Naked Prey

26

Del was stabilized in Armstrong and then flown back to the Cities, where he was met by Weather, by Rose Marie, and by the governor himself.

Lucas stayed behind for a hard two days after Singleton was shot. They brought Margery Singleton in, a bird-like woman shocked by what they were saying. "It can't be my boy; it can't be my boy," she said. "He's dead? You say he's dead?" The sheriff eventually patted her on the back, thanked her for the phone call, and sent her on her way.

They debriefed Ruth Lewis, who was accompanied by an influential Minneapolis attorney who did the heavy lifting for the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The drug runs weren't mentioned, but she told them what she "suspected" about the car theft ring.

All of Calb's employees were interviewed, except for three who'd departed for parts unknown. All of those interviewed professed to have been mystified by the number of Toyotas they'd been painting. They'd all heard that it was a deal with some insurance company to fix slightly flawed new Toyotas.

Letty was interviewed and sent down to the Cities with the older woman from the church. She was scheduled for more work on her hand.

The FBI crew found first Tammy Sorrell's grave, led there by the Christmas wrap at the edge of the dump cut, and then, later the same day, Annie Burke's.

Lucas turned the details over to the crew from Bemidji, and on the third day, left Custer County. An Alberta Clipper was coming through, and he stayed close to the front all the way down, driving through the feathery snow, listening to the FM stations come and go.

He arrived home to find his wife putting her coat on.

"Going to Subway. I thought I'd be back before you got here," Weather said, after kissing him hello.

"I can go if you want," Lucas offered.

"No, I'll go. Back in fifteen."

"Talk to Del today?"

"Yes. Went over, talked to him, looked at the films. I'm no orthopod, but I think what you heard is right," Weather said. "The break's a bad one-some of the bone got blown back into his calf. Twenty years ago, before they got so good with bone grafts, he'd be stuck with a pretty bad limp. Now, it'll be a while before he's out jogging, but I don't think he'll limp."

"Cheryl's pissed at me," Lucas said. "That happens. The wife always gets a little pissed at the partner when somebody gets hit."

"You feel bad about it?"

"Some," Lucas said. "But I don't know what else I could have done. We thought he was in there killing them."

The phone rang, Weather picked it up, listened, said, "Yes, just a second." She covered the mouthpiece with her hand, said, "It's Sheriff Anderson from Armstrong," and, "I'm going to Subway."

The kid was in bed, the housekeeper was in her apartment. Lucas went up and took a quick shower, and got back downstairs just as Weather arrived with the sandwiches. They sat at the kitchen table, eating them and splitting a bag of potato chips. "I thought things would go easier, with the new job," Weather said. "I think Cheryl thought so, too. Del's been in some scrapes, but nothing bad since that deal with the pinking shears."

"That was more… grotesque… than really bad," Lucas said. "I mean, it wasn't like he couldn't work for months and months."

"So what'd this Anderson character have to say? The sheriff?"

"About what?"

"About the autopsy, for one thing. You said they were going to do them today."

"Singleton had eight bullet holes in him. Two were mine, two were Zahn's, and four were Letty's, from two different guns. She said she shot him, and she had-he had a hole in his chest, but somehow he got the slug out."

"Jeez."

"Yeah. The two little girls were killed with injections. They're not sure what the agent was, but when I heard that, it kind of weirded me out. I don't know what to think about that." He frowned, contemplated his sandwich, and added, "Katina and Martha West were killed with the same gun used on the Sorrells, but it wasn't Singleton's service revolver. He probably ditched it somewhere. His mother said he had another, smaller gun, which sounds right. But the injections… that kind of worried me. Doesn't sound like Singleton.

"But then, the sheriff tore apart Singleton's place-actually, it was the guys from Bemidji and a couple of deputies-and they found a load of cash in the basement. More of the kidnapping money. A lot of it's missing, but they probably just spent it. If the Burke guy wants, he could probably bring an action against the Calb estate and the Cash estate and get some of the money back from the sales of their houses, and so on. I don't know if it'll come to much, now-the Cash house, anyway. With Calb out of business, I think Broderick's probably gonna sink back into the prairie."

"Huh." Weather took an unladylike bite out of her sandwich.

"Did you see Letty today?" Lucas asked.

"Yes," Weather said, talking with her mouth full. "They took the cast off to have a look, put another one back on. They think that they might do some revisions next week. She's going to be a hurting little kid for a while."

"Huh. She was pretty unhappy when I talked to her last night," Lucas said. He half-grinned. "Anderson took her new gun away from her, for one thing. I don't think she's gonna get it back."

"She's gotta be traumatized," Weather said. "Her mother might not have meant to do it, but that little girl has been abused. That's what it amounts to. Taking care of a drunk when you're twelve years old? And she's done it for years. She was the adult in the family. And then she's shot and shoots back, and her mother's killed… It's amazing that she hasn't gone catatonic."

"Yeah… " They chewed for a moment, then Lucas said, "Anderson said that Ruth Lewis took off. He's trying to find her, but the older lady up there, at the church, said Ruth crossed into Canada, something to do with her network. Said she'd be back in a few days. Sheriff said he checked, and the border people have a record of her crossing this morning. So… I suspect she's rearranging things. They'll be bringing the dope across somewhere else."

"Hope she pulls it off," Weather said. "She seemed like she was trying to do the right thing."

"I don't know," Lucas said. "I'm not smart enough to figure out all the what-ifs."

Then Lucas sat tapping his fingers on the table for a minute, inspecting an olive that had squirted out of his sandwich, and finally, Weather said, "What?"

He put the sandwich down and made his face sincere, like when he wanted to do something that Weather might not like. "You think, uh, Letty might be able to move in with us for a while? Until things get figured out?"

Weather ripped open the nearly empty sack of potato chips, and dumped the last four chips on the table. She took two of them. "I wondered if you were going to ask. I think we could, though I would predict some trouble. She's tough, she's gonna do what she wants to do, and she doesn't mind giving you a hard time."

"Which reminds of us who?" Lucas asked.

Weather was puzzled. "Who?"

"Jesus Christ, Weather, you just described yourself perfectly." He took one of the remaining chips.

"I did not." She was amazed. "I'm the most flexible person I know."

"Aw, man… " He gave up. "But you think we can do that?"

"I think we could. I like her a lot," Weather said. "We've got plenty of room. Even if we have another child, the two little ones could sleep together until Letty went off to college… "

"Another… hmm."

"I'm not pregnant, dummy," she said. "I'm just talking theory, at this point."

Lucas looked at the table. "You gonna eat that chip?"

That same night, Margery Singleton was surprised to find her back door open when she got home. She always locked it. Or almost always-though, it being a small town, she sometimes forgot.

She pushed inside, trying to recapture the feeling of the morning. Hadn't she gotten the key stuck in the door that morning? Or was it yesterday?

She pushed the door closed, flipped the light, took a step into the kitchen and stopped. A woman was sitting at the table and Margery took a step back. "Who the hell are you?" Then she saw the pile of money on the table. "That's my money, there."

Ruth Lewis picked up Loren Singleton's.380.

"You killed my sister, Mom. And you killed those little girls with needle injections. And God only knows who else. Something has to be done about that." She was pointing the pistol at Margery's chest.

The pistol, which Ruth had picked up at the church, had been surprisingly simple to work. She'd done a little practice before she'd sent another one of the sisters across the border with her driver's license. Ruth would cross herself later that night, with that sister's ID. A simple-enough alibi-she'd learned to think like a criminal.

"Well, you can't just shoot me," Margery said. She was thinking ahead two squares, like she had with Loren. Loren had been dead and gone before he'd left her house that night, and she'd known it. But Loren was screwed up in the head, and if the cops had gotten a handle on him, he would've spilled all the beans. And when they found the little girls at the dump, and found those needle pricks… who would have thought they could do that, after all this time?

"You can't just shoot me," Margery was saying. If she could get close enough to the table…

Ruth said, "I don't see why not."

She flinched with the blast, deafeningly loud in the small room. But she showed that cold, wintery smile when Margery Singleton went down.