Naked Prey

six-pack back at the bartender. “Hold on to this, will you? I want to see if I can catch them.”
    “Larson’s—right down the block.”
    H E FOUND THEM in the women’s foundations area, buying cotton underpants. Ruth Lewis saw him coming, and smiled sadly. “Have you heard anything?”
    Lucas shook his head. “Not yet.” He looked at Letty, who’d been looking at an underwear rack. “How are you?”
    “We’re both pretty sad, me and Ruth, trying to figure out what’s going to happen,” Letty said. Her eyes were red, with circles below. Her lip trembled. “I never even got to see Mom.”
    “What’re you doing here?” Lucas asked Ruth.
    Ruth tipped her head at Letty. “She’s got nothing left. Nothing. No shoes, no underwear. We went through our stores at the church, didn’t find much.”
    “I love to shop,” Lucas said.
    “Ohhh . . . ” Ruth said. A skeptical smile, not the first time he’d gotten that reaction from a woman. But it was true.
    “I’m serious. I really like to shop. Especially for clothes. You wanta party?”
    Letty looked at Ruth, and Ruth said, “We don’t really need that much.”
    “I’ll let you in on a small secret, which I wouldn’t want you to spread around,” Lucas said. “Okay?” They both nodded, and Lucas said, lowering his voice, “I’m the richest cop in Minnesota.”
    “I knew that,” Ruth said. “Sister Mary Joseph said you have a ridiculous amount of money.”
    “So I can spend a few bucks on a good time,” Lucas said. “Let’s go.”
    They bought all kinds of stuff, with Letty getting seriously involved: Jockey underpants; a couple of brassieres that Lucas wasn’t entirely sure were necessary, but which he wouldn’t have remotely thought of questioning; three pairs of jeans and two pairs of slacks; and four sweatshirts, which Lucas thought was too many, but Letty said “they’re all I wear.” They bought four more shirts at Lucas’s insistence, a vest, a watch, some costume jewelry and a pair of pearl earrings, a parka, mittens, two hats, and a duffel bag that would carry everything that she didn’t wear.
    And though Ruth was skeptical, they spent half an hour and thirty-five dollars at the cosmetics counter.
    Out on the street, Letty said, happily, “That was the best time I ever had.”
    Further down the street, across from an Ace Hardware, they put the packages in Ruth’s Corolla, and Letty told Lucas, “I will pay you back every penny.”
    “I won’t take the money,” Lucas said. “Not a cent. You gotta learn to take gifts.”
    “It’s charity.”
    “It’s not charity,” Lucas said. “It’d be charity if I didn’t know you and didn’t like you. These are gifts, because I like you.”
    “Would you loan me some money? Right now? If I pay back every cent?”
    He hesitated, then said, “Probably. What do you want it for?”
    She nodded at the Ace Hardware. “I want to go in there and get a new gun. They took that piece of crap .22, and the deputy said I wouldn’t get it back. It’s evidence, if they ever catch the guy I shot.”
    “Oh, Letty . . . ” Ruth said.
    “Lucas?” Letty asked.
    Lucas looked at Ruth, and then said, “I’d do it, unless Ruth absolutely vetoes it. The gun would be in her house, at least for a while.”
    Letty turned to Ruth, who said, “I really don’t think you need a gun, Letty.”
    “But you don’t really know me very well, do you?” Letty said. Lucas estimated her working age at a quick forty-three. “I do sort of need the gun.”
    Ruth said to Lucas, “If you want to loan her the money, I won’t say no.”
    O NCE INSIDE THE hardware store, Ruth went to look at other stuff—went to be away from them—while Lucas and Letty got into the details of the gun purchase. Letty wanteda Ruger 10/22 semi-auto; Lucas suggested a bolt-action Ruger 77/22. Letty said it cost too much, and she’d be more comfortable with the lighter semi-auto. Then the store manager, a thin man with spiky gray hair, and a hunter himself who knew Letty, jumped in and said they had an even lighter semi-auto, a Browning, that split the price difference.
    Lucas finally told Letty that he wouldn’t buy a semi-auto, because he worried that an auto-loader was not safe enough. “I want you to know when you’ve got a round in the chamber, because you put it there yourself.”
    Then Letty got pouty: “I’ve been doing this for years . . . ”
    “Yeah, with a single-shot . . .