Naked Prey

thing,” Singleton said. He touched her face and said, “Don’t worry. You worry too much.”
    “I just want everything to be right,” she said. “You never talked to Deon about anything, did you?”
    By anything, she meant the kidnappings, Singleton realized.
    “Jeez, Katina . . . ” He was insulted.
    “I’m sorry, I’m just so upset.”
    “It’ll be okay, honey.”
    “Not just that. I sorta need to . . . get close to somebody. After all this.” She stood close to him and fumbled for his hand.
    “So come over. We’ll just, you know . . . hang out.”
    “I’ll see you there,” Lewis said. “I’ll take my car so I can get back. Maybe we could go down to the Bird for dinner.”
    “Love you,” Singleton said, talking down to her. First time he’d said that; no place romantic, just standing in a snow-swept parking lot in the middle of nowhere. “Love you,” he said.

12
    S UNDAY .
    Lucas and Del went north in a two-car convoy, Lucas leading in the Acura, Del trailing in the rented Olds. They left the Big New House at three-thirty in the morning, out past the airport, around the sleeping suburbs, then northwest on I-94.
    Rose Marie had called ahead and cleared them with the overnight highway patrolmen, and Lucas put the cruise control on eighty-five, with Del drafting behind him. They made the turn north at Fargo in three hours, picking up a few snowflakes as they crossed the narrow cut of the Red River. The snow got heavier as they drove north up I-29, but was never bad enough to slow them. After a quick coffee-and-gas stop at Grand Forks, they continued north, then cut back across the border to Armstrong, and pulled into the Law Enforcement Center a few minutes before nine o’clock.
    Bitter cold now, but the snow had quit for the moment.More was due during the day, and Lucas wanted to get started in Broderick before conditions got too bad. The sheriff wasn’t around—probably at church, the comm center man said—so they left a message that they’d be somewhere around Armstrong or Broderick, then stopped at the Motel 6. With the discovery of the bodies of Hale and Mary Sorrell, most of the reporters had gone, and they got rooms immediately.
    “Like a land office in here the night before last,” the clerk said. “Now we’re back to Sleepy Hollow.”
    “All the reporters gone?”
    “All but one.” The clerk leaned across the desk and dropped his voice. “A black guy from Chicago. He says he’s a reporter, but I wouldn’t be too sure.”
    “Hmm,” Lucas said wisely, and took the room key.
    O N THE WAY out of Armstrong, rolling through the bleak landscape, Del punched up the CD player and found Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page,” in the cover version by Metallica.
    They listened for a while, and then Del said, “I like Seger’s better.”
    “Close call, they’re both good,” Lucas said. “I go for the Metallica. Great goddamn album, anyway.”
    “Dusty fuckers versus metalheads; and you always leaned toward the metal,” Del said. “Back when you were running around town on that bike. I remember when you went to that first AC/DC concert. You talked about it for weeks.”
    “They kept your motor clean,” Lucas said. They were coming up on Broderick. “Tell you what—let’s go on through town and find that kid.”
    “Letty . . . ”
    “West.”
    A F ORD T AURUS was parked in the yard next to the Wests’ Cherokee. Lucas and Del trooped across the porch, and Martha West met them at the door before they had a chance to knock.
    “The state policemen,” she said to the room behind her. She pushed the door open and said, “C’mon in.”
    The front room was too warm and smelled of wool and, Lucas thought, old wine and maybe Windex or lemon Pledge. Letty was sitting on a piano bench in front of a broken-looking Hammond organ; a short, muscular black man with a notebook was perched in an easy chair, forty-five degrees to her right, a Nikon D1X by his feet. A pillow sat on the floor at the third point of the triangle, where Martha West had apparently been sitting.
    “Hey, Lucas and Del,” Letty said. She got up, smiling. “Did you see me on TV?”
    “All over the place,” Del said. “You were like Mickey Mouse.”
    Martha West said, “We’ve been having an interview with Mr. Johnson from the Chicago . . . ” She looked for the name but couldn’t find it.
    “Tribune,” the black man said, standing up. He wore round, gold-rimmed glasses and looked