Secret Prey

hands up, Marcy pushing him, shouting. He could barely hear her. ‘‘Okay,’’ he said finally, through the roaring in his head. ‘‘Okay, I’m done.’’
    Marcy faded in. ‘‘You’re done. Are you done?’’
    ‘‘I’m done . . .’’ He dropped his hands. They were dappled with blood, and blood from Gut’s nose was sprayed across his shirt. He said, ‘‘This shirt’s fucked.’’
    Gut was stretched on the ground next to the pickup running board, groaning, the lanky man leaning over him, saying, ‘‘Breathe easy. Come on, you’re okay.’’
    But he wasn’t okay. He said, ‘‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t . . .’’ Every time he tried to sit up, he moaned, holding his sides; he was blowing streams of blood from his nose. ‘‘We better get an ambulance,’’ the lanky man said. ‘‘Get him over to the clinic.’’
    ‘‘Can you call from your car?’’ Sherrill asked.
    ‘‘Yeah, I can do that,’’ he said, as if the concept were new to him. He hurried to the squad car, parked at the edge of the lot, pushing through a narrow ring of spectators. As he went, Marcy asked, quietly, ‘‘Are you okay?’’
    ‘‘Yeah, yeah, he never touched me,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘That’s not what I meant.’’
    He looked at her: ‘‘Yeah, I’m okay. I sorta let it all out, there.’’
    ‘‘I’d say.’’
    The lanky deputy was back, said, ‘‘The ambulance’ll be here in a minute.’’ Then to Lucas, ‘‘I ain’t gonna try to take you in, ’cause we all got guns, but you’re under arrest.’’
    ‘‘Bullshit,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘You two came here to try to push us out of a murder investigation and he took the first swing. If I don’t get some answers, I’ll get the goddamn BCA up here and we’ll tear a new asshole for your department. You two are gonna be lucky to get out of this with your badges.’’
    ‘‘We’ll see,’’ the lanky man said. ‘‘Why don’t you go on down to the courthouse. I’m gonna get the sheriff in. And you’re not helping around here.’’
    ‘‘Why don’t you just come up to the Sugar Beet,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘We’ve got a big room.’’
    A siren started down in the town, the ambulance. The lanky man looked at Sherrill and then at Lucas. ‘‘All right. We’ll see you up there.’’
    ‘‘THIS IS JUST FUCKIN’ AWFUL,’’ SHERRILL SAID, ON THE way back to the motel.
    ‘‘The fight?’’ That was odd; she’d always been one of the first to get in.
    ‘‘Not the fight. The way the fight turns me on. You could bend me over the front fender right now, in front of all those people, I swear to God. Whoo. But you sorta hung me up there, dude. I don’t think I coulda taken that skinny guy.’’ She was vibrating, talking a hundred miles an hour. ‘‘Maybe I could have slowed him down. Didn’t take you long with the fat guy, that’s for sure. Man, if the skinny guy had gone for his gun, though, I’d’ve had to do something, and we coulda wound up with dead people out there. Whoa, what a rush. Man, the fuckin’ adrenaline is coming on, now. It always comes about ten minutes too late.’’
    Lucas grinned at her: ‘‘About once a year. It cleans out the system.’’
    ‘‘What’re you gonna tell the sheriff? I mean, we could be in some trouble.’’
    Lucas shook his head. ‘‘There’s something going on. We know it, and now they know we know. I think we might learn something.’’
    ‘‘Jeez—I wish I hadn’t used you up before dinner. I’m serious here, Lucas, I could really use some help.’’
    ‘‘We might have a couple minutes.’’
    ‘‘It won’t take that long . . .’’
    THE SHERIFF SHOWED UP A LITTLE MORE THAN AN hour later. Lucas was walking back from the Coke machine with a Diet and a regular Coke, his hair still wet from another shower, when they arrived in two cars; the sheriff, the older deputy named Jimmy, the young, lanky man from the restaurant, all in the sheriff’s squad car, and Dr. Stephen Landis in a two-year-old Buick.
    Lucas continued to the room, pushed through the door, said, ‘‘They’re here.’’
    Sherrill tucked her shirt in: she’d been worried the room would smell too much like sex, which she thought would seem perverted so close to the fight—which Lucas told her was perverted—so she’d turned up the shower full blast, cold water only, and sprayed it against the back wall of the shower stall. Now the room smelled faintly of chlorine, with a hint of