Naked Prey

that thekidnappers never called. The feds even started looking at Hale’s background to see if he might have had something to do with Tammy . . . you know.”
    Lucas touched the computer screen. “He says Kelly, Cash, and Warr did the kidnapping, and that Cash is a driver for the truck place. He doesn’t say anything more about Joe. I think he must’ve got the information from Joe. Where else would he get it?”
    Wilson pursed his lips. “So Joe . . . ”
    “I think Joe’s outa here,” Lucas said. “If Sorrell was Special Forces . . . maybe he had some training with pliers and fingernails.”
    “You don’t think Joe did this?” Wilson gestured out toward the kitchen, where the two bodies still lay on the floor.
    “It’s possible—but how the hell would Sorrell know about Cash and Warr? I think he probably grabbed Joe when Joe came for the money,” Lucas said. He looked at the note again, frowned. “I thought all the stories were about the rich girl being kidnapped on Christmas Eve, and all the gifts around the tree . . . ”
    “She was . . . ” Wilson shook his head. “Maybe it’s a typo. Maybe he meant the twenty-fourth, and typed the twenty-second.”
    “Pretty unlikely,” Del grunted. “That’s one thing you’d get right, in that kind of note.”
    “Those bank draft receipts, the ones that went to Vegas . . . ” Lucas had returned them to the briefcase where he found them, to have them checked later. Now he retrieved them, and looked at the dates. “They’re dated December twentieth. He took a million dollars in cashier’s checks to Las Vegas on the twentieth.”
    “What do you think?” Wilson asked.
    “Could you get one of the bank managers to check on when the drafts were cashed?” Lucas asked.
    Wilson looked at his watch. “It’s Saturday. Maybe. Let me call somebody.”
    “Maybe . . . ” Lucas scratched his chin and looked at Del. “Maybe he was collecting money in Vegas. He got drafts from his bank, then spent three days withdrawing the money from his Vegas accounts. He was collecting cash to pay the kidnappers.”
    Del nodded. “Couldn’t just walk into a bank and ask for a million in cash. How else would you get it? But a bunch of bank drafts for Vegas hotels . . . He could’ve even passed it off as a business thing, with the banks.”
    “So Tammy wasn’t kidnapped on the twenty-fourth,” Lucas said. “They got her sooner than that. Huh.” They’d been squatting next to Mary Sorrell’s computer, and now they all stood up. “But there was something that Sorrell didn’t get from Joe or Cash or Warr. There must be a fourth man. Or woman. Or maybe a fourth, fifth, and sixth. Somebody who knew what it meant when Cash and Warr got hanged.”
    “And didn’t want Sorrell talking about it,” Del said. “Couldn’t risk it.”
    “Why couldn’t he risk it?” Wilson asked.
    Del said, “Because he didn’t know if Sorrell was finished—didn’t know whether or not Sorrell had his name. Didn’t know what Jane and Deon might have told him.”
    Wilson scratched his head and said, “Shoot,” and a moment later, “Goldarnit.”
    Lucas said to Del, “We better get back up north.”
    Del nodded. “But we wouldn’t get up there before dark, if we left now. We should catch a nap this afternoon, leave really early tomorrow. Three in the morning. Get there when the sun comes up. Take that little town apart.”

11
    S ATURDAY AFTERNOON, JUST after dark, Loren Singleton rolled along Highway 36, listening to the radio. He was tired, despite a long nap, from the overnight round trip to the Sorrells’ and back. A snow squall bothered his windshield, little pecks and flecks of ice whirling down from the north.
    He’d been horrified by the shooting, as he hadn’t been by the killing of the little girls. The little girls just seemed to go to sleep—and he hadn’t really done that. He’d just been there.
    At the same time, there was something about the Sorrell killings that left him feeling . . . larger. Tougher. He tried to find the exact word: studlier? That embarrassed him, but it might be close.
    The lights of Broderick came up through the blowing snow, the cafe, and the gas station, two dimly lit windows at the church, a beer sign in the bar—and then he noticedthe light in the back of Calb’s. The office was lit up, as though there were a meeting going on.
    He pulled the Caddy into the parking lot, watched for shadows on the