Naked Prey

time they find us, the hole’s healed up . . . We can figure something out. I can pretty much see what we’re gonna do—but it ain’t gonna work if that little kid talks.”
    “Aw, jeez, they’re gonna get us.”
    “You better hope not. You know what they do to guys like you down at Stillwater? You won’t have any trouble taking a shit, I tell you that. You’ll be nice and loose. That’s if the feds don’t get you. The feds’ll put you in the chair, if they get you.”
    “Oh, God.” He stuck his knuckle in his mouth again, closed his eyes, bit on it. The pain helped clear his mind out. He opened his eyes and said, “I’m going. It’s almost dark now, I still got the garage-door opener for Calb’s, Ican put the car in there, walk across to the church. I heard that the other women left after Katina died; there’ll only be Ruth Lewis and the kid.”
    Talking himself into it. Margery nodded and said, “You might not have much time. Best get moving. I’ll figure things out here.”
    T HE SHERIFF HEARD about the dump dig at the same time that Loren Singleton heard. Anderson got it from an assistant county attorney at Borgna’s Drugs. The sheriff was mulling over the selection of Chap Stick products when the prosecutor came by, carrying a box of NyQuil, and said, “We gotta stop meeting like this.”
    Anderson said, “Especially with you carrying drugs.”
    “That’s the darn truth. I don’t know why those crazy fools mess around with meth labs when they can come down to Borgna’s and buy NyQuil . . . So what’d they find at the dump?”
    “The dump?” Anderson was puzzled.
    “Yeah, it’s all over town—the feds and those state guys are up at the dump, digging the place up. Ray Zahn’s up there, they rousted out old Phil Bussard, must have him up there with the ’dozer. Must be looking for those girls.”
    “Aw, Jiminy,” Anderson said. He walked out of the drugstore and climbed into his truck, did an illegal U-turn, and headed out of town. He got madder and madder, thinking about it, as he went north—he was smearing cherry Chap Stick on his lips when he realized that he’d just shoplifted it under the eyes of an assistant county attorney.
    “These people,” he said aloud, meaning the BCA, but especially Lucas Davenport. He was so arrogant, so holier-than-thou, out here in the sticks with his expensive Patagonia parka and his forty-thousand-dollar truck that no self-respecting American ought to be driving. Like to seehim get that thing fixed when it blows up on Highway 36, he thought; like to see him find parts for a gosh-darned Acura out here. They’d have to tow that sucker back to the Cities.
    They had their hot jobs up at the capital hanging out with that faggot Henderson, and they didn’t understand that he couldn’t be cut out of this investigation—not if he wanted to keep this job, the best job he’d ever had and would ever have. These people.
    He had a little fantasy of arranging a breakdown for Davenport’s Acura, noticed that he’d just gone through Broderick at eighty-five miles an hour, saw lights on at Calb’s and wondered if the feds might be in there, too, got even madder, and pushed the truck to ninety.
    At the turnoff to the dump, he thought, Easy does it. You’re cool, now. He continued down the approach road. There were no vehicles parked at the gate, but from the high seat in the truck, he could see over the rise of the dump to a brilliant cluster of lights off to his right. People at work.
    He took the truck that way, bouncing over the ruts left by the bulldozer, saw Zahn walking back to his car, then Davenport and Capslock walking toward the fancy Acura.
    The radio went, on the command frequency. “Sheriff, you there?”
    He ignored it, pulled up beside Davenport and Capslock, and hopped out.
    “What’s going on here?” he asked Lucas.
    “Take a look in the hole,” Lucas said. “We think it’s Mrs. Calb.”
    “Aw, jeez . . . How come I wasn’t in on this?”
    Lucas said, “I gotta apologize for that, but we got some information that, uh, the guy we’re looking for might be with the sheriff’s department.”
    Anderson had started toward the hole, but that turned him around. “My department?”
    “Yeah. We think it might be Loren Singleton. Katina’s boyfriend.”
    “Singleton? I just, I just . . . Aw, shoot.” He walked over to look in the hole. They’d exposed most of the bag, and he could see a woman’s thigh and