Naked Prey

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; andwhite, 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.
    T HAT 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.

19
    T HEY WERE STUCK .
    They’d spent the day before tramping around Broderick, talking with housewives and Calb employees, getting nowhere. The pitch Lucas had made to the sheriff’s deputies hadn’t produced anything yet, and Lucas began to wonder if he might be able to devise a way to pull the killer in. The problem was a lack of bait. There was Letty, but he couldn’t use her. Might have been able to use her if she was a fifty-year-old asshole who’d brought the trouble on herself, but not an innocent teenager.
    He worried a little that he’d even bothered to think of reasons not to use her . . .
    H E WAS SITTING on his bed at the Motel 6, reading a Star Tribune story about the attack on the West house, and waiting for Del to knock. The TV was tuned to the Weather Channel, because they’d heard a rumor from the nightclerk that snow was coming in. Coming in somewhere. When he looked out the window after he got up, there were a few fat flakes drifting around, but nothing serious. He was rereading the fire story when the room phone rang.
    Ruth Lewis: “The sheriff called. They want to bury Martha West tomorrow and I’m going to bring Letty back up. I wanted to let you know—the sheriff said they’ll provide security at the funeral.”
    “She can travel? Letty?”
    “Your wife says so. Your wife is the admitting physician, by the way. She said you didn’t know. She said they’ll need Letty back here in a week, but that she could travel tomorrow.”
    “Has anybody figured out where she could stay?”
    “Yes. She’ll stay with me. I have lots of room right now, and we get