Naked Prey

still. Wherever a house was burning wood, the smoke from the chimney went straight up for fifty feet before fading away.
    On the way, Lucas dialed the Kansas City number that Mark Johnson had given him early that morning. The answer was fumbled, and Lucas recognized it as a cell phone, being answered by somebody who was standing on a street corner. “Block.”
    “Yeah, my name is Lucas Davenport, I’m with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension up in Minnesota—”
    “Mark Johnson said you might call. He said you were the Tom Block of Minnesota. But better looking.”
    “That’s true,” Lucas said.
    Block laughed and asked, “So he told me what’s going on, with the lynching and the kidnapping.”
    “Not a lynching.”
    “If it was down here, it wouldn’t be a lynching, either. In Minnesota, it’s a lynching. Anyway, you think the Cashes are chopping cars up there?”
    “No, I don’t,” Lucas said. “The place we’re looking at—it’s called Calb’s—doesn’t look like a chop shop. It looks like what they say it is, car body and truck rehab.”
    “See any Toyota trucks up there? I mean, connected to this place?”
    Lucas thought—and he’d seen one. “One,” he said. “Land Cruiser.”
    “Now we’re talking. The thing is, we know the Cashes are moving hot cars. We’ve even caught their boys in a couple, but those were going to chop shops down here. There’s a rumor that they steal new Toyota trucks. Only new Toyotas. And then the Toyotas disappear, and they’re never found again. Ever. They’re gone. Never get in wrecks, never sold to wrecking services. I’ve got some numbers of insurance companies that are interested, if you want to talk to them, but I’d say we’re talking anywhere from seventy-five to a hundred trucks a year, from all over the Midwest and the plains, far east as Cleveland and far west as Denver.”
    “That’s a lot of trucks.”
    “We figure about five million worth. We had one guy across the river in Kansas City, Kansas, who bought a new Land Cruiser, sixty thousand dollars, got it stolen, got his insurance check, bought another one, and they stole that, the second night he had it.”
    “Hmm.”
    “Listen, I gotta get a bus. If you want to talk, comedown, or call me this afternoon, I’ll have some open time. I can tell you all about the Cashes. I grew up with them.”
    “A NYTHING GOOD ?” D EL asked.
    “That was a Toyota Land Cruiser those women were hauling coffee in, right? Last night?”
    “Yeah, I think.”
    “They’re driving for Calb for $100 a week and they drive a sixty-thousand-dollar Land Cruiser. That’ll cause you to think.”
    “Oh, boy. Tell me about it.”
    Lucas told him. And as they came up to Broderick, he said, “Go on through. Let’s see if there’s anything going at Letty’s.”
    As they went past Deon Cash’s place, they noticed a half-dozen cars in the driveway and yard. “FBI has landed,” Del said.
    “Talk to them later.”
    There wasn’t much at Letty’s house: one deputy sheriff’s car and one state fire marshal’s car sat next to the hole that used to be the house. The deputy was in his car, writing on a clipboard, and waved at Lucas. Another man was digging carefully through the basement.
    When Lucas identified himself, the man climbed out on a stepladder. He was wearing rubberized coveralls, and his face was smudged with charcoal. “George Puckett,” he said.
    “Figure anything out?”
    “Not a thing,” he admitted. “I don’t see any signs of accelerant. The sheriff’s deputies say the fire was deliberate, but I couldn’t prove it.”
    “That’s not nothing,” Lucas said. “That means that the guy probably didn’t come here to burn it down. Probably did it on the spur of the moment.”
    “Might not be nothing, but it isn’t much,” Puckett said. “Wish I could help more.”
    Lucas and Del walked around the scene a few minutes longer, found a patch of blood where Letty had huddled in the snow. No blood between that spot and the window, as far as they could tell, although the remaining snow was covered with soot and debris from the fire.
    “Church?” Del asked.
    “I guess. What else is there?”
    T HE MOTHERLY WOMAN met them at the door, looked hard at both of them, and without a word took them back to the kitchen, where Lewis was again working at the table. When they came in, she stood up, looked at Del, and said, “I’d like to talk privately with Lucas.”
    Del shrugged, looked at