Naked Prey

9

Del had gotten them rooms in a Motel 6, but after Small Bear identified Sorrell with the photos, they decided to head back to the Cities. The helicopter had already gone, so they'd be driving.

"We have to put together an approach," Lucas told Dickerson, as they rode back to Armstrong in Anderson's truck. "You gotta stay right on top of the DNA samples. The lab'll want to take three or four days, but you can get them in two days if you push. Also: we need that formal statement from Small Bear. Get her while she's hot."

"You gonna bust him?"

"I'll talk to the governor," Lucas said. "I'd rather have the DNA done first, so we know that what we've got is good. But there's some politics in this, so-I dunno. If the DNA's good, we'll have him cold, and what I'd like to do is talk to him without any lawyers around. Find out what the hell happened. How did he pin them down? What was the sequence? Were there more people involved?"

Dickerson nodded. "All right. He was in the Army, so he'll have prints on file. I'll get them and run them against everything we're taking out of his hotel room, so we'll have that, too. I'll get all the tapes from Moose Bay, see if we can get him following her out of the casino… "

"Need statements from everybody… "

"I wish you'd stay around for when Washington gets up here," Anderson said to Lucas. Anderson was behind the wheel. "I don't know exactly what to do with him."

"Don't talk to the guy," Lucas said. "Be too busy solving the crime. This guy makes a living with confrontation, and you cannot win. Have somebody designated to handle your information and to deal with him-a woman would be best, somebody a little older and motherly, so if he really ripped on her, he'd seem like an asshole. But you oughta stay away."

"I gotta say something," Anderson protested. "It's my town."

"Man, I'm telling you, if you go out there and meet him, he's gonna fuck you," Lucas said. "If you want to be on TV, that's okay. Have somebody keep an eye on Washington, and talk to the TV people while he's taking a nap, or eating. Be really polite about him-welcome him to the community-but do not talk to him."

Anderson looked at Dickerson. "What do you think?"

"Lucas is right. If you talk to him with a TV camera around, he'll hand you your ass. If you gotta talk to him, do it privately, in your office. Don't let the cameras in."

"If you can hold him off until the day after tomorrow, then the whole thing may be moot," Lucas said. "We'll jump on Sorrell, and leak the story like crazy. Washington probably won't want to be identified as defending people who kidnapped and murdered a little girl."

"All right, all right," Anderson said. He muttered something under his breath, then said, "You guys are treating me like the village idiot."

After a moment of silence, Lucas asked, "Think you could do pretty good surgery?"

"What?" Anderson said.

"Surgery. You think you could do a heart bypass tomorrow if you had to?"

Now Anderson was pissed. "Is this leading to something?"

"Yeah. This: Washington is to confrontation and publicity what a heart surgeon is to bypass surgery. You shouldn't be embarrassed if you're not as good at it as he is. None of us are. It's his specialty. He's not interested in getting to know you, or understanding the problem, or solving the crime. He's here to fuck somebody and raise some money for himself. If you give him a target, he'll fuck you. Nothing personal-it's just his job."

They rode in silence for a while, then Dickerson said, "I'm seeing stars, I think."

"Supposed to clear off just long enough to get really cold, then tomorrow, we got more clouds coming," Anderson said.

Del called the Motel 6 from the Law Enforcement Center and canceled their rooms, and Lucas talked to the car dealer, Holme, about taking the Oldsmobile south to the Cities. "It's a good runner," Holme said. "No problem about that. But how you gettin' it back?"

"I'll find somebody to bring it back, or bring it back myself," Lucas said. "Give me a week." He thought about the possibility of a body out at the Cash house: he'd be back.

And he called Mitford, who was still in his office. "We got a solid ID," Lucas said. "I'm coming back tonight, we ought to arrive sometime after two in the morning, so I can be in early tomorrow. If you talk to the governor tonight, our next question is: When do we take him?"

He explained about the DNA processing time. "The thing is, if we really nail him down right at the start, before he has a chance to get into some long strategy sessions with his lawyers… maybe we can find out what happened. At least what happened with the kidnapping."

"A two-fer," Mitford said. "Clean up the kidnappings and the lynchings-the hanging. I'll talk with the governor tonight. You'll be on your cell phone?"

"Yeah, but there are some big holes in the cell phone net. You might not be able to get me for a couple hours, unless I'm going through a town. Once I get on I-94 going south, we could probably hook up."

"If I don't get you, we meet tomorrow for sure. How about seven o'clock?"

"You got a life, Neil?"

"What?"

On the way out of the Law Enforcement Center, Lucas said good-bye to Anderson and Dickerson, the sheriff shaking hands with him this time. Lucas had the feeling that he wouldn't stay away from Washington, but that was Anderson's problem. "Guys, we kicked some ass today," Lucas said.

They consolidated their bags in the Olds, and Lucas took the wheel. As they passed the front of the courthouse, they saw the glow of TV lights on the front steps.

"Getting set up for Washington," Del said.

"Like a flame for a moth," Lucas said. "I'll bet you ten bucks that Anderson winds up out there."

"No bet."

The Twin Cities were southeast from Armstrong, but the fastest way home was on a state highway that went directly west for almost forty miles, where they would hook up with the north-south I-29 in North Dakota. They'd take I-29 to Fargo, where they'd catch I-94 east into the Cities. It was a long way around, but both Anderson and Dickerson said it was the quickest way, by at least an hour.

On the way out of town, they called home to tell their wives that they were on the way. The housekeeper told Lucas that Weather was at the supermarket on Ford Parkway, but she'd pass the message on. Lucas put the speedometer on ninety and they headed through the moonless dark toward the North Dakota border.

"Ought to bring the Porsche up here, let her out," Lucas said. "Dead straight, not another car in sight, and we know where all the cops are."

" 'Course, we could hit a cow," Del said.

They rode along for a few minutes, then Lucas said, "You know, I didn't see any cows."

"Come to think of it, neither did I."

Another minute, and Lucas said, "They must've named Moose Bay after something. Maybe we'll hit a moose."

Del didn't answer. Lucas glanced over at him, found him staring out the window.

"What?"

"My God. Look at the lights. Northern lights."

Lucas couldn't see them from the south side of the car, so he stopped, and they both got out and stood next to the idling Olds. The stars were so close that they looked like headlights on a city highway, but the real show was to the north, where a rippling curtain of pale yellow and even paler violet hung from the vault of the sky. The curtain moved, swayed, brightened and then faded, and then exploded in another sector. They stood on the highway watching, until the cold began to seep into their shoulders, and then they got back in the Olds and took off.

Del still watched from his window, and finally he sighed and said, "Too much light to see them in the Cities. I mean, you can see them, but not like this."

"I can see them pretty good from my cabin," Lucas said.

"So goddamn bright that you don't need your headlights," Del said.

"Yeah?" Lucas reached out and turned off the headlights. They were immediately hurtling through a darkness so intense that it should have had Elvis paintings on it.

"Turn the fuckin' lights back on," Del said after a few seconds. "There might be a curve somewhere."

"No curves," Lucas said. "I could tie the wheel down, crawl in the back seat and go to sleep." But he turned the lights on, and they crossed the Red River into North Dakota thirty-three minutes after blowing out of Armstrong.

Lucas drove the first two hours, then Del took two, and Lucas took them into the Cities six hours after leaving the Law Enforcement Center. He dropped Del at his house, then drove through the quiet streets to Mississippi River Boulevard and the Big New House. He left the Olds in the driveway, got his bag from the trunk, fumbled his house keys out of his pocket, and trudged inside.

Weather woke when he tiptoed into the bedroom by the light from the hallway. "That you?"

"No. It's a crazed rapist."

"How'd it go?"

"We cracked it." He started to undress.

"What?" She pushed herself up. "You can turn on a light. Here… "

Her bedstand light came on. "Are you working tomorrow morning?" Lucas asked. Weather operated almost daily.

"No. I might do a palate in the afternoon, but they've got to finish some tests on the kid, so it's not a sure thing. What happened with the lynching?"

"Not a lynching," Lucas said. "It was a revenge killing. You remember that Hale Sorrell who was in the paper a month ago, his kid got kidnapped?"

"Yeah?"

"It was him."

She was amazed, and a little entertained. "Lucas, you're joking."

"No. We haven't made an arrest, but the bodies were really clogged up with somebody else's DNA, and I'll tell you what: it's gonna be Sorrell's. He found out who killed his kid, he tracked them down and he hanged them. I don't know the details, but we're gonna find out."

"Oh, God. That poor family. That poor family."

"You don't really go around hanging people," Lucas said.

"What would you do if somebody kidnapped Sam and killed him?"

Lucas got in bed but didn't answer.

She pressed him: "What would you do?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, bullshit, Lucas, I know what you'd do and so do you," she said. "You'd wait until the police weren't looking, then you'd find them and kill them."

"All right," Lucas said. Then, after a while, "Make a spoon."

She rolled away from him, and Lucas snuggled up behind her, arm around her waist. "See anything about it on TV?"

"Yeah. That Washington man and the sheriff had a press conference, and Washington lost it and started screaming at the sheriff about being a redneck bigot and the sheriff kept apologizing. It was like he admitted it, or something."

"Aw, man, we told him… "

"It was pretty funny, if you like assassinations," Weather said. "And this little girl was on. She had this amazing face, like in those pictures from the Dust Bowl."

"Letty West. I'll tell you about her in the morning," Lucas said. They snuggled for a while, and then Lucas rolled away and said, "I gotta sleep. I'm supposed to be downtown at seven o'clock or some fuckin' thing."

"Set your clock," Weather said. "Are you going to arrest him? Sorrell?"

"No, no. It's just that the goddamn governor's aide is a maniac. He wants an early meeting. Nothing's gonna happen with Sorrell for a day or two."

Loren Singleton and his mother, unaffected by the crystal clarity of the night and the rippling northern lights, were passing through Fargo as Lucas snuggled up against Weather's butt. And as Lucas stirred under the drone of the alarm clock, and Weather kicked him and he groaned, and thrashed toward the snooze button, they were rolling up the long landscaped driveway at Hale Sorrell's house in the countryside east of Rochester.

Sorrell himself, wearing blue silk pajamas, let them in the house. Singleton, in his deputy sheriff's uniform, asked, "Is your wife up yet?"

"Oh, God. Oh, my God, you found her?" Sorrell asked, his eyes wide. They clicked over to Margery, but didn't ask the question: maybe she was some kind of social worker. He turned and shouted, "Mary! Mary!"

From up the stairs: "Who is it?"

"You better come down."

"You have any relatives in the house?" Singleton asked. "Any help, any friends?"

"No, no-Mary could call her mother… " Mary Sorrell came down the stairs and said, "Is it Tammy?"

"No, it's not Tammy," Singleton said. He thought about the warm bundle he'd carried outside.

"Then what…?" Sorrell asked.

Was there fear in his eyes? Did he think Singleton was here because of the hangings? Better get it done with.

"It's just… " Singleton said, digging in his coat pocket. He glanced at his mother: they'd worked this out. "It's just… " The Sorrells were looking at his pocket, as though he were about to produce a paper or a photograph. Instead, Singleton produced a snubby.380 automatic, pushed it toward Sorrell's eyes and pulled the trigger.

At the last moment, Sorrell flinched. Even at the short distance, Singleton might have missed-but Singleton flinched the same way, and the bullet struck Sorrell between the eyes and he fell backward. After a second of stunning gun-smoked silence in the aftermath of the blast, Mary Sorrell backed a step away, and began to scream, looking at her husband's body, and then, realizing, up at Singleton.

The gun was pointing at her head and Singleton pulled the trigger and flinched again, just as Mary Sorrell flinched the opposite way, and, though he was four feet from her, the bullet clipped only the corner of her ear, and she staggered away and turned and tried to run.

"Goddamn you," Margery shrilled, and to Singleton: "Shoot her. Shoot her."

She was now six feet away, and Singleton, shaking badly, shot her in the back and she went down, hurt but still able to scramble, weakly, to her hands and knees. She made a coughing noise, like a lion, coughing from the blood in her lungs and crawled away from him, trailing brilliant red lung-shot blood now. Still shaking, he stepped carefully around it and shot her in the back of the head and she went down for good.

Then Singleton and Mom both stood there until Singleton groaned, "Oh, God."

"Shut up, dumb shit," his mother said. "Just listen."

They listened together. For running feet, for a call, for a question. All they heard was the crinkling silence of the big house. They knew from Tammy that the Sorrells had no live-in servants, although there was a housekeeper who would be arriving after eight o'clock.

"We ought to check around," Margery said, looking up and down the entry hall. "There's money in this place. I can smell it."

"Mom, we gotta get out of here," Singleton said. "We can't touch anything. I told you. They got microscopes, they got all kinds of shit. Don't touch anything."

So they left, in the wan light of the predawn, locking the door behind them. They had at least a couple of hours before the housekeeper showed up. Not enough time to get back to Armstrong, but certainly enough time to arrive early in the day, to be astonished if Singleton was called upon to be astonished.

"Left some money back there," Margery said as they rolled out of the driveway. "Left some goddamned money on the table."