John Sandford - Naked Prey

"And if we bust the women, that's the end of their little drug-running enterprise," Mitford said.

"That's right. I don't feel too good about that-and to tell the truth, I think we could smell a little stinky afterward. We bust them, and four or five thousand women don't get their cancer pills."

"Let me rephrase that for you," Mitford said. "Four or five thousand registered voters won't get their cancer pills and they'll complain to one of the biggest interest groups in the country, the breast-cancer coalition."

"You think we should let it slide?"

"I don't think anything. I'm not a law enforcement officer. I don't even recall having this conversation. The governor certainly never knew about it."

"So I'm working on my own book."

"Welcome to state government," Mitford said.

Lucas and Del left the church, so Letty and the other women could get ready for the funeral, and walked across the highway to Calb's. The two BCA investigators were in the shop, working through the office. A deputy was sitting in the work bay, with a half-dozen employees scattered around the bay on folding chairs.

Lucas briefed the BCA guys on the theft ring, then went out to talk to the employees. "You all may be in some sort of trouble, so maybe you want to get a lawyer or public defender out here… but none of you will be charged with anything right away. The guys in the office will want to talk to you individually. I would like somebody to tell me one thing, which won't have any effect on you at all… Okay?"

The men glanced around at each other, a couple shrugged, and a stocky man in a grimy Vikings sweatshirt said, "What do you want to know?"

"You know that one of the women from the church-one of the nuns-was found dead at Gene Calb's house. Shot in the head."

"Gene didn't do it," one of the men interrupted.

"That's not what I need," Lucas said. "We're not sure what happened, but we know that both of Gene Calb's cars are still in his garage. What I want to know is… did one of those Toyotas come in last night, or the night before? One of the good ones?"

The men all looked around at each other again, there was more shrugging, eyes drifted away, and finally the spokesman said, "I don't know."

"Is there an old one around here? At somebody's house, or around back? I haven't looked around back."

"Not around here," the spokesman said. No more eye contact.

On the way out, Del said to Lucas, "So the Calbs are running in a wrecked Toyota. Why is that? Why not take one of their cars?"

"Because if they can get it as far as the airport at Thief River, or Fargo, and if we hadn't found out about it… we'd never know where they went."

"I'll get some calls out," Del said.

Martha West's funeral service was held in a nondescript chapel at the funeral home, so nondescript that it could hardly even be called nondenominational-it looked like a grade-school cafeteria without the charm, and was cold, as if the funeral home didn't want to waste energy on heating it. Seventeen people showed up, including cops. The coffin was sealed. Letty sat at the front and cried, her cast propped on the chair in front of her, her single crutch between her legs. A Lutheran minister called on Martha's friends to talk about her, and a few did, without much to say.

Couldn't say that she drank a lot, and spent most of her time at the Duck Inn.

Most talked about her songs, and how hard she worked on them, and what a good voice she had, for Custer County anyway, and let it go at that. A women's group served Ritz crackers with cheese, and sliced celery and carrots with pimento spread, in a side room, for people who weren't going to the cemetery. That was almost everybody.

Lucas and Del drove out to the cemetery behind the hearse, with Letty crying in the back seat, and Ruth trying to comfort her when she wasn't crying herself. The snow was blowing hard, and the grave looked like a big fishing hole in an ice-covered lake. The coffin went in the ground and they all left, with Letty peering back for as long as she could see the cemetery. And when she couldn't see it anymore, she rolled facedown on the back seat and sobbed.

The sheriff had made tentative arrangements for a foster home, but in the end, they didn't take her there. They left her with Ruth, at the church, with the older woman. The arrangement, they agreed, was temporary, until they figured something out. "Don't tell me you're gonna try to find my dad," Letty said. "There's no way I'd live with that sonofabitch."

As they drove away from the church, Del said, "What a wonderful fuckin' day. If there was a four-story building in town, I'd jump off it."

"There's the smokestack. There's the grain elevators."

"Fuck you."

Lucas: "Got to think of something, man."

"I have thought of something," Del said. He suddenly seemed comfortable, Lucas thought, which was odd, given the circumstances.

"What?"

"I'll tell you in a while. I gotta make sure I can pull it off, first."

"What?"

"Drop me off at the drugstore. I got things to buy."

"What're you doing?"

"Figured out how we're going to end this thing."

"Tell me."

"I will-in about an hour."

Del knocked on Lucas's motel door an hour later. Lucas had been watching TV news, and he got up in his bare feet to answer the door. Del had his duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and a package wrapped in brown paper under the opposite arm. He handed the package to Lucas.

"See ya," he said.

"Where're you going?" Lucas was mystified.

"Back to the Cities. Got a plane out of Fargo in two hours. Figure to get home by seven-thirty. Cheryl's gonna pick me up at the airport, and I'm gonna take her out to LeMieux's for a little French food, maybe a little wine, tell her on the way home how cute she looks with her hair that way, whichever way it is today."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Gettin' laid," Del said. He ticked an index finger at Lucas. "I've got a round-trip ticket, I'll be back tomorrow by noon. Now. In that package you will find five different-colored fine-line Magic Markers and a large spiral art pad. So you get a couple beers down here, lock yourself in, and think. Draw your pictures on the pad, all those arrows and squares and shit. I'll come back tomorrow and you can tell me who did it."

"Jesus, Del… "

"We don't need to be chasing people," Del said. "We need to figure out what the fuck happened. I think there's enough information-you just haven't thought about it enough. So. See you tomorrow."

He reached forward, took the doorknob, and pulled the door shut. Lucas looked at the package, hefted it, looked at the closed door, and thought, This is ridiculous. He opened the door just in time to see Del slip inside the Mustang, which he'd had waiting in the drive. Del looked over at him, lifted a hand, and drove away.

"Hey!"

Del kept going.

Lucas went back inside with the package, tossed it on the second bed, went back to the television. The woman newscaster had the most amazing lips. They couldn't be real, he thought-they must keep a bee in the studio, trained to sting them. Must hurt…

He fell asleep for a while, got up with a bad taste in his mouth. Del didn't understand about the arrows and boxes, he thought as he brushed his teeth. His seances with the drawing table and the arrows and boxes only worked when his head was right, when something down in the lizard part of his brain said that a solution was available…

He wasn't getting that message yet. He stopped brushing for a moment and looked at himself in the mirror. On the other hand, there was something. Not something he missed, just something about the killings that he hadn't digested yet.

Maybe he could figure something out, draw a box and a couple of arrows. Couldn't hurt.