Naked Prey

how-to’s.
    The women who lived at the church usually ate communally, cooking out of the church kitchen, although there was no rule about that. A side room had a pile of bean-bagchairs, a television connected to a satellite dish, a DVD player and sixty or seventy slowly accumulated chick flicks. A balcony in the back, once an organ loft, had been set aside as a quiet place, for someone who needed a moment’s peace and separation.
    Two of the women at the church were nuns. None, or maybe just one—nobody was certain—was a lesbian. Absolutely none of them cared what the people in town said.
    Ruth Lewis was the leader. She worked out schedules and tactics with Calb, for the dope operation, and coordinated through Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services for the food and clothing distribution work. The food and clothing distribution might have helped a few people, but Minnesota was a socialist state, and much of that was done more efficiently by the local state agencies. The women didn’t care about that, either; a decent cover was worth maintaining.
    After briefing the other women on the murders of Jane Warr and Deon Cash, Ruth listened to worries and arguments for an hour, but most of them were self-reliant, not given to panic. After an hour of talk, they agreed there was nothing to do but wait—to work the drug transport as well as they could, to work the rural food program, and to keep their heads down.
    Afterward, Katina Lewis took her sister aside and said, “Loren will keep us posted about the police. There’s a good chance that if something happens . . . if they find out about the drug runs, we’ll have some warning before they do anything.”
    “If they know about you guys, about your relationship, we might pull Loren down with us,” Ruth said. She smiled her cool smile. She didn’t like Loren Singleton, and Katina knew it.
    “He’s willing to take the chance,” Katina said. “The only problem might be, he’s always been under hismother’s thumb. If she knew what was happening out here, she’d sell us to the highest bidder. The old witch.”
    “Warn him.”
    “I am, sorta. What I’m really doing is . . . ” She smiled; her older sister was always so solemn that she made Katina giggle.
    “What?” Ruth asked solemnly.
    “We’re sorta changing thumbs,” Katina said. “The old witch’s for mine.”
    L ATER, R UTH WALKED up the highway in the afternoon darkness to get a salty fried-egg-and-onion sandwich at Wolf’s Cafe. Ruth always felt guilty about the egg sandwiches—they were greasy, probably put an extra millimeter of cholesterol in her veins every time she ate one, the salt probably pushed her blood pressure, and the raw onion gave her bad breath that lasted for hours. On the other hand, she had no heart problems, her blood pressure was perfect, and the sandwiches tasted wonderful, a break from the gloom of winter and the glum healthy food of the communal kitchen.
    The cafe had a double door, and always smelled of grease, and was fifteen degrees too warm, and Sandy Wolf called out, “Hey, baby Ruth.”
    “Hi.” Ruth nodded shyly. She wasn’t a hail-fellow, like Wolf, but she enjoyed the other woman’s heartiness. Another woman sat halfway down the counter . . . not a woman, though, Ruth thought, but a girl, eating a piece of pie. Letty West.
    “Letty?” Ruth stepped down the bar, smiling. She’d liked the girl the first time they met, and had talked to her a dozen times since. “How are you?”
    Letty returned the smile, waved her fork. “I’m fine. Had a press conference this afternoon.”
    “Oh, I heard.” Ruth went solemn, looked for the right words. “Heard that you found the . . . people.”
    “We was just talking about it,” Wolf said. “Letty says they was frozen like Popsicles.”
    “They put them in the black bags to carry them out, and they were in there like a sackful of boards,” Letty said.
    “Do the police have any ideas who did it?” Ruth asked.
    Letty shook her head. “Nah. They know a heck of a lot less than I do. They don’t know anything about Broderick—I been filling them in. There’s these guys, Lucas and Del, I’m helping them out. We ate up at the Bird this afternoon.”
    “What . . . did you actually see? At the murder scene?”
    Sandy Wolf leaned on the counter and Ruth plopped on the stool next to the girl, and Letty went through the whole story, as she’d told it to the television cameras that