Naked Prey

18

Loren Singleton hurt. The pills helped, but they wouldn't last. The bleeding, at least, had stopped, but a bruise was growing across his chest, from his breastbone to his armpit. The bullet hole looked like a black mole, clogged with hardening blood. He had a fantasy: drive to Fargo, buy some women's makeup at a Wal-Mart, paint his chest so it looked okay, then go bare-chested for a minute or so in the deputies' locker room.

Then he thought, Why? If they wanted to look at his chest, they'd look at it, whether or not somebody had seen it in the locker room. If they looked at it deliberately, body paint wouldn't help.

He thought about calling Katina Lewis, but dismissed that after a moment. They were falling in love, but there was no way that she'd go for the killing of Martha West, no matter how necessary it may have been. He might, in fact, have to break it off with Katina-he could fake the flu for a few days, but if they stayed together, she'd have his shirt off soon enough. He couldn't bear the idea, couldn't stand it.

He had to do something. Something to fix it all. Something that would fix the whole deal.

That guy Davenport, at the deputies' meeting, asked everybody to nose around. If everybody did talk to everybody else, they might finally figure out that Loren Singleton had been closer to the Kansas City people than anybody had really appreciated. If somebody had seen them here, and somebody else had seen them there, and if they put it with what Katina knew, and what Gene Calb knew…

That was the trouble with a small town: too many people knew your business, knew your life.

In the end he called Mom.

Margery sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. "You dumb shit. You dumb shit. What were you thinking about? Now they've got to look up here. When the Sorrells were killed, it could have come from anywhere. From Kansas City. Now… you're sure the kid didn't recognize you?"

"I'm still here," Singleton said. He added, after a moment, "So are you."

"What is that supposed to mean?" She didn't yell it at him-she growled it.

"It means, we need a way out."

She looked at him for a few seconds, then said, "There's only one way out. We've got to give them somebody else who did it."

"What?"

"If they look at you, with that hole in you… if they even suspect, all they have to say is, 'Take off your shirt.' That's it. Then you're done."

"I know it," he said, miserably. He touched his chest and tears came to his eyes. "Jeez, I hurt."

"I don't know why I help you," she said. "I just oughta go to work and forget about it."

"They'd find out what happened. You'd go to jail right along with me."

"Who's gonna tell them?"

Silence. Then: "I would. You got me into this, you… witch. You're the one who thought Jane was so fuckin' wonderful, you're the one who thought Deon was so fuckin' smart, you're the one who thought of stealin' the little girls, for Christ's sake. I ain't hanging for that. I ain't hanging for the little girls. I'll take them out where the bodies are, they'll dig them up, and you know what they'll find? They'll find all that shit from the nursing home that you pumped into them, that's what they'll find."

More silence. A full minute of it, the locks closing down again, just like when they lived together years ago, locks on all the doors.

"You gotta do what I tell you."

"If it makes any goddamn sense." More tears. "Goddamn, I hurt."

She told him what to do, and Singleton staggered off to bed, pulling at the hair on the sides of his head. His head was burning, not from the wound, but from what his mother had said. Once facedown, he blacked out. He woke from time to time, to find Margery in the living room, watching TV, watching him.

Mom.

Finally, late in the afternoon, he pushed himself to his feet, brushed his teeth, washed his hands, went to the bedroom, opened the bottom drawer, and found the little.380 semi-auto. He checked it, put the gun in his pocket. And now a pipe.

His basement was small, dark, damp; a hole, really, for the water heater and the furnace and for a few thousand spiders and crickets and ants and mice. Singleton walked carefully down the wooden steps, pulled the string on the bare overhead bulb, dug around in an old trash rack, and eventually came up with what he'd been looking for.

A lead pipe. Lead pipes were hard to find. They'd been outlawed for decades and when a guy really needed a lead pipe, you could hardly find one. If you wanted to hit somebody over the head, you were usually stuck with a copper or iron pipe, which were really too hard to do the job right. With copper or iron, you'd break the skin, while, with a properly deployed lead pipe, you got a nice deadly rap, and no blood.

He was just lucky, Singleton thought, to have one. He carried it upstairs, walked around the kitchen a few times, whacking the palm of his hand with the pipe, then stepped down the hall to the living room. "Let's go," he said.

Margery pushed herself out of the La-Z-Boy. "You better do this right, dumb shit. This is it. If this ain't right, we're gonna die."

"I know."

"So get some different shit on. You're supposed to know how all this works-but you gotta get some different shit on."

Singleton pulled out his oldest parka, a dark blue nylon job that he hadn't worn in years. He got his heaviest gloves and a pair of boots. When he bent forward to tie his shoes, the pain in his chest suddenly flared and he gasped, a high-pitched "Yiiii… "

"You goddamn baby," Margery said.

Katina had said good-bye to Ruth, and then had gone out as usual to check on a dozen elderly women living in the small towns across the countryside-women who needed food or medicine or company. Katina did it three days a week, when she wasn't scheduled to make a run. Not only did that help build a better cover for the group, she enjoyed it, and did some good, she thought.

She was south of Armstrong by the end of the day, coming back into town a half-hour after dark. She decided to check Loren's house, on the chance that he was home and awake. She swung by, found the house dark, went to the garage and looked inside. His cars were there, and she went and knocked on the door, waited, knocked again. No answer. Huh. When he went somewhere, he usually drove-Loren was not a walker.

But he wasn't answering the door. For a moment, that felt sinister. What if this killer…

No. There were much better answers than that. She stood on her tiptoes and tried to see inside, but there was nothing to see. After a minute or so, she went back to her car. She'd call him later, she thought, as she headed back to the church.

Only two women were left at the church, in addition to Ruth and herself, and those two had apparently gone out. There were no runs scheduled, and the other two had been making country checks like she had. She turned on the lights and found a note on the kitchen table: "5:20. Gone down to the Red Red Robin for dinner. Lucy's buying. If you make it back before six, come down."

She looked at her watch. Only five-thirty. She'd missed them by ten minutes. She could use some restaurant food, she thought. She went back out to her car, noticed that Calb's had gone dark, and headed back to Armstrong.

The lights were on at Calb's house, on in most of the houses up and down the short street. Singleton and his mother stayed in the dark as much as they could, without looking furtive. A couple of cars had gone by, and they'd leaned behind sidewalk trees as they passed. Singleton dug at the sole of his boot, trying to look as if he were doing something, if somebody looked out the window of one of the houses-though with the parkas pulled around their faces, there was no possibility that they'd be recognized.

The walk to Calb's house had taken ten minutes, and by the time they got there, the pain was fading again, as it had after he'd taken the first pill. On the other hand, his mind still felt a little disconnected, a little cloudy. That might be okay with Gloria Calb, but he'd have to be sharp for Gene.

As they came up to Calb's, Margery said, "Let's go around to the back door. Won't be in the porch light."

"Okay."

He was like a robot, taking directions. He couldn't imagine Gloria being suspicious of him-she knew what he did for Gene. They walked up the driveway, through the fence gate between the house and the detached garage, and around to the door. Knocked on it quietly. Knocked on it again, heard somebody walking around inside. Knocked on it a third time.

Gloria Calb came to the door and looked out the window, and he dropped the hood of the parka. When she saw his face, she pushed the door open.

"Loren, what are you doing?"

"Is Gene here yet?"

"No. I'm just making dinner."

"I was supposed to meet him here. We've got a real problem. The state police called a meeting today… Can I come in? Gene thought he'd be home by now."

She was too polite to do anything but let him in, even if she'd had a second thought. "Of course, I'm sorry, come in. Gene usually is here by now… "

He pushed the door shut behind him and she turned to lead the way through the kitchen. He had the pipe in his hand, and her head was right there, like a baseball frozen in space, and he could see the salt-and-pepper hair sweeping up past her small pink ear.

Singleton hit her behind the ear with the real, actual lead pipe.

The sound was a sharp whap, and Singleton could feel the soft pipe deform around Calb's skull. Calb said, "Uhhh" and dropped to the floor. Tried to push up, still alive.

Margery, who'd waited by the side of the house, came up, inside, and squatted next to her. "She's alive," she said. "Give me the goddamn pipe, you dumb shit."

Singleton handed her the pipe, and Margery straddled Calb, stooping, and hit her a half-dozen times on the head, hard, as though she were breaking rocks with a hammer.

The second or third blow probably killed her; the others were just to make sure. There was some blood, and Singleton pulled one of the plastic sacks out of his pocket and handed it to her and she lifted Calb's head by the hair and pulled the bag over it.

Still a little blood on the kitchen floor. Margery found some 409 all-purpose cleaner under the sink, cleaned up the blood with a couple of paper towels. The towels went in the garbage bag on top of Calb's head, and they dragged the body down a hallway and leaned it against the wall, in a slumped, seated position.

Margery was breathing hard. She wiped her hands together, as if dusting them off, and said, "All right. That's one. Give me that little gun-just in case. Gene's a big one, and you're hurt."

Singleton stepped into the living room, turned on a light, then turned on a hallway light that led upstairs, so there would be light coming down from an upstairs window when Calb pulled into the driveway. He wanted Calb to think that Gloria might be upstairs.

He told his mother and she shook her head as if it were all a terrible mistake. He went to turn off the lights and she said, "Nah, nah, leave it. Get in position." Then she slapped her forehead. "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"I gotta make a call… You get in your spot."

If Calb pulled straight into the garage, as he should, he'd be coming in the back door, through the kitchen. Singleton moved across the half-lit kitchen and looked out a side window toward the garage. The garage lights should come on when Calb hit his remote control. Nothing yet.

He could hear his mother muttering into the phone in the front room. What was all that about? Something at the nursing home?

Singleton leaned back against the wall, and for the first time in five minutes, noticed the pain in his chest. Not so bad right now. Not quite so bad, but his chest felt wet. He stuck a hand inside his shirt, felt the wound, felt a dampness and pulled his fingers back out. Blood. Goddamnit, he'd broken the wound open.

He had to find somebody to work on it, and soon. God knew what the lead bullet was doing inside of him. Probably poisoning him. Thinking about it sent him to the sink, where he washed his hands again, and wiped them carefully on paper towels. He put the towels in his pocket-DNA. His mother came back in the kitchen.

"What ya doing?"

"I'm bleeding again," he said.

"Won't kill ya," she said. "I seen a lot worse." She turned up her head and sniffed. "Something in the oven?" She stepped over to the stove, and looked through the glass front. "Looks like a casserole."

"Pork chops," Singleton said, nodding at the sideboard. Three thick center-cut porkchops sat on a sideboard, and one of the burners was glowing on the stove. "Turn the stove off," he said.

Margery left the burner on but put a kettle on it, obscuring the orange glow. Not bad, Singleton thought: the bubbling pot killed the silence. "Better get back in the hall," Singleton told her. "Gene doesn't miss dinner."

Calb arrived as the words came out of Singleton's mouth. Margery slunk back into the hall as the headlights swept over the side of the house and the driveway. The lights in the garage went on, and Singleton said, aloud, "Be alone." He pressed himself to the kitchen wall beside the door from the entry.

The garage door went up, then went down, and a moment later, Calb was at the back door, stomping his feet on a snow mat. "Gloria?"

He closed the outer door and stepped into the kitchen, leaning forward, groping for the light. "Gloria?"

Singleton hit him on the crown of his head and he went down to his knees. Singleton, grimacing, hit him again, and Calb stayed on his knees and one hand came up, his face turned up, and he said "cars," or something like that, and Singleton hit him across the eyes and this time, Calb went down.

Margery stepped up, took the pipe, crouched, and began hitting him as she had Gloria, the hammer swinging once, twice, three times, four, five…

Breathing hard, she finally stood upright, light in her rattlesnake eyes. How many times had she hit Calb? He had no idea, but Calb was dead, all right-his head was like a bag of bone chips.

"That got him," the old lady said with satisfaction.

"Did you kill people at work? The old men you didn't like?"

The rattlesnake eyes slid away. "What're you talking about? Let's get to work. Dumb shit."

Singleton looked at Calb and suddenly began bawling again. His mother muttered something and went into the living room, and Singleton wiped his eyes on his sleeves and got a bag out and bagged Gene Calb's head. Then he got a paper towel and the 409, cleaned a smear of blood off the floor, put the paper towel in the bag, and called his mother, and together they dragged Calb into the hall and left him next to his wife.

Back in the kitchen. "Goddamn, something smells good," Margery said, turning toward the stove where the casserole was still cooking, smacking her lips.

Margery made him clean the floor again; he was doing that, and she was back in the living room, "keeping an eye out," she said, when the doorbell rang. He was on his hands and knees and heard the door open, and his mother say, "Come in," and then, "Where's Loren and Gene?" and he recognized the voice and his eyes got wide and he lurched to his feet and called, "Katina?"

And at that very second, he heard the door close and remembered giving Margery the.380, and he stepped to the doorway with the towel in his hand and saw Katina looking at him, a question on her face, and Margery standing behind her, her arm pointed at Katina's head, and he shouted, "No… "

Bang!

Katina went down. Her eyes rolled and she went down on her face and she never twitched, and Singleton screamed something at his mother and started toward her, and she leveled the.380 at him and screamed back, "Get the fuck away from me, get away… "

Everything locked up. Then Margery said, quietly, "It's gonna take two of us to finish this. She had to go, because there was no way for you to break it off that wouldn't be suspicious. Now, you want to help, or you want me to finish you off, too?"

The gun never wavered.

"Goddamn, that smells good," Margery said. It had taken a while, but Singleton wasn't going to hurt her. Not now-or not yet. He'd started thinking.

She went to the stove, opened the oven, took a couple of hotpad mitts off hooks beside the stove, and pulled the casserole out. She turned the top burner back on, found a pan in the bottom of the stove, and dropped in the porkchops. She found plates and bowls and silverware, dumped some macaroni and cheese from the casserole dish into the bowls, fried up the porkchops and slid them onto the dish.

"Damn, that's good." Margery said. They sat in the semidark kitchen, and talked about what to do next.

Chest hurt.

They finished eating, cleaned up the dishes and put them away, threw the cooking trash in the garbage, and began ransacking the house. Two suitcases, clothes, shoes, jewelry, Gloria Calb's purse, cosmetics, some photographs-they took two photographs out of their frames, and left the frames. Threw it all into the suitcases and carried the suitcases out to Calb's Suburban. As they went through the house, collecting things that the Calbs would take with them to Hell, they searched it, looking for money.

If Calb had left money in the house, Margery said, and the cops found it, that could queer everything. They found nothing except two safe deposit keys for a bank in Fargo. Margery took them, put them in her purse.

Then the bodies.

Gene and Gloria Calb went out to the Suburban. He humped them out as fast as he could, but Calb was heavy, and he wound up dragging him. Still, the effort nearly killed him, and Margery was no help at all. Singleton's chest felt as though it were tearing apart, and he hadn't yet gotten to the hard part of the evening.

Katina, in dying, had leaked onto the carpet. They left the blood spot and carried her upstairs, got a chair from the bedroom, pushed open the access hatch to the insulation space under the roof, and pushed her body up through the hole. She was wearing a sweater, and Singleton carefully dragged the sweater across a rough spot in the framing around the hatch, so that a few strands of wool were pulled out.

Back downstairs.

Forgetting something, he thought. Hurting. He needed another pill, is what he needed. Christ, this might be too much…

What was he forgetting? He walked through the whole scene, and remembered the shell from the.380.

Found it in the kitchen, carried it outside, rolled it through Gene Calb's fingers, and made sure he got one good right thumbprint on the cartridge, as it would be if Gene were pressing a shell into a magazine.

Carried the cartridge back inside and tossed it on the floor.

His mother had one last idea. Gene had a home office…

They went through a Rolodex, and inside found a Kansas City phone number for Davis. He dialed the number and a woman answered, "Hello?"

"My name's Carl. We are asking Kansas City people for donations to the Missouri State Law Enforcement Association, which supports your local state, county, and municipal law enforcement officers-"

"We gave some," a woman's voice said.

"Our records don't show that," Singleton said. "We feel our law enforcement officers… "

He strung the conversation out another ten seconds, until an increasingly irate woman said, "Go away," and the phone slammed down. There'd be a record that just before the Calbs disappeared, they'd called Shawn Davis in Kansas City.

Good enough.

In the garage, he got a shovel, and they climbed into Calb's truck. He had three hours before he went on duty. Needed another pill, too.

As they backed out of the driveway he thought, Goddamn, those pork chops were good. Then he thought, Katina.

Margery said, "Watch out for the mailbox, you dumb shit."

The rest of the evening was straight out of a horror film. By the time Singleton got home, he hurt so badly he could barely breathe. He peeled off his coat, peeled off the fleece under it, and found a three-inch bloodstain on his shirt. He took off the shirt, and his bloody undershirt, touched the bullet wound, and flinched. The scab over the hole had cracked open, and when he touched it, the pain flared through his rib cage, and ran around almost to his spine. At this rate, his arm would soon be useless.

He began sobbing as he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Katina. What about Katina? Was she in heaven? Was she looking down at him, knowing what he'd done?

He braced himself on the sink with both hands, and tipped his head down, and tried to cry, something more than the gasping sobs… nothing came out. After a moment, he pulled himself back together and began looking at the wound again. Something had to be done.

He carefully manipulated the bruised skin with his fingers, squeezing it, like a pimple, fighting the pain. The skin and fat wasn't particularly thick at the entry point, and he thought-could it be his imagination? — that he felt a lump. The lump didn't move, though.

Hurt. But he couldn't help himself. He went to the dresser and dug out a sewing kit, took out a needle, ran hot water on it for a moment, and then, using the eye end, probed the bullet hole. The probe hurt, but not as much as squeezing the wound. Holding his breath, he moved the needle around, then down a bit, maneuvered, felt as though he were pushing muscle aside-and hit something hard.

Didn't feel like bone. He moved the needle carefully now, judging the characteristics of the lump. Found the edges. "That's it," he muttered to himself. He found what he believed to be the center of the slug, and pushed on it. A little pain, but the lump didn't move. He found the edge of it, explored beside it. Brighter blood was coming out now, apparently from freshly pierced capillaries, and it made the exploration more difficult, the lump more slippery. But he found the side of it, and pushed with the end of the needle. It didn't move. He explored some more; he was sweating now, from the pain, but the pain was still bearable.

After a minute, he pulled the needle out and looked at it. The bullet, he thought, was stuck in a rib-hadn't gone through, but had gotten into it. Every time he breathed, or flexed, the motion was transmitted through his rib cage, and that was where the spasms of pain came from. He thought about it for a moment, then pulled on a sweatshirt and went out to the garage.

If he hadn't had just the right thing to work with, he might not have tried. But he did have the right thing, or what seemed like the right thing, in his tool box: a pair of tiny, needle-nosed pliers used to do automotive electrical work.

This was going to hurt,he thought. But if it worked…

He carried them back into the house, took two pills, scrubbed the pliers with antibacterial soap, and then, still not happy with their condition, dropped them in a saucepan, covered them with water, and put them on the stove. He let them boil for a while, then cool down underwater, as he waited for the pills to take hold. He glanced at the clock: forty-five minutes before he was due at work. He could do this.

He did it sitting at the kitchen table. Probed the lump with the needle, then slowly pushed the pliers in until he touched it. The pain had been dulled by the pills, but this hurt as bad as anything yet. His right hand, the pliers hand, began shaking, so he pinned the pliers in place with his left hand, and leaned against the table, bracing himself.

Then with his right hand, steady now, he slowly spread the pliers, pushed them down alongside the lump-or what felt like down, his hand shaking again-and squeezed. Pain flared through his body. Might have gotten some meat, he thought. Squeezed… and had it.

Slow and steady. He held it, pulled, pulled… had some meat, but then suddenly felt the lump come free. Held it, held it, pulled…

And had it out. It emerged like a small, gray larva, slick with blood, a.22 slug half the size of a pea.

Blood dribbled out of his chest again, but now everything felt different. The pain was changed-there'd been an ugly, corrosive feel to it, and now it just hurt. This he could handle.

He tottered off to the bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror. His face seemed narrower, sharper, wolf-like; and white, from the pain, his frown lines etched deep.

But he could touch his chest without flinching. He could manipulate the wound area without the arc of pain. He took two tabs of penicillin and a pain pill and looked at his watch. Had to start moving. He patched himself with gauze and tape, carried his bloody shirt and undershirt and fleece down to the washer, and threw them in, poured in a half-cup of liquid Tide, and started it. Climbed into his uniform.

Almost done now, he thought, as he buttoned up his shirt. There was Letty West-but if they were searching the landfill, he would have known about it, and so far, they weren't. Maybe she didn't know? Maybe he'd taken that risk for nothing?

He had the night to think about it.

And to think about the bullet. There was a sense of accomplishment with the bullet. Damn, that was a story. Maybe he could tell it someday.

That night was the longest in Singleton's life-and like most of the other nights of his life, nothing happened. He drove back and forth through town, his usual eleven o'clock grid, then headed out into the countryside, passing through a list of small Custer County towns, showing the flag for the sheriff. He tried to think about Katina as he drove, but where Katina used to be, there was a big dark box. He tried to focus on her face, and nothing came. He tried to think about what would happen in the next few days, and couldn't think of anything.

At seven o'clock, he signed off, went home, and crashed-lay fully clothed on his bed, unfeeling, until the telephone rang.