Buried Prey

remember: the average guy is a lot bigger and stronger than the average woman. Best way to protect yourself is to scream and run. If he gets you and pulls you in, go with it. Go in, and go for his nose—try to bite it. Hard—like you were trying to bite through an overdone steak. He’ll let go of you, to try to push you off. When your hand comes free, go for his eyes with your nails. A kick in the nuts, it’s too hard to score, and even if you do, there’s a good chance he’ll still take you down.”
    “What if you don’t want to really hurt him, you just want him to quit what he’s doing?” Letty asked.
    “If a guy’s a serious threat, you hurt him,” Lucas said. “If he’s not a serious threat—if he’s just messing you around—don’t hurt him. Don’t rip his nose off or his eyes out, don’t kick him in the nuts. But if he’s serious, tough shit. Take him any way you can. Okay? Is that what you wanted to know?”
    “That about covers it,” Letty said.
    “I hope the new one didn’t hear that,” Weather said, patting her baby bump.
     
     
    WHILE LUCAS AND LETTY were reviewing testicular vulnerabilities, the killer was cruising Barker’s home in Bloomington. He’d looked her up on Facebook, had taken her husband’s name from that, and then looked them up in the phone book.
    And there they were.
    He had the old man’s Glock with him. Didn’t need to be a genius to use it. He’d fired it any number of times up at the cabin, back in the woods. Thirteen rounds. Enough to start a war.
    Just point and shoot.
    He was a little scared, but not too. Quiet neighborhood, close to a freeway where he could quickly get lost.
    If he decided to do it.

14
    Letty was going to a snobby friend’s prejunior-year party. Letty wasn’t a snob, but something about the whole insider-clique idea appealed to her sense of investigation. She’d dressed carefully, and carefully suggested that it might be good if she were to arrive at the party in a Porsche. With the top down.
    Letty had Lucas whipped, so Weather took her in the Porsche, with the top down. And so Lucas was driving the Lexus SUV when he pulled over to pick up Del. Del was standing at the curb outside his house, talking to a guy in a St. Paul Saints hat who had a wiener dog on a leash. Del said goodbye to the guy, climbed in the car, and said, “Maybe I oughta get a wiener dog.”
    “You got a toddler, why would you need a dog?” Lucas asked. “Teach the kid to retrieve.”
    “Wiener dogs don’t retrieve. They were bred to go down into badger dens and fight the badgers.”
    “Hey, that’d be right up your kid’s alley, from what I’ve seen.”
    Del refused to rise to the bait: “No, really, I think a kid ought to grow up with a pet. It’s another way to get socialized.”
    “When the hell did everybody start worrying about socialization?” Lucas asked. “Look at you. You’re not socialized, and you’ve done okay. Well, I mean, you’re not in jail, anyway.”
    “I’m trying to make a serious point,” Del said.
    So they talked about it on the way to Robert Sherman’s house on Iowa Avenue. Lucas knew where he was going, he thought, and, despite St. Paul’s insane method of assigning street addresses, didn’t bother to punch the address into the truck’s navigation system. When they ran out of street before they got to the number, they wound up driving around, running into more dead-end streets, muttering to each other, until finally Lucas pulled over and laboriously punched the address into the navigation system.
    Iowa Avenue, it turned out, existed in several pieces. The piece that they’d been looking for was a nice-enough neighborhood of older clapboard houses, with a touch of brick here and there, garages added later, full-grown maple and ash trees along the streets, and mailboxes out at the curb.
    Sherman’s house sat ten feet or so above the street, with a newer concrete driveway leading to a four-car garage in what had once been the backyard. There were lights in the window. Lucas and Del got out of the car, and Del hitched up his pants, which gave him a chance to touch his pistol, making sure it was in exactly the right spot.
    Lucas said, “Somebody’s playing a piano,” and they both turned and looked for the source. The sound was coming from a house across the street, Lucas decided, where somebody was playing a familiar tinkly movie theme that he couldn’t quite name. Something old.
    “And somebody’s cooking