Wicked Prey

reading about it. Should be enough to prop up that fuckin’ farm, and any other farms you know about.”
    “I did all right,” he agreed.
    “But I still owe you,” Lindy said. “You know that little bridge over Cross Creek?”
    “Yeah.” The bridge was three miles down the gravel road. Kids would park there, walk a half mile upstream to a broken-down dam, and swim in the summer.
    “If you park, and then go under the bridge, and walk down, away from the dam, to that big oak tree where they used to have that tire swing?”
    “Yeah?”
    “If you look behind the tree, you’ll see a rock, right on the top. There’s six hundred thousand dollars under the rock,” she said. “Your share. I’m keeping the other shares.”
    Lane laughed with the joy of life and said, “You’re a nice girl, Lindy.”
    “Brute used to say, ‘You’re not very nice, but you are pretty good.’”
    Lane said, “Yeah. He did say that.”
    “So we’re okay?”
    “We’re okay—and listen. You take care of yourself, hear?”

    JUSTICE SHAFER was released by the Secret Service, without the .50-cal, and took off for Oklahoma. He thought about Juliet Briar occasionally, on the way back, but by the time he got home, she’d pretty much slipped his mind.
    * * *
    JULIET BRIAR was arrested for assault, but nobody much intended to prosecute, not after the rape charges were substantiated, and the beating wounds were photographed by the public defender’s office. She was released to her mother, and when school started, went back. She thought about Justice Shafer, off and on for the first week or so, but then he slipped away.
    The second week of school, she walked over to a McDonald’s on University Avenue and was there, sipping on a strawberry shake, when Dubuque and Moline came in the door, and she took in the low-slung pants and the brass billfold chains, and felt a little thrum in her heart. The two men ordered and Dubuque was looking around when their eyes touched, and Dubuque’s face lit up and he said to his brother, “Look what we got here.”
    Briar smiled at him, and Dubuque came over and said, “How you doin’, Mama?”
    “I’m doing okay,” she said.
    They chatted for a minute, then Moline came over, and they sat across from her in the booth, and talked about Randy. Randy had broken his neck and was paralyzed from head to foot.
    “That motherfucker is a talking head, that’s all he is,” Moline said.
    “He’s a fuckin’ paperweight,” Dubuque said. “Ain’t no good to a woman like you.”
    “I was gonna take care of him,” Briar said, “but everybody said that I can’t. He’s too hurt. They’re gonna put him in a home.”
    “A little shit falls on everybody’s head,” Moline said, waxing philosophical. He took a fry, popped it in his mouth, let his eyes sink into hers. “Me’n Dubuque—we been out riding around. That’s our truck out there.”
    She looked out in the parking lot: a black Toyota 4Runner with chrome spinners on the wheels. “So what do you say, Mama?” Dubuque asked. “Wanna go for a ride?”
    She laughed: “It’s a fuckin’ Toyota,” she said.
    They left without her.
    * * *
    A DOCTOR called Weather on Monday evening, and Weather gave the phone to Lucas, and Lucas took it and listened, and said, “All right. When? All right. I can do that.”
    He hung up and Weather asked, “What was that about?”
    “Randy Whitcomb wants to see me,” Lucas said.
    “I didn’t think he . . . I thought he’s pretty messed up.”
    “He is,” Lucas said. “I don’t know what he wants.” He stood up. “I’m gonna run over there. Back in an hour.”
    He took the Porsche, idling through the evening light, thinking about the past week. Lots of problems out of the way.
    The whole business of the moneymen never made it into the papers, because the deaths of the cops rode over it all, and the deaths of Cohn and Cruz seemed to settle it. Mitford, the governor’s man, went away happy.
    Unless they uncovered a man with two watch-like swastika tattoos, they wouldn’t find the third robber, Lucas thought. As for DNA in the apartment, there were so many human traces—the place had been a model apartment, and hundreds of people had been inside, shedding hair and skin cells—that any results would be functionally and legally meaningless, as well as enormously expensive. So they didn’t process for DNA.
    The county attorney would decide later in the week whether to prosecute Whitcomb for