Naked Prey

his .45 out of its holster and pushed the door open with his knuckles. Del, to one side, with his Glock pointed overhead, said, “I’m going . . . ” and then he was inside, with Lucas two steps behind, and Jenkins behind him. Shrake had jogged around to the back, just in case.
    “Guy down here,” Del said, and Lucas moved forward, and then Del said, “Another one,” and Lucas saw the first body sprawled in the hallway, one arm sticking like a chicken claw into the kitchen. Sorrell. Lucas recognized him from the photographs, except that the photographs didn’t have a bullet hole in the face.
    Del was moving, and Lucas moved with him, and Lucas saw the woman, facedown in a puddle of blood. Like Sorrell, she was wearing a bathrobe, and one leg stuck out toward Lucas. As he’d done with the door, he stooped and touched her leg with his knuckles. Not cold; still some warmth.
    “Not long ago,” Lucas said.
    “Let’s clear the first floor,” Del said.
    Lucas spoke over his shoulder to Jenkins. “Put a gun on the stairs. We’re gonna clear the floor.”
    “Gotcha,” Jenkins said. He moved to the base of a curling stairway with a blond-wood railing, his pistol pointed generally up the stairs. Lucas and Del took two minutes clearing the first floor, slowing to pop the back door and letShrake in. When the floor was clear, Shrake and Jenkins took the basement and Lucas and Del took the second floor, although all four believed the house was empty, except for themselves and the bodies.
    And it was.
    Lucas came back down the stairs, tucking the gun away, and said, “Let’s move it out on the porch . . . make some calls.”
    The first call went to the Olmsted County sheriff’s office. Lucas identified himself, gave the dispatcher a quick summary of the situation for the recording tape, and got the sheriff’s cell phone. The sheriff took the call on the second ring, listened for a moment, then said, “Oh, my God. I’m on my way.”
    “Bring the ME and tell him we’re gonna need some fast body temps.”
    Then he called the governor, through Mitford. “Neil. Get me a number for the governor. Like right now.”
    Mitford said, “He’s next door. Hang on, I’ll walk the phone over. Did you get him?”
    “Not exactly,” Lucas said.
    Henderson took the line. “Get him?”
    “We busted down the door of his house and found Sorrell and a woman who I expect is his wife, dead in the front hallway. Shot to death. Looks like executions. Looks like they’d just come down in their bathrobes and were shot. Like somebody got them out of bed. Bodies aren’t quite cold.”
    “Good lord. Did you . . . touch them?”
    “Yeah. The sheriff’s on the way with the ME,” Lucas said. He was standing on the porch, and down at the bottom of the hill, he could see a patrol car flying down the approach road, slowing for the driveway. “We’ve got one coming in right now.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I don’t know. I’m a little stunned. But I’d say that either Joe’s not dead, and he came back, or that there’s another player.”
    “What do I do with the CBS interview?”
    “You got what, an hour? I’ll talk to the sheriff about notifying the next of kin, tell them that it’s critical to move fast. If we can get that done, you could make the announcement. I wouldn’t make the announcement, though, before the next-of-kin notification. Not unless we get some media out here, or something, as cover. If you do, it’ll come back to bite you on the ass—some relative talking to TV about how he heard it first from you, and how awful it was.”
    “Let me think about that,” Henderson said. “In the meantime, get the sheriff to find the next of kin.”
    “Okay,” Lucas said.
    “Take down a number,” Henderson said. He read off a phone number, and Lucas jotted it in the palm of his hand. “That’s the red cell phone. About ten people have the number, so don’t call it too often. But call me on this.”
    “Okay.”
    “You know, if you look at this one way . . . our problem was solved pretty quickly.”
    “I wouldn’t look at it that way,” Lucas said. “Not in public, anyway.”
    “Call me back,” Henderson said, and he was gone.
    T HE SHERIFF’S CAR reached the top of the hill and pulled around Jenkins’s Dodge, slid to a stop in the snow. An apple-cheeked deputy jumped out of the driver’s side, and, staying behind his car, hand on his holstered six-gun, the other hand pointed at the