Naked Prey

go talk to the Carlsons,” Lucas said to Del.
    L INDA C ARLSON WAS a good-looking, blond forty-five-year-old whose husband worked as a State Farm agent. She had large eyes, slightly tilted upward, that made her looked sleepy, as though she’d just been rolling around in bed with someone. Lucas saw her and thought, Mmm. “I called over there last night, but didn’t get an answer,” she said, putting a hand on Lucas’s sleeve. She was a toucher, too. “I was kinda surprised that there was nobody home, because I talked to Gloria yesterday afternoon and they weren’t planning to go anywhere . . . ” She was wearing a fuzzy angora V-necked sweater and her hand crept up the V until it stopped at her throat, and she said in a hushed voice, “You don’t think anything’s happened?”
    “We’re just trying to get in touch,” Lucas said.
    “I’ve got a key,” Carlson said. “I can go down there anytime . . . ”
    Lucas spread his hands—“We can’t go in without a search warrant. If you could just take a peek, if you don’t think the Calbs would care. All we want to know is that they’re okay.”
    “They wouldn’t care. Let me get my coat.”
    She went to get her coat and Del muttered, “You’ve got drool dripping out the side of your mouth, marriage-boy.”
    “Just looking,” Lucas said.
    B ACK AT THE Calbs’, the deputy said, “I talked to Loren. He was on duty last night and didn’t see Lewis. He said he thought she was coming over before he went on duty, but she never showed up. He called the church and she wasn’t there.”
    “Okay.”
    Carlson’s key was for the back door. She went in, as Lucas, Del, and the deputy waited on the back porch. She called, “Gloria? Gloria? Gene?” She disappeared into the interior of the house, then came back and said to Lucas, “Maybe you better come in.”
    “What? Are they . . . ”
    “Nobody’s home,” she said. She was nervous, turning pink. “I don’t know about these things, but Gloria’s a very neat housekeeper . . . If this . . . ”
    She led Lucas to a hallway off the kitchen and pointed down. There was a dark spot on the carpet, about the size of a paper pie plate. Not coffee, not Coke. Heavier than that, crusty-looking.
    Lucas squatted next to it, then said, “Please don’t touch anything. Keep your hands by your side and carefully walk back out through the door, okay?” He followed her out to the porch and said to the deputy, “Wait out here, okay?” and to Del, “C’mere.”
    Del followed, and when Lucas showed him the rug, he squatted, as Lucas had, then said, “Yeah.” He stood up, went into the kitchen, tore a small sheet of paper towel off a roll by the sink, tapped it under the faucet head toget it damp, then stepped back to the hallway and touched the dark spot with the damp point of the paper towel.
    He held it up to Lucas. The towel showed a diluted blood-red. “That’s a problem,” Del said.
    L UCAS PULLED OUT his cell phone and dialed the LEC, asked for the sheriff. Anderson came on and he asked, “Have you seen Ray Zahn?”
    “He’s here now, we’re working out a warrant.”
    “Listen, a friend of the Calbs from down the street had a key and permission to go into the house. She went in, found blood, and invited us in. I don’t know the legal aspects of it, but it looks bad. We need that warrant down here right now, before we start pulling the house apart. But we need it now. ”
    “Ten minutes,” Anderson said. “I’ll walk it around myself.”
    Lucas called Green, the FBI agent, told him about the blood. “Send our crime scene guys down here, will you?” Lucas asked. “We may have another scene for him to process.”
    “Right now,” Green said.
    Lucas rang off and Del said, “Over here.”
    He was squatting in a corner of the kitchen, and Lucas stepped over. A pistol shell lay against a molding.
    “A .380,” Del said.
    “Yeah. Goddamnit. Listen, let’s do a walk-through. We’re okay on that—the blood’s fresh enough. Quick trip through the house.”
    T HE HOUSE WAS large, but they did the first pass in five minutes. No bodies, but the house had been stirred around.“Closets are halfway cleaned out,” Del said. “Lot of stuff gone, and they were in a hurry.”
    “Whose blood is it, if the Calbs were running?”
    “How did they run, if both of their cars are in the garage?”
    “Taxi to the airport?”
    “Do they have a taxi here? Do they have airplanes that go