, as long as Deon didn't do anything. But there was something too weird about this guy. I'll share this with you?-she'd never heard a serious asshole say anything like that.

They went up the stairs onto a back porch, then through the porch into a mudroom, then through another door into the kitchen. None of the doors was locked. Broderick was a small town, and it doesn't take long to pick up small-town habits. As they clunked into the kitchen, which smelled like microwave popcorn and week-old carrot peels, Deon Cash called from the living room, "Hey," and they heard his feet hit the floor. A second later he stepped into the kitchen, scowling about something, a thin, five-foot-ten-inch black man in an Indian-print fleece pullover and jeans, with a can of Budweiser in one hand.

He saw Warr, the big man behind her, and then, an instant later, registered the shotgun. By that time, the big man had shifted the barrel of the shotgun and it was pointing at Cash's head. "Don't even think about moving."

"Easy," Cash said. He put the can of Budweiser on a kitchen counter, freeing his hands.

"Call Joe."

Cash looked puzzled for a second, then said, "Joe ain't here."

"Call him," the big man said. He'd thought about this, about all the calling.

Cash shrugged. "HEY JOE," he shouted.

Nothing. After a long moment, the man with the shotgun said, "Goddamnit, where is he?"

"He went away last month. He ain't been back. We don't know where he is," Warr said. "Told you he wasn't here."

"Go stand next to Deon." Warr stepped over next to Cash, and the big man dipped his left hand into his parka pocket and pulled out a clump of chain. Handcuffs. He tossed them on the floor and looked at Warr. "Put them on Deon. Deon, turn around."

"Aw, man . . ."

"It's up to you," the big man said. "I don't want to hurt you two, but I will. We're gonna wait for him if it takes all night."

"He ain't here," Warr said in exasperation. "He ain't coming back."

"Cuffs," the big man said. "I know what it sounds like when cuffs lock up."

"Aw man . . ."

"C'mon." The shotgun moved to Cash's head, and Warr bent over and picked up one set of cuffs and the big man said, "Turn around so I can see it," and Warr clicked the cuffs in place, pinning Cash's hands behind him.

The big man dipped his hand into his pocket again and came up with a roll of strapping tape. "Tape his feet together."

"Man, you startin' to piss me off," Cash said. Even with his hands cuffed, he managed to look stupidly fierce.

"Better'n being dead. Sit down and stick your feet out so she can tape you up."

Still grumbling, Cash sat down and Warr crouched beside him and said, "I'm pretty scared," and Cash said, "We gonna be all right. The masked man can go look at Joe's stuff, see he ain't here."

The big man made her take eight tight winds of tape around Cash's ankles. Then he ordered Warr to take off her parka and cuff her own hands. She got one cuff, but fumbled with the other, and the man with the shotgun told her to turn and back toward him, and when she did, clicked the second cuff in place. He then ordered both of them to lie on their stomachs, and with the shotgun pointed at them, he checked Cash's cuffs and then Warr's, just to make sure. When he was satisfied, he pulled on a pair of cotton gloves, knelt beside Warr, and taped her ankles, then moved over to Cash and put the rest of the roll of tape around his.

When he was done, Cash said, "So go look. Joe ain't here."

"I believe you," the big man said, standing up. They looked so helpless that he almost backed out. He steadied himself. "I know where Joe is."

After a moment's silence, Cash asked, "Where is he?"

"In a hole in the ground, a couple miles south of Terrebonne. Don't think I could find it myself, anymore," the big man said. "I just asked you about him so you'd think that . . ." He shrugged. "That you had a chance."

Another moment's silence, and then Warr said, "Aw, God, Deon. Listen to his voice."

Cash put the pieces together, then said, loud, croaking, but not yet screaming, "We didn't do nothin', man. We didn't do nothin'."

"I know what you did," the big man said.

"Don't hurt us," Warr said. She flopped against the vinyl, tried to get over on her back. "Please don't hurt us. I'll tell the cops whatever you want."

"We get a trial," Cash said. He twisted around, the better to see the man's face, and to test the tape on his legs. "We innocent until we proved guilty."

"Innocent." The big man spat it out.

"We didn't do nothin'," Cash screamed at him.

"I know what you did." The crust on his wounds had broken, and the big man began kicking Cash in the back, in the kidneys, in the butt and the back of his head, and Cash rolled around the narrow kitchen floor trying to escape, screaming, the big man wailing like a man dying of a knife wound, like a man watching the blood running out of his neck, and he kicked and booted Cash in the back, and when Cash flopped over, in the face; Cash's nose broke with the sound of a saltine cracker being stepped on and he sputtered blood out over the floor. Across the kitchen, Warr struggled against the tape and the handcuffs and half-rolled under the kitchen table and got tangled up in the chairs, and their wooden legs clunked and pounded and clattered on the floor as she tried to inchworm through them, Cash screaming all the while, sputtering blood.

Cash finally stopped rolling, exhausted, blood pouring out of his nose, smearing in arcs across the vinyl floor. The big man backed away from him, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then took a utility knife out of his pocket and stalked across the room to Warr, grabbed the tape around her ankles, and pulled her out from under the table. Warr cried, "Jesus, don't cut me!"

He didn't. He began slicing though her clothing, pulling it away in rags. She began to cry as he cut the clothing away. The big man closed his mind to it, finished, leaving her nude on the floor, except for the rags under the tape on her ankles, and began cutting the clothing off Cash.

"What're you doing, man? What're you doing?" Cash began flopping again, rolling. Finally, frustrated with Cash's struggles, the big man backed away and again kicked him in the face. Cash moaned, and the big man rolled him onto his stomach and knelt between his shoulder blades and patiently sliced at Cash's shirt and jeans until he was as naked as Warr.

"What're you doing?" Warr asked. Now there was a note of curiosity in her voice, showing through the fear.

"Public relations."

"Fuckin' kill ya," Cash groaned, still bubbling blood from his broken nose. "Fuckin' cut ya fuckin' head off . . ."

The big man ignored him. He closed the knife, caught Cash by the ankles, and dragged him toward the door. Cash, nearly exhausted from flopping on the floor, began flopping again, but it did no good. He was dragged flopping through the mudroom, leaving a trail of blood, onto the porch, and then down the steps to the lawn, his head banging on the steps as they went down. "Mother, mother," Cash said. "God . . . mother."

There wasn't much snow on the ground-hadn't been much snow all winter-but Cash's head cut a groove in the inch or so that there was, spotted with more blood. When they got to the Jeep, the big man popped open the back, lifted Cash by the neck and hips, and threw him inside.

Back in the house, he picked up Warr and carried her out to the truck like a sack of flour and tossed her on top of Cash and slammed the lid.

Before leaving, he carefully scanned the house for anything that he might have touched that would carry a fingerprint. Finding nothing, he picked up the shotgun and went back outside.

--from Naked Prey by John Sandford, copyright © 2003 by John Sandford, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher.