Naked Prey

talk,”Katina said. “I don’t think they’d have the guts to bug the church.”
    “Maybe . . . ” Calb looked out the window. “I wonder what happened? I heard they were just hanging there, like icicles, all . . . messed up.”
    “Jane Warr. She was not a nice woman. Deon was worse,” Katina said. She turned to Ruth. “The Witch used to hang around with Jane. I hope she’s not involved with this somehow.”
    “Ask Loren,” Ruth suggested.
    “I will. But Jane and Deon . . . ”
    “May God have mercy on their souls,” said Ruth, and she crossed herself.

5
    A RMSTRONG, THE COUNTY seat, came over the horizon as a hundred-foot-tall yellow concrete chimney with a plume of steam hanging over the prairie, then as a couple of radio towers with red blinking lights, then as a row of corrugated steel-sided grain elevators along a double set of railroad tracks. They followed the tracks past the elevators, past a few broken-down shacks on what had once been the bad side of town, into a quiet neighborhood of aging Cape Cod houses, all painted either white or a dirty pastel pink or blue, over a bridge labeled CROSS RIVER, and into the business district.
    “What’s that smell?” Del asked, as they came into town.
    Zahn looked at him. “What smell?”
    “Paper plant, or chipboard plant,” Lucas said.
    “Chipboard,” Zahn said. “I don’t smell it anymore.”
    “Jesus. It smells like somebody’s roasting a wet chicken, with the feathers on,” Del said.
    “Ain’t that bad,” said Zahn.
    “Yes, it is,” Del said.
    The downtown was a flat grid, mostly brick, yellow and red, with meterless curbs along blacktopped streets, three or four stoplights. Lucas could see both a Motel 6 and a Best Western, Conoco and BP stations on opposite corners with competing convenience stores, a Fran’s Diner followed by a Fran’s Bakery followed by a Fran’s Rapid Oil Change, a McDonald’s on one corner and a Pizza Hut halfway down the block, a sports bar called the Dugout.
    At the heart of the town was a scratchy piece of brown grass, patched with gray snow, with a two-story, fifties-ish red-brick courthouse in the middle of it. A newer red-brick Law Enforcement Center hung on to the back of the courthouse, with a fire station even farther back.
    Three cops and a couple of firefighters were outside in the cold, leaning against the walls of their buildings, smoking.
    Holme’s Motors was across the street from the LEC, in a metal building with a single plate-glass window looking out at a dozen used American cars. Red, white, and blue plastic pennants hung down from a wire stretched above the lot; there was just enough wind to keep them nervously twitching. Zahn pulled into the lot, and through the window they could see a man poking numbers into a desk calculator. “That’s Carl,” Zahn said.
    Carl Holme was broad and bald-headed, with a cheerful smile. “Heard about the Negro getting hung,” he said to Zahn, when they pushed through the door. “That’s gonna dust things up, huh?”
    “I’d raise your prices before the TV people get here,” Zahn said.
    “Really? You think?”
    Five minutes after they walked in, they walked back out into the cold. Lucas took the Olds and Del cranked up theMustang and they trundled behind Zahn, a three-car caravan, sixty feet across the street to the Law Enforcement Center.
    The smoking cops said hello to Zahn, looked with flat curiosity at Lucas and Del. Zahn took them inside, was buzzed through a bulletproof-glass door to a reception area, where he introduced them to Zelda Holme, the car dealer’s wife, a pretty, round-faced woman who was also secretary to the sheriff.
    “Sheriff Anderson called and said you wanted to talk to Letty. We’ve got her back in the lounge,” Holme said, smiling and friendly. “Come right along.”
    “I’m gonna take off,” Zahn said to Lucas, lifting a hand. “You’ve got my number. Call if you need anything.”
    “See you later,” Lucas said. “Thanks.” He and Del fell in behind Holme, and as they followed her along a cream-painted concrete-block hallway, Lucas mentioned that they’d just rented cars from her husband.
    “I hope you counted your fingers after you shook hands with him,” she said cheerfully. “Carl can be a sharp one.”
    The lounge was the last door on the right, a pale yellow concrete cubicle with Office Max waiting-room chairs, vending machines, and a slender girl in jeans who had her face in an