Naked Prey

left side of the two-swing bar. On the far back end of the property, a forties-era outhouse crumbled into the dirt.
    Lucas noticed a line of green-paper Christmas trees taped in an upstairs window.
    “How old’s the girl?” Del asked.
    “Eleven or twelve, I guess.”
    “What’s the machete for?” Lucas asked.
    “Something to do with the trapping,” Zahn said.
    “She down at the scene, or . . .  ?”
    “They took her into town with her mother, to make a statement.”
    Lucas asked, “Who’d know about this road? Have to be local, you think?”
    Zahn shrugged: “Maybe, but I think it’s probably the first road the killer came to that led off the highway, outside of Broderick. First place he could do his business with a little peace and quiet.”
    “Must have scouted it, though,” Lucas said. The road was only slightly wider than the patrol car, with no shoulder on the left, and on the right, six feet of frozen dirt and then an abrupt slope into the ditch. “That ditch would be dangerous as hell. How’d he turn around?”
    “There are some tracks, you’ll see them up ahead. What’s left of them, anyway. He just jockeyed her around, and got straight. But you’re right; he must’ve scouted it.”
    “If this kid could see him, why’d he think he was out of sight?” Del asked.
    “We had a good wind through here last night, a nice little ground blizzard,” Zahn said. “From the grove of trees, on the ground, he might not be able to see the farmhouse, but from up on the second floor of the farmhouse, you could see his lights down in the grove. Anyway, Letty said she could, and there’s no reason to think she was lying. She never turned her room light on.”
    “Mmm.” Lucas nodded. He’d once been in a ground blizzard where he couldn’t see more than three feet in any direction, but if he looked straight up, he could see a fine blue sky with puffy, white fair-weather clouds. “So the victims lived back in Broderick?”
    “Yeah, down there in another old farmhouse. That’show we identified them so quick. Took one look and knew who the guy was. Him being black.”
    “How long did he live here?”
    “Year and a half. He was in jail down in Kansas City, showed up here in July a year ago, and moved in with Warr. Warr was working at the casino in Armstrong, dealing blackjack. We just found out about the jail thing this morning.”
    “The Warr woman—she was from here?” Del asked.
    “Nope. She was from Kansas City, herself,” Zahn said. “Got into Broderick about a month before Cash, so we think she must’ve been his girlfriend, and came up here when he was about to get out of jail, to nail down the job. But to tell you the truth, we don’t really know the details yet.”
    “Okay.”
    “What about Broderick?” Del asked. “Anything there? What do they do? Farmers?”
    “Well, it was mostly a ghost town until Gene Calb got his truck rehab business going. There was always a gas station and a store, and a bar off and on, servicing the local farm folks. Just a crossroads. Then some people moved up here, to be close to work at Calb’s—houses are really cheap—and now, there must be twenty or thirty people around the place.”
    “So what the hell was an interracial couple from Kansas City doing there?” Lucas asked.
    “That seems to be a question,” Zahn agreed. They’d come up on the line of cop cars, which were parked on both sides of the narrow lane. A half-dozen cops were standing around, backs to the wind, ducking their heads briefly to see who Zahn was bringing in. Zahn threaded between them, slowed, pointed to a tall white-haired man in sunglasses, a camo hunting jacket, and nylon wind pants, who stood withhis hands in his pockets talking to two other men. Zahn said, “That’s the sheriff, Dick Anderson. I’ll let you out here. I’m gonna find someplace to get turned around. I get claustrophobic when I’m pointed the wrong way.”
    L UCAS AND D EL climbed out, and the sheriff and the two men he was talking to looked down at them, and the sheriff said something to the other two and they both smiled. Del, who was coming up behind Lucas, muttered, “We’re city slickers.”
    “For a while, anyway,” Lucas agreed. He smiled as he came up to the sheriff. Lucas’s blue eyes were happy enough, but his smile sometimes made people nervous. “Sheriff Anderson? Lucas Davenport and Del Capslock with the BCA. We understand you’ve got a situation.”
    “If that’s