Naked Prey

anywhere?”
    “Shit, I don’t know.”
    They were snapping at each other, feeling the pressure. Three people on the line—the Calbs and the church woman, Katina Lewis.
    “Where’s the goddamn sheriff?”
    A NDERSON ARRIVED TEN minutes later—“Couldn’t find the judge. He was in, but he was down in the surveyor’s office, bullshitting. Took forever to find him.”
    “We’re okay to dig around?”
    “Go ahead,” Anderson said. “You need more people?”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “The BCA crime scene people are coming down from Broderick. The FBI may be with them . . . First thing, we’ve got to figure out if the Calbs are really gone.”
    “Where’s that blood?”
    Lucas showed him, and Anderson shook his head. “That’s a lot of blood.”
    “But whose blood is it?” Lucas asked.
    H AVING GIVEN THE house a quick run-through, they checked the cars. The engines were cold, so they hadn’t been used in the past couple of hours. There was nothing in either one of them that helped.
    The lead crime scene guy arrived, with one of hissubordinates, and with Del and Lucas trailing, they began in the basement and slowly worked their way to the top of the house. The subordinate noticed the strands of wool on the hatchway that led to the space under the eaves.
    “They wouldn’t hang there forever,” he said. “If they were in a hurry, what were they doing up there?”
    “Had something hidden?” Del suggested.
    They got a chair, and then an ottoman to stack on top of it, and Lucas and Del helped him balance as the crime scene guy stood on top of the ottoman, pushed the hatch up, clicked on his flashlight, and froze. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Aw, Jesus Christ.”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know. Get me down.”
    The tech hopped down and Lucas clambered on top of the ottoman. When he stuck his head through the opening, Katina Lewis’s face was four inches from his. Her dead eyes looked straight through him and he instantly flashed back to the hanging scene, the dead eyes of Cash and Warr; and he saw the face of the other woman, Ruth Lewis, in this woman.
    “Lewis,” he told Del. “Just like the other ones.”
    “Only her?”
    Lucas couldn’t see past her, but he could see the rest of the area, and there was nothing but pink insulation. “I don’t see anyone else. I need to get a little higher . . . ” He grabbed the edges of the hatch, pulled himself up a foot, but didn’t have the leverage to get any farther. He could just see over Lewis’s body, and there was nothing but insulation. “Nope. I think it’s just her.”
    “I’ll get something out on the Calbs,” Anderson said. “You think it’s Gene doing this?”
    “Looks like it,” Lucas said. He climbed down off the ottoman and chair. “Whoever it is, he’s breaking up—he’s going through a psychotic break. If it’s Calb, I’d say his wife is in big trouble. He could kill anyone, now.”

20
    T HE CRIME SCENE crew had suspended work at Cash’s house and had moved down to Calb’s. Lewis’s body was still in the crawl space under the eaves and nobody knew exactly when they could move her—removing the body would be a job, and they wanted as few people as possible going in and out of the house until it was fully processed.
    Lucas and Del carefully probed through the life the Calbs had left behind. Calb had a small home office, and one of the file drawers was open. Files had been taken, Lucas thought. He found income tax returns for 1996–99, but nothing newer. None of the files related directly to the body-shop business, but when they’d talked to Calb the first time, Lucas had noticed a row of filing cabinets in his office, so business papers might well be there.
    Del came in after a while, with a small zippered bag. He handed it to Lucas, who said, “What?” and zipped the bag open. An insulin kit.
    “Somebody’s a diabetic and didn’t take his or her shit,” Del said.
    “Unless this is a backup.”
    “Still.”
    A deputy came through, and they asked him about the airport; it was small planes only, and Calb wasn’t a flier, as far as the deputy knew. Nor were there any taxis in town.
    One of the BCA investigators from Bemidji, who’d been working at the Cash house, called to say that he and his partner had walked across to Calb’s place and had frozen it—all the employees were there, and they were detaining any more who showed up.
    Then the crime scene crew at Calb’s house found a