Naked Prey

what you’d call it,” the sheriff said. The sheriff was about forty, Lucas thought, with a pale pinkish complexion; he ran to fat, like a clerk, but wasn’t fat yet. His hands stayed in his pockets. A statement of some kind, Lucas thought.
    Anderson nodded to the two men with him: “These are deputies Braun and Schnurr. We understood that Hank Dickerson was coming up from Bemidji with a crime scene crew.”
    Lucas nodded, still smiling. “Yes. They should be here anytime. Del and I were sent by the governor to make sure everything was handled right.”
    “The governor knows about this?” Anderson asked doubtfully.
    “Yes. I talked to him this morning before I left. He said to say hello and that he hoped we could get this cleared away in a hurry.”
    “Maybe I should give him a call,” Anderson suggested.
    “I’m sure he’d be happy to hear from you,” Lucas said. He looked around. “Where are the victims?”
    Anderson turned toward the stand of trees north of the road, took a hand out of his jacket pocket, and pointed. “Back in there, where the guys in the orange hats are.”
    Lucas said to Del. “Let’s go take a look.”
    “Are you running this, or Hank?” Anderson asked.
    “Both of us, in a way,” Lucas said. “I report directly to the commissioner of Public Safety and to the governor. Hank reports up through the BCA chain of command.”
    “So what exactly do you do?” Deputy Schnurr asked. “Handle the politics or what?”
    “I kick people’s asses,” Lucas said. His eyes flicked over Schnurr and the other deputy, then went back to the sheriff. “When they need to be kicked.”
    He and Del both stepped away at the same time, toward the men in the orange caps. The sheriff and his two deputies hesitated, and Del and Lucas got a few steps away and Del said, “That was cool.”
    “Hey, the guy didn’t even shake hands.”
    “Yeah.” They pushed through a tangle of brush and caught a glimpse of the bodies hanging from the ropes; passed a few more trees and then saw them fully, in the clear. Lucas focused on them, got careless, pushed back a springy branch and got snapped in the face by a twig. His cheek stinging, he said, “Careful,” to Del, and went back to staring at the bodies.
    They looked like paintings, he thought, or maybe an old fading color photo from the 1930s, two gray, stretched-out bodies dangling from a tree, half facing each other, ropes cutting into their necks, with four white men not looking at them—desperately not looking at them.
    As they came up, Del asked, quietly, “You ever noticed how hanged people sort of all look alike—like they losetheir race or something? They all look like they’re made out of clay.”
    Lucas nodded. He had noticed that. “Except redheads,” he added. “They always look like they came from a different planet.”
    Del said, “You’re right. Except for redheads. They just get paler.”
    The four orange-hatted men were spaced around the bodies at the cardinal points, as though they might be rushed from any direction. A short stepladder was set up beside the bodies, and the snow had been thoroughly trampled down for fifty feet around. Two of the men were doing the cold-weather tap dance, a slow shuffle that said they were freezing. When Lucas and Del came up, one of the orange-hats turned and asked, “Who’re you?”
    “BCA,” Lucas said. “Who’re you?”
    “Dave Payton.” The man turned back to the bodies and shivered. “D-Deputy sheriff.”
    “What’re you doing?” Del asked.
    “K-Keeping everybody out of a circle around the bodies. You guys are supposed to have a crime crew coming. You don’t look like them.”
    “They’ll be a bit,” Lucas said. His voice had turned friendly. “You get here early?”
    “I was the first car in, after the state patrol. Ass is freezin’ solid.”
    “Where’s the line they were brought in on . . . tracks or anything?”
    Payton jerked his arm toward the road. “Back that way, I guess. Pretty trampled down, now.”
    Lucas looked, and could see the kind of snaky break in the brush that often meant a game trail. If the bodies had been brought in along it, then the hangman had known exactly where he was going.
    Del had taken a couple steps closer to the dangling bodies. “Woman’s got blood on her face,” he said.
    “G-Guy’s pretty messed up, too,” Payton said. “Looks like somebody beat the heck out of him before he did . . . this.”
    “I don’t think