Naked Prey

15

Lucas had stolen an old copy of Fortune magazine from the motel lobby and lay in bed, reading an article about how he could still retire rich, when the phone rang. Del?

He picked it up and got the comm center clerk from the Law Enforcement Center. "Mr. Davenport? This is Susan Conrad down at the sheriff's office. We've just dispatched our fire department to the West house. The call coming in said the whole house was burning like crazy. Thought you might want to know."

"Jesus. Thanks."

Lucas slammed the phone back on the hook and ran barefoot in his underwear to the door and out, down two, and began pounding on Del's door. "Get up. Del. Get up."

Without waiting for an answer he ran back to his room, left the door open, and began pulling on his jeans. He'd been outside for no more than ten seconds and he was cold-God only knew what the temperature was. He was pulling on his shirt when Del stumbled into the room, pulling on jeans, still wearing his pajama top.

"West house is burning down. Fire trucks on the way," Lucas blurted. Del disappeared. Lucas pulled on his socks and shoes, and in the distance, through the open door, could hear the siren that called in the volunteer fire department, and the roar of the truck heading out.

Shoes on, Lucas got his wallet and keys and coat and gloves and headed out to the truck, climbed inside, saw Del running toward him, popped the passenger-side door lock, and Del was inside and Lucas took off.

Del was carrying his shirt and coat and boots and dressed as they headed toward the highway. "Not a coincidence," he grunted.

"We been out with that kid all over the place, it's like we were dragging bait. I didn't even think about it," Lucas said. They were probably two or three miles behind the fire truck when they got to Highway 36, but once past the last house going out of town, Lucas dropped the pedal to the floor and left it there. Two minutes out, he pushed the button that lit his information screen, which said that it was fourteen degrees below zero. Another minute out, they could see a glow to the north, burning faintly above the closer red lights of the fire truck. "Jesus Christ, that can't be it," Del said. "We're too far away."

"Gotta be it," Lucas said, "Unless the report was wrong."

They were closing quickly on the first-responder fire truck, but didn't catch it until they were just outside of Broderick. By then, they knew the reports had been right: the fire was north of Broderick and huge, and there was nothing else out there.

Lucas, worried that some of the town residents might be in the highway, in the dark, looking at the fire, let the truck lead them through town. When the truck pulled into the house, Lucas swung past it and turned in at West Ditch Road.

Even from there, on the opposite side of the ditch, the heat was ferocious. "If there's anybody in there, they're gone," Del said. One of the firemen had jumped off the truck, slid down the bank of the ditch and began hacking at the ice on the bottom with an oversized ax. As he did that, another man was uncoiling a hose, and when he had enough of it, he rolled it down the bank, and the ax-man dragged it to the hole he'd cut and shoved it under the ice.

A minute later, a thin stream of water was splashing onto the house, but it was obvious that it was doing no good at all-it was like pissing into a welding torch. The fire was eating everything. More lights now, police cars and two more fire trucks.

Then:

"Lucas."

The voice was high and shrill but somehow weak, and might almost have been the scream of a failing joist in the fire. But Lucas knew it wasn't, and he ran down the gravel track, in the direction of the sound, and shouted, "Letty? Letty?"

"Over here. Here." He could see the pale half-oval of her face across the ditch, half of her face lit by the fire. "I'm hurt bad."

"Hang on," Lucas shouted. Del yelled, "Not that way," as Lucas went straight down the wall of the ditch, sliding, crawled halfway up the other side, slid back, tried again, slid back, and finally ran thirty feet down the ditch to where some tumbleweeds were still rooted in the side, and clambered out of it. Del had run around the end of it, and was coming toward him. "Letty?" He'd lost track of her.

"I'm hurt bad, and I think Mom's… Mom's in there. Somebody came and shot her." She began sobbing and Lucas came up, and he bent to pick her up and she shrank away and said, "My hand is hurt bad, and my side hurts, I think I'm shot, and my ankle might be broke… "

"Aw, Jesus." Del was there, and Lucas pulled off his coat and said, "We're making a sling, just… aw, fuck it. Del… " Lucas pulled his coat back on and said, "I'm gonna pick her up. Which side hurts, honey? Which side?"

He picked her up, cradling her, and Del asked, "Where're your keys?" and Lucas told him, and Del dug them out of Lucas's coat pocket and ran back to get the truck. One of the firemen ran up and asked, "She burned?" and Letty said, "No, I'm hurt." Del was there in a few seconds, and Lucas lifted her into the back seat and then crawled in with her, and Del put the truck on the highway and they were headed back to Armstrong, running at top speed.

"You okay?"

"I'm hurt bad… " She began sobbing again.

Lucas got on the cell phone, found a signal, called into the sheriff's comm center. "How do we get to the hospital? We've got a hurt kid."

"You on your way back to town?

"Running fast."

"Where are you?"

"Just went through Broderick."

"There'll be a car sitting on the edge of town with its light bar flashing. Blink your headlights a bunch of times when you come up, and he'll take you right through to the medical center."

"We're coming… "

Lucas relayed the information to Del, then turned back to Letty. "I know you're hurt. But tell me what happened, if you can."

"I was up in my bedroom, and Mom was down in hers, and I heard this knock… " She told the story, and when it was done, Del muttered, "Jesus Christ, Letty," and Lucas said, "You think he was shot."

"He was shot. He fell down."

"Maybe he was… you know, going down so you couldn't see him."

"He was shot," she said, stubbornly. "I'd never miss anyone that close. He's shot in the chest."

"All right. Twenty-two short?"

"Yes." Her body was shaking with grief and pain. "He shot Mom. She was yelling for me to run, and she was fighting him, and then there was a shot and she stopped yelling and he started coming up the steps… You didn't see her outside, in the yard or anything?"

Lucas said, "I didn't look. I was just trying to stay out of the way of the fire guys. You never saw the guy?"

"Only his outline. It was way dark. But… he talked to me. He knew who I was. He called me Letty. And he sounded like… he was from around here. He sounded like one of us."

"Did you see his car?"

After a moment of silence, she said, "He didn't have a car. He didn't have a car. I shot him and he fell down and then he got up and walked back to the house while I was trying to reload, and then I just sat there and the house caught on fire and I couldn't get up, and then the house burned and then you came. No car ever drove away."

"You're sure."

"No car. He didn't have a car."

"Okay. Listen… "

He was about to say something, but she pushed a hand out of her coat sleeve and tried to look at it, and Lucas saw a huge gash that started at her wrist and ran across the palm and disappeared between her middle and ring fingers.

"Better keep your hand down," he said. "It's bleeding a little."

"Coming up on the patrol car," Del said. Lucas looked down the highway, and saw the light bar. Del clicked the high beams off and on, and the patrol car pulled out on the highway, rolled slow until they'd gotten close, and then sped up and led them through town to the medical center's Emergency Room. Three people were standing on the ramp, and then a fourth joined them, pushing a gurney, and Del pulled up next to them.

The four moved Lucas and Del out of the way and loaded Letty onto the gurney and pushed her inside, and Lucas went over to a plastic trash barrel and punted it out into the driveway, where it rolled around spewing its garbage.

"Her fuckin' hand," he said to Del. "Her fuckin' hand looks like it's almost cut in half."

"What about the chest? Was she shot in the chest?"

"She was pretty alert for anything deep," he said. Then: "I gotta get inside."

"I'll park the car… "

Lucas stopped at the door and looked back: "You getting pissed yet?"

"Yeah. I'm pissed."

A young resident had been hustled out of bed when Lucas called in, and he was looking at Letty when Lucas pushed his way into the examination room. "How is she?"

Letty tried to push up, and the doc turned, looked at Lucas over his mask: "Who're you?"

"I'm a cop. How is she?"

The resident turned back to Letty, and as an aside to a nurse, in exactly the wrong tone, said, "Get that guy out of here."

Lucas snarled, "Listen, asshole, I'm not going into all the background, but if you want to keep your license in Minnesota, don't fuck with me. Now, how is she? Is she shot?"

The doc looked at a nurse, who shrugged, and showed no inclination to throw Lucas out. The doc said, "She has what might be a gunshot wound, but it's not life-threatening. Her hand is badly cut. We haven't fully evaluated it yet. We need to X-ray her foot. It's badly swollen and she complains of pain. It might be broken-it's at least badly sprained. Is that good enough?"

"What about the hand? That looked bad."

"I cut it on the broken window," Letty said. "Did you find Mom?"

"The hand will take, mmm, take some special attention," the resident said. "There's a surgeon in Fargo… "

"Fuck Fargo," Lucas said. He banged back out of the examining room, and went outside, met Del, told him what he was doing, pulled out his cell phone and called home. A sleepy Weather answered on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"It's me-I've got a problem."

He told her about it quickly, and when he was done, Weather said, "Get her down here as fast as you can. We need her while the wound is fresh. I don't do hands, but I can get Harry Larson to do her. How fast can you get her here?"

"I'll have to check. Go back to sleep-I'll call you. Are you cutting tomorrow morning?"

"Not until ten. What are you going to do?"

"See if I can find a plane. If I can't, I'll drive her down, or something. Get an ambulance."

"Listen: let me call over to Regions, see what they've got. Maybe it'd be quicker to get a fast helicopter out of here, rather than messing around."

"Good. Call me back."

"Who's paying?"

"We are. I am."

"Won't be cheap."

"Call 'em."

Del asked, "What 're we doing?"

"We're gonna take her out of here in a helicopter-Weather's taking care of it. She's gonna call back."

"I don't think her mom made it," Del said. "When I came running around the ditch, going back to where you were… somebody inside the house was burning." He wrinkled his nose, then made a spitting gesture off to the side. Burning people smelled like pork barbeque, and left a stink in your nose and mouth.

"She knows it," Lucas said. "She hasn't admitted it yet. Sounds like Mama took on the asshole, whoever he is."

"Wonder why he burned the house down? If he hadn't done that, Letty might have died out there. I'd figure he was after Letty… "

"Why? I mean, why was he after her?"

Del thought. "I dunno."

"What if he was after Mom?"

Del shook his head. "That doesn't feel right."

"Okay. But the whole thing is pretty interesting. Why was he after her? What was he burning? Where is he now, especially if he was shot?"

"I have my doubts about him being shot. I mean, we both know cops who've emptied a whole goddamn Glock at somebody down the hall, and didn't hit shit."

"Mmm. I kind of suggested that, and she said she hit him. Said there was no way she missed. I kind of think she might have hit him."

"Better get the word out to the local hospitals."

"We can do that."

THEY WERE STILL talking about it when Weather called back. "Turns out there's an air evac service out of Brainerd, which is almost halfway up there, and they can have a helicopter on its way in a half-hour. They'll call you when they're coming, and give you a time estimate. He says there's a landing pad right there at the hospital. He said it wouldn't be much more than an hour before they're coming in up there. I can meet her when she gets down here."

"Excellent."

Back in the hospital he told the doc, "We're medevacing her, sending her down to Hennepin General and a hand guy. A chopper'll be here in an hour or so. We need to get her stable."

"The hand is the only big problem," the doc said. "She's got a groove in her side where she was shot, but that's minor. So's the leg. The hand… the hand is a problem."

"So how soon can she go?"

"I'll start some pain medication, and she can be ready in a half-hour. If the chopper's coming in here, we're good."

Lucas said to Letty, "I told you my wife is a doctor. She's setting up everything down in the Cities, and she's gonna meet you. You'll be okay, but they want to fix your hand as soon as they can."

"Okay," she said. "Did you check on Mom?"

"We're gonna do that now," Lucas said. "I'm gonna head right back up there-you'll be okay, just ride along and do what everybody tells you. They'll take care of you."

"Mom's dead," she said.

"We'll go see what happened," Lucas said. He touched her good leg. "You take care of yourself."

Back at the West house, the fire was virtually out-there was almost nothing left to burn, and what had been a four-square farmhouse was now a hole in the ground. A deputy, who said that he'd met Lucas at the hanging scene, shook his head when they asked about Martha West. "Nobody's seen her. Car's here. There was this… " He gestured at the house. "There was this smell… "

"I know. Letty said her mother was downstairs. She heard a knock on the door, then her mother started screaming, there was a shot, the screaming stopped, and Letty went out the window. Never saw her mother or heard her again."

"We're sure she's telling the truth? I don't want to suggest anything, but they were out here alone."

"Letty was shot herself, and it's not self-inflicted, believe me," Lucas said. "Somebody shot her from behind and above. And nobody would do to themselves what happened to her, just to cover up. Her hand-there's a possibility that she's gonna be crippled."

The deputy winced. "Okay. You know, out here on the prairie… strange things happen when people are alone too much."

"In the city, strange things happen when they're together too much," Del said.

"Strange things happen," the deputy said.

Lucas suspected they were about to lurch off into some philosophical black hole and hastily interjected. "We need to alert all the local hospitals and doctors that the killer may have been shot."

"That's something. Since she didn't hit him in the head, I hope she hit him in the nuts," the deputy said. "I'll call it in."

Once Singleton got the fire going, he'd slipped out the front of the West home and begun jogging down the highway. He'd thought about one more look around, one more quick search for Letty, but she had that gun, and she'd see him coming. He gave up on that, and jogged.

His chest hurt. Hurt a lot-but he wasn't spitting blood, wasn't having any trouble breathing. If he could just keep going…

Running hurt. He ran halfway back to Broderick, then he stopped, stooped over, braced his hands on his knees, and tried to ease the pain. The pain was coming in waves now, and if he hadn't been shot, he might have thought he was having a heart attack. Behind him, the fire was growing. He ran on, hurting, made it to the car, running through the dark behind the convenience store and the shop.

This was the dangerous part. This was where somebody might see him. He eased the patrol car out from behind the shop, pointed it south, and took off. No lights in any windows that he could see, but in the rearview mirror, the fire was going like crazy.

A mile out of town, two miles, four-then his handset burped, and he heard the comm center calling over to the fire station. He dropped the hammer on it. He was still two miles from the nearest road that would take him away from Highway 36.

He made it by ten seconds. He'd made the turn when he saw the light bar on the first responder truck. He continued east, and out the side window could see the huge balloon of fire at the West house; then the comm center was squawking at him and he said he was on the way back but he was pretty far south and he heard the siren come up…

And he hurt. Goddamn Letty West.

He was sweating from the pain: he could smell himself. He made another mile, crossed a gravel road heading south, into the backside of Armstrong. Four minutes later, he was at his garage, running the door up.

Inside the house, he peeled off his parka, took off his shirt and undershirt, and examined the hole in his chest. It was a hole: a purplish,22-sized dot on his chest, already surrounded by a nasty bruise. He pushed on the skin around it, and winced: won't do that again. Blood trickled steadily from the hole-not much, but it wouldn't stop.

He went into the bathroom, got a roll of gauze, made a thick pad, went into the kitchen, found some duct tape, and taped the pad to his chest. He couldn't help fooling with the area around the hole, squeezing gently to see if he could feel the slug. He couldn't, but he hurt himself again.

"Fuckin' dummy," he said.

The phone rang. He let it ring. Probably Katina, with news about the fire. He got enough tape on his chest that he was sure he wouldn't bleed through his shirt, then checked his arm. Martha West had scratched him, not too badly, but there would have been skin under her fingernails. Good idea about the fire. He washed the scratches with soap and warm water, smeared on some disinfectant ointment, and duct-taped it.

All right. No blood showing. He could still walk around. He got a fresh shirt, eased into it. Touched his chest, and the pain ran through him. The phone started ringing again. He ignored it, touched his chest again, gasped with the pain, and headed out to the car.

The fire station was lit up-and empty. Every man was out at the fire. Singleton pulled into the station, pushed through the main door and called out, "Hey. Anybody home?"

Nobody answered, though a Hank Williams, Jr., song was drawling through the open truck slots.

"Hey. Anybody?"

No? Excellent. He headed up the stairs, to the sleeping loft, went straight through it to a storeroom where the medical gear was kept. The fire department was also the backup paramedic service. He pulled down a paramedic's pack, ripped off the sealer tab, and zipped it open.

Shit: no pills. He needed some painkillers, and there wasn't a goddamn thing. He'd been sure there'd be some-firefighters always seemed to have a few pills around, supposedly because of the small burns they took on the job. If so, they didn't get the pills from the paramedic packs. He zipped the pack up, replaced it.

Where else? The hospital, the drugstore. The hospital would probably be on alert, with the fire, and he didn't know how he'd get the drugs anyway. The drugstore had a safe…

He touched his chest. Goddamnit, that hurt.

He was on his way out when he got lucky. All the lockers were open and he saw a tube of pills in one of them. He looked at it: Advil. Not good enough. Then he checked all the lockers, quickly, found a dozen more bottles of pills, mostly vitamins and nonprescription painkillers. Finally, in the locker of one of the two full-time firemen, he found two tubes of Dilaudid. Twenty orange tabs, in total. Both tubes carried the notation, "One tablet every four to six hours."

Excellent. He took the tubes. Dug further through the locker and found another tube: penicillin. Good. Took that, too.

Have to think about Katina, though. He was gonna be out of action for a while, and he needed a reason. Had to think.

Made it out to the car, touched his chest. Goddamn, that hurt.

Then he thought, Wonder where Letty West got to? He'd gone out to her house to solve a problem, and hadn't. She was still out there, Letty was.

Singleton got into his car and headed for the fire. Halfway there, a new thought occurred to him: Mom was gonna be pissed.