Naked Prey

gathered in the courtroom. Two or three people who looked like courthouse loafers had squeezed in, curious, and Lucas ordered everybody who wasn’t a sworn deputy to leave. The loafers squeezed back out, and one of the deputies closed the doors.
    “I don’t want anybody to talk about what goes on here,” he said. “If you gotta talk to your wives, tell them to keep their mouths shut. I know it’s hard, but it’s only for a couple of days. What I have is a list of everybody who lives in Broderick.” He waved Del’s yellow legal pad. “I think I have the name of everybody. And we need to have a real gossipy talk about who does what up there. Who’s been busted,who’s been warned, what kind of trouble they’ve gotten themselves in, if they have—we need anything you’ve got. I’m telling you fellas, after last night . . . we need to nail this sucker. And we don’t have a hell of a lot to go on.”
    “No DNA at all?” one of the deputies asked. Lucas recognized him as one of the guys who’d been at the fire.
    “We’re not too hopeful,” Lucas said. “Mrs. West was burned beyond recognition, and those of you who’ve been up at the house know what that looks like. It’s a big pile of charcoal.”
    “Cash and Kelly worked for Gene Calb; have you talked to Gene?”
    “Yeah, but he says he doesn’t know nothin’ about nothin’. So what I need to know from you is, What about Gene Calb? Does he really not know nothin’ about nothin’?”
    “He’s always been a pretty good guy,” one of the deputies said. “Can’t see him killing anybody.”
    “Ever been in trouble?”
    “Traffic tickets, I guess. Maybe a DWI when he was a kid.” The deputy looked around, picked out a man in gray coveralls. “What do you think, Loren? You go up there.”
    The man named Loren cleared his throat and said, “I rent a paint booth from him for a couple days, every year or so—I refinish cars as a hobby. The thing is . . . there are some pretty tough hombres up there. Mike Bannister or Kiley Anderson or Dexter Barnes, everybody knows them. Gene handles them, though.”
    “So what about these guys, Bannister and Anderson and Barnes?” Lucas asked.
    The deputy said, “They’re mostly just hell-raisers, but they’ve been known to steal a car occasionally. There’s one guy out there, Durrell Schmidt, will steal a calf every once in a while. That’s what we think, anyway.”
    “Had some marijuana around there,” another man said.
    “Had some everywhere, it’s mostly just ditch weed,” a third deputy said.
    They went around for a while, told Lucas a story or two, and laughed at them. Lucas finally asked, “So who up there could kill somebody? Who up there, if he really got his back to the wall, could do that?”
    Loren said, reluctantly, “You could see three or four of those guys getting drunk and maybe something happens and they get crazy with a gun and shoot somebody, almost like an accident—but if it came down to sitting around and thinking about it, and then doing it . . . I gotta say Gene Calb. Maybe Dexter Barnes. I mean, if it came right down to having to do something really tough, and then doing it, one of those two guys. I don’t think they did, but I don’t know anybody else up there who . . . who . . . ” He scratched his chest as he looked for a word. “Who is really organized enough to do this. Organized isn’t the right word, maybe . . . ”
    There was some nodding of heads, but then another deputy said, “Do we know for sure that the guy who killed the Sorrells and West had anything to do with the kidnappers? Or that the guy who killed the Sorrells is the same guy who killed West?”
    Lucas smiled. That was a new thought, that everything was unconnected. “We believe there’s gotta be some connection—if there isn’t, we’re really out in the dark.”
    Another deputy said, “I talked to the doc this morning, the medical examiner, and they X-rayed Martha West and she’s got a slug in her head. You know about this?”
    “I haven’t talked to the ME today,” Lucas said. “Good slug?”
    “Most of it’s there. So if it’s the same guy who did the Sorrells, you could get a match.”
    “All right. Listen guys, I want you all to go out and question everybody you know. I don’t mean interrogations, just ask around. Was there anything weird going on up in Broderick? Anything that’s sort of undercover around Calb’s place? If you hear anything, from