Wicked Prey

them . . .”
    * * *
    DOWN BELOW, the paramedics were thrashing through the trees. The first cop, with Lucas, began talking to Briar about what had happened that evening, and Briar couldn’t get through it—couldn’t think of what to say, other than that they were partying and that Randy had been crazy in his wheelchair, and she told him about how Ranch had made the crank pipe. The cop asked, “Mind if we look inside?”
    Briar said, “No, go ahead.”
    Lucas, who’d been looking down into the hollow, smiled to himself: there were a bunch of ill-considered words, he thought, though the cop could probably go in anyway. Now, there was no problem at all—he’d been invited.
    “I heard that,” he said to the cop, turning toward them, and the cop nodded to him. Lucas was looking right at Briar’s back, and in the thin flickering lights from the house, saw what looked like stripes across her dress; but he recognized blood when he saw it.
    “Hey . . .”
    The cop picked up the tone and looked toward him.
    “Check her back,” Lucas said. “She’s bleeding.”
    Briar started to weep, and sidled away from them. “He didn’t mean nothing by it,” she said. “He didn’t mean nothing.”
    * * *
    THE PARAMEDICS brought Whitcomb up out of the trees, strapped to the board, and hauled him to the ambulance and raced away toward the hospital. He moved not at all, though he appeared to be semiconscious.
    The second cop watched them go, then turned to Lucas and said, “He’s fucked. His neck is not right.”
    Lucas was about to comment when Ranch, who’d been standing, silently, a few feet away, fell over, unconscious. Because his hands were cuffed, he landed directly on his face. Lucas and the cop both flinched and glanced around, listening for a gunshot, then the cop crouched over Ranch and said, “He’s breathing.”
    “Better call another meat wagon,” Lucas said. He looked toward the house, where the first cop had taken Briar. He could hear Briar weeping again. “These people are messed up.”
    * * *
    LUCAS LEFT the St. Paul cops to straighten it all out, called Shrake and was told that nothing was happening at the apartment; and that the armored car companies were being monitored. “They might be gone.”
    “Maybe,” Lucas said. “But they lingered. Why did they linger?”
    “What about the SWAT?”
    Lucas looked at his watch: “Leave them for a while. I’m coming back, but I’ve got to talk to Letty first. Something weird is going on.”
    * * *
     
    WHEN HE got back to the house, he was determined to stay calm. He did, somewhat to his own surprise, because Letty was apparently as confused about events as he was.
    “You arrested her at a motel? What for? How did you know her?” Letty asked. “Did you arrest Randy?”
    “I didn’t even know she was involved with Randy,” Lucas said. “How do you know Randy?”
    “I only saw Randy once, when I was in a McDonald’s with John and Jeff, the day they picked me up at the Capitol, when you gave me the twenty. I don’t know what Randy wanted—I just thought Juliet would make a story.”
    “But you knew I’d been involved with Randy?”
    “Yeah, later. I figured he might be coming after me to get back at you, but he was such a dummy, I decided that he really wasn’t much of a threat.”
    “You were wrong about that,” Lucas said. “He was a threat. People like that are always a threat, because they’re nuts. But then . . . you kept going back, didn’t you?”
    “Only to Juliet,” Letty said. “I didn’t mess with Randy. Did Jennifer tell you about the perverted mailman? That whole thing?”
    “What perverted mailman?” Lucas asked. He looked at Weather, who was draped over a couch, looking at both of them with great skepticism. “Do you know about a mailman?”
    “First I’ve heard about a perverted mailman,” Weather said.
    “But what about the motel?” Letty asked. “You arrested a possible assassin who Juliet was supposed to . . . you know?”
    “Let’s go back to the mailman,” Lucas said.
    * * *
    WHEN THEY worked through it all, none of it seemed to make too much sense. Lucas finally said, “All right, this is all done, okay? Randy’s hurt, and it’s pretty bad—he’s broken his neck, maybe. But you’re all done with Randy and Juliet and I want a no-shit promise from you. I’m not pressuring you, I’m asking you: on our relationship, I’m asking you.”
    Letty stuck out a fist for a bump: “If I ever have