Naked Prey

told him what I was going to do, which was, tell the truth. That I knew Shawn in the Army and knew he had this troubled cousin and when the cousin got out of jail, I hired him as a favor. Then I told them I was about to fire him because he was a screw-up, and I suspected he used the drugs, but not that he sold them. I told them I thought the trouble might be coming from Jane’s casino job . . . ”
    “Good,” Singleton said. “I was going to suggest that. We’ve gotta reinforce it now that you got them thinking about it.”
    Katina pulled at her lip. “I’m worried about Letty West. She’s spending a lot of time with the police, and she hangs around here.”
    Calb shook his head. “Nothing to worry about. She comes in to get warm, and I don’t let her go in the shop because I don’t want her getting hurt, all the shit laying around here. I don’t believe she ever talked to Deon.”
    T HEY CHATTED FOR a few more minutes, then, as they left, Singleton deflected a hint from Katina—she could have used some comforting in these troubled times—and headed back to Armstrong. He stopped at Peske’s market to pick up a six-pack of caffeinated Coke, and ran into Roger Elroy, who was also looking into the cooler at the back of the store. “Anything happening?”
    “They got him,” Elroy said quietly.
    “They got him?”
    Elroy was young and eager and full of news. “They know who it is—those two BCA guys figured it out up at the casino,” Elroy said. Singleton thought, the casino, and a wave of relief washed through him, and he leaned into the cooler for a six-pack. “It was that guy whose kid was kidnapped, Hale Sorrell, that guy from Rochester. Remember, last month?”
    Singleton almost gave it away then. Might have, if Elroy had seen his face, but his face was in the cooler, as he reached deep inside. He stopped, got a grip both on himself and the six-pack, backed out, and said, “Where’d they come up with that?”
    Elroy told him, briefly, then shook his head. “Anderson talked to the governor. They think the Sorrell girl’s body might be out there at Deon Cash’s place. You knew those guys, right?”
    “Knew who they were,” Singleton said. “Talked to Cash a couple of times . . . Jeez. So have they grabbed Sorrell yet?”
    “Not until tomorrow. They’re trying to run some stuff down—they’ve got a line on the car he used, they’re running some pictures by a witness. They don’t want to tip him off.”
    “Jesus.”
    “These BCA guys, they’re heavy duty,” Elroy said. “I met Davenport a couple of years ago, when he was on another job. I’m telling you, he’s the smartest cop in the state. He’s the guy who set up that ambush on that assassin woman down in Minneapolis. If he thinks it’s Sorrell, then it is.”
    “Maybe not so smart. Maybe just lucky.”
    “You haven’t met him,” Elroy said. “He is something else. When I met him, he was up here with this policewoman, fuckin’ her, she had a set of knockers . . . ”
    S INGLETON HAD A lot to think about, and he prowled down the streets of Armstrong, doing just that. Thought about Letty West. Thought about her for five minutes, tried to remember exactly where he’d seen her around the farmhouse. He knew he’d seen her out around the dump, but not when . . .
    He sat on a street corner for a while, tapping a Marlboro into his hand, lit it with an ice-cold Zippo. Thought about Hale Sorrell. Finally, disturbed and a bit angry at the unfairness of it, he drove over to Logan’s Fancy Meats, used the phone on the outside wall, dialing a number from memory.
    A man answered, “Hello?”
    He hung up, walked back to his car. Unraveling sweaters. He lit another Marlboro, thought about it.
    S INGLETON DIDN’T THINK of himself as a killer, because he’d never actually killed anyone—not that the law cared. The law would say he was a killer, because he was there when the girls were killed. It was all really gentle: Mom had gone into the room with them, and told them that they were being taken back home, but that they weren’t allowed to see it. So she’d give them a shot, and when they woke up, they’d be back with their mom and dad.
    They never woke up, of course. Singleton had carried them out in a black plastic garbage bag, still warm, out through the night, the burial spade rattling in the back of the truck. They’d gone quickly, quietly, mercifully. They never felt a thing.
    He’d like to go like that. In