Naked Prey

five, but didn’t like it: didn’t like the tar joints on the county highway and Lucas felt like a pea being rattled in a tin can. Del was shouting, “Go, go,” and in the rearview mirror, Lucas could see Zahn slowly closing on them. Within a minute or two, Zahn was fifty yards back, and he hung there; they were only two minutes out of town.
    They were still more than a mile out when they saw somebody walking across the highway far ahead. At that distance, he was the apparent size of a flea seen from across a room, but Del said, “That’s him: that’s gotta be him.”
    They were a little more than a mile out when they saw him kick in the door of the church, and Del pulled out his pistol and said, “Put me right on the door.”
    Lucas said, “Going too fast. I don’t know where I can put us. That’s all gravel in there.”
    Seconds later, they were skidding across the gravel, Zahn fishtailing into the lot right behind them, trying to keep from colliding. Lucas stopped a little beyond the church door and Del was out and then Lucas was out and he saw Zahn drawing his pistol and aiming over the roof of the cruiser and then Singleton was in the door and Lucas leveled his gun at him and started shouting—didn’t know what he was shouting, he was shouting a noise, and he heard what sounded like gunfire—and then Singleton, who’d been moving in a slow jerking motion, suddenly andspasmodically lifted one hand and there was a gun in it and he fired and Del went down and Lucas and Zahn opened fire and Singleton slumped back into the church.
    Lucas ran around the truck. “Del . . . Del . . . ”
    R UTH L EWIS CAME to the door, cautiously. Letty was right behind her with her gun. Lewis stopped to look at Singleton, but Letty came through and saw Del on the ground and said, “Oh, no, is he hurt bad? Is he hurt?”
    Lucas was kneeling beside him, Zahn standing over them both, and Del asked, “How bad?”
    “Your leg is fucked up,” Lucas said. “Doesn’t seem to be pumping blood. You want to wait for an ambulance or you wanna go for a ride?”
    Zahn, above them, said, “I called for an ambulance, it’ll be here in seven minutes. I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse. If you wait, you’ll have a comfortable ride.”
    “I’ll wait,” said Del.
    “Let’s get some blankets under him,” Ruth Lewis said. “Loren’s dead.”
    “We found the Calbs out at the dump—Loren killed your sister, and the Calbs, and Letty’s mother, and the Sorrells, and probably the two children,” Lucas told her. “Guy’s done a lot of damage.”
    “Mmm,” she said, distantly. Lucas thought she might be going into shock. Then, “I’ll get the blankets. The ground’s so cold.” She hurried back into the church.
    Letty squatted next to Del. “I shot him three more times,” she said. “I heard you coming and he went to the door with his gun, and I shot him three times but he kept going.”
    “Aw, man,” Lucas said. “This is awful.”
    “Guy committed suicide,” Del said. “Just wish . . . just wish . . . ”
    Ruth Lewis ran inside, saw the .380 kicked against thewall. Blankets. She needed blankets for Del. She went to the closest bed, stripped off the blankets, then got some more from the next cubicle. And she thought: Mom?
    On the way back out, she saw the cluster of people around Del, and she stepped sideways and picked up the little .380 and put it in her pocket.
    R UTH CAME BACK with the blankets, and they pushed them under Del’s butt and back and good leg, and Del asked everybody, pain in his eyes, “I won’t lose the leg, will I?”
    Zahn said, “With our hospital, you never know,” and when Del did a kind of eyeball double-take, he said quickly, “Just kidding. Hang on, there. That fuckin’ Loren.”

26
    D EL WAS STABILIZED in Armstrong and then flown back to the Cities, where he was met by Weather, by Rose Marie, and by the governor himself.
    Lucas stayed behind for a hard two days after Singleton was shot. They brought Margery Singleton in, a bird-like woman shocked by what they were saying. “It can’t be my boy; it can’t be my boy,” she said. “He’s dead? You say he’s dead?” The sheriff eventually patted her on the back, thanked her for the phone call, and sent her on her way.
    They debriefed Ruth Lewis, who was accompanied by an influential Minneapolis attorney who did the heavy lifting for the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The drug runs weren’t