Naked Prey

by John Sandford

  She was only a hundred feet from the house when she realized that she wasn’t alone in the yard. There was a squirt of light and then she heard movement, a crunching on the snow. He was coming after her, whoever he was.

  Shells. As she hobbled along, she dug in her coat pocket, and found a .22 shell, but her hand wasn’t working and she dropped it. Lost in the dark. Dug out another one with the other hand, broke the rifle, got the shell in, snapped it shut. A squirt of light, then the man called, “Letty. You might as well stop. I can see you.”

  Bullshit, she thought. She could barely tell where he was, and he had the partly lit house behind him. And she was moving as fast as he was, because he was having trouble following her footprints through the grass that stuck through the shallow snow, and there was nothing behind her but darkness. If he kept coming, though . . . She had to do something—she didn’t know how badly she was hurt. Had to find someplace to go.

  His silhouette lurched in and out of focus in front of the house, and she remembered something that Bud, her trapper friend, had told her about bow-hunting for deer. If a deer was moving a little too quickly for a good shot, you could whistle, or grunt, and the deer would stop to listen. That’s when you let the arrow go.

  She turned, got a sense of where the man’s silhouette was, leveled the rifle and called, “Who are you?”

  He stopped like a deer, and she shot him.

  SINGLETON RAN UP the stairs, and at the top looked around, heard the crash of breaking glass, looked back, thinking somehow that it might be Martha West, who was sprawled in the wreckage of the glass table, and realized in the next instant that it had to be Letty because Martha was definitely dead.

  He spotted the door with light leaking beneath it, stepped over to it, and said, “Letty?” and tried the knob. Locked. He kicked it once and it bent, without breaking. He kicked it a second time, a cop-kick, and it flew open. Letty was gone. Window broken, with movement—the jacket going out. He stepped on a notebook and almost fell, got right, hurried to the window and saw a dark figure on the ground, hobbling down the side of the house. He fired once, missed, and, blinded by his own muzzle flash, let go another shot, and then he couldn’t see her anymore.

  Think.

  She was out there alone, maybe hurt. There was nobody else out there—the countryside was empty, he could shoot a machine-gun at her and nobody would hear. He ran down the stairs, realized his arm was burning. He looked at it, quickly, as he hurried through the living room and out on the porch: blood. Then he was around the house, and he got out the flash and got under the window and flicked the penlight on, and started tracking her. At the back of the house, he found blood, so he’d hit her, maybe, unless she’d cut herself going out of the house . . .

  He tracked her for a minute, then called out, “Letty. You might as well stop, I can see you.”

  She called, “Who are you?” and he stopped, trying to focus on the direction. It was dark as a coal sack.

  Then a star burst in front of him, a muzzle flash, and he felt a sharp slap on his chest and he involuntarily sat down. He could hear her running again but he paid no attention: he thought, I’m shot. I’m shot. He couldn’t believe it—he was shot. Shit at and missed, shot at and hit. He almost giggled. Had to do something about this.

  He crawled back toward the house, then got on his feet, staggering, got inside, and looked at his chest. Nothing: but it hurt bad. After a second, he spotted a tiny dimple in the parka fabric. A hole, he thought, wonderingly. He unzipped the parka, found a small circle of blood on his uniform shirt. Pulled his shirt open, found a bigger circle on his undershirt. Pulled that up, and found a hole in his chest, just right of his left nipple. The skin was already beginning to bruise, and when he touched it, pain rippled across his chest.

  Shit. He was shot.

  Didn’t hurt as bad as his arm, though. He took a few experimental breaths. He was breathing okay. And he thought, She yelled, “Who are you?”

  Did she really not know? When would she have seen his face?

  He began to see some possibilities—maybe he could pull this off yet. And then he thought, DNA. Goddamn DNA. Martha West had cut him up, they might find his blood anywhere . . .

  LETTY FIRED THE shot, then stumbled away from her muzzle flash, aware that it would have given her away. The man was crunching through the snow again, and she found another shell with her good hand—what was wrong with her left? It just didn’t work—and tried to get it in the gun. She fumbled it, found another, got this one in, stopped to listen.

  Nothing. Where was he? She began to get the creepy feeling that he was right next to her, breathing quietly, and she slowly dropped to her knees, huddling into the dried Russian thistles along the West Ditch. Waited. Where was he . . .

  Two minutes passed, though it took an eternity. Another minute? Where was he? What happened to Mom? She almost gagged, because she thought she knew what happened to Mom. Though Mom had fought the guy long enough for her to go out the window . . .

  More light. What was that? More light, lots more light . . .

  The house was burning. She was drawn to it—was there something she could do, or was the gunman simply pulling her in? Frightened, she shrank farther back into the dark, and farther back, as the flames grew.

  When the first of the volunteer trucks arrived, twenty minutes later, the fire was five stories high and climbing into the night like a volcano.

  15

  Lucas had stolen an old copy of Fortune magazine from the motel lobby and lay in bed, reading an article about how he could still retire rich, when the phone rang. Del?

  He picked it up and got the comm center clerk from the Law Enforcement Center. “Mr. Davenport? This is Susan Conrad down at the sheriff’s office. We’ve just dispatched our fire department to the West house. The call coming in said the whole house was burning like crazy. Thought you might want to know.”

  “Jesus. Thanks.”

  Lucas slammed the phone back on the hook and ran barefoot in his underwear to the door and out, down two, and began pounding on Del’s door. “Get up. Del. Get up.”

  Without waiting for an answer he ran back to his room, left the door open, and began pulling on his jeans. He’d been outside for no more than ten seconds and he was cold—God only knew what the temperature was. He was pulling on his shirt when Del stumbled into the room, pulling on jeans, still wearing his pajama top.

  “West house is burning down. Fire trucks on the way,” Lucas blurted. Del disappeared. Lucas pulled on his socks and shoes, and in the distance, through the open door, could hear the siren that called in the volunteer fire department, and the roar of the truck heading out.

  Shoes on, Lucas got his wallet and keys and coat and gloves and headed out to the truck, climbed inside, saw Del running toward him, popped the passenger-side door lock, and Del was inside and Lucas took off.

  Del was carrying his shirt and coat and boots and dressed as they headed toward the highway. “Not a coincidence,” he grunted.

  “We been out with that kid all over the place, it’s like we were dragging bait. I didn’t even think about it,” Lucas said. They were probably two or three miles behind the fire truck when they got to Highway 36, but once past the last house going out of town, Lucas dropped the pedal to the floor and left it there. Two minutes out, he pushed the button that lit his information screen, which said that it was fourteen degrees below zero. Another minute out, they could see a glow to the north, burning faintly above the closer red lights of the fire truck. “Jesus Christ, that can’t be it,” Del said. “We’re too far away.”

  “Gotta be it,” Lucas said. “Unless the report was wrong.”

  They were closing quickly on the first-responder fire truck, but didn’t catch it until they were just outside of Broderick. By then, they knew the reports had been right: the fire was north of Broderick and huge, and there was nothing else out there.

  Lucas, worried that some of the town residents might be in the highway, in th
e dark, looking at the fire, let the truck lead them through town. When the truck pulled into the house, Lucas swung past it and turned in at West Ditch Road.

  Even from there, on the opposite side of the ditch, the heat was ferocious. “If there’s anybody in there, they’re gone,” Del said. One of the firemen had jumped off the truck, slid down the bank of the ditch and began hacking at the ice on the bottom with an oversized ax. As he did that, another man was uncoiling a hose, and when he had enough of it, he rolled it down the bank, and the ax-man dragged it to the hole he’d cut and shoved it under the ice.

  A minute later, a thin stream of water was splashing onto the house, but it was obvious that it was doing no good at all—it was like pissing into a welding torch. The fire was eating everything. More lights now, police cars and two more fire trucks.

  Then:

  “Lucas.”

  The voice was high and shrill but somehow weak, and might almost have been the scream of a failing joist in the fire. But Lucas knew it wasn’t, and he ran down the gravel track, in the direction of the sound, and shouted, “Letty? Letty?”

  “Over here. Here.” He could see the pale half-oval of her face across the ditch, half of her face lit by the fire. “I’m hurt bad.”

  “Hang on,” Lucas shouted. Del yelled, “Not that way,” as Lucas went straight down the wall of the ditch, sliding, crawled halfway up the other side, slid back, tried again, slid back, and finally ran thirty feet down the ditch to where some tumble-weeds were still rooted in the side, and clambered out of it. Del had run around the end of it, and was coming toward him. “Letty?” He’d lost track of her.

  “I’m hurt bad, and I think Mom’s . . . Mom’s in there. Somebody came and shot her.” She began sobbing and Lucas came up, and he bent to pick her up and she shrank away and said, “My hand is hurt bad, and my side hurts, I think I’m shot, and my ankle might be broke . . .”

  “Aw, Jesus.” Del was there, and Lucas pulled off his coat and said, “We’re making a sling, just . . . aw, fuck it. Del . . .” Lucas pulled his coat back on and said, “I’m gonna pick her up. Which side hurts, honey? Which side?”

  HE PICKED HER up, cradling her, and Del asked, “Where’re your keys?” and Lucas told him, and Del dug them out of Lucas’s coat pocket and ran back to get the truck. One of the firemen ran up and asked, “She burned?” and Letty said, “No, I’m hurt.” Del was there in a few seconds, and Lucas lifted her into the back seat and then crawled in with her, and Del put the truck on the highway and they were headed back to Armstrong, running at top speed.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m hurt bad . . .” She began sobbing again.

  Lucas got on the cell phone, found a signal, called into the sheriff’s comm center. “How do we get to the hospital? We’ve got a hurt kid.”

  “You on your way back to town?”

  “Running fast.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Just went through Broderick.”

  “There’ll be a car sitting on the edge of town with its light bar flashing. Blink your headlights a bunch of times when you come up, and he’ll take you right through to the medical center.”

  “We’re coming . . .”

  Lucas relayed the information to Del, then turned back to Letty. “I know you’re hurt. But tell me what happened, if you can.”

  “I was up in my bedroom, and Mom was down in hers, and I heard this knock . . .” She told the story, and when it was done, Del muttered, “Jesus Christ, Letty,” and Lucas said, “You think he was shot.”

  “He was shot. He fell down.”

  “Maybe he was . . . you know, going down so you couldn’t see him.”

  “He was shot,” she said, stubbornly. “I’d never miss anyone that close. He’s shot in the chest.”

  “All right. Twenty-two short?”

  “Yes.” Her body was shaking with grief and pain. “He shot Mom. She was yelling for me to run, and she was fighting him, and then there was a shot and she stopped yelling and he started coming up the steps . . . You didn’t see her outside, in the yard or anything?”

  Lucas said, “I didn’t look. I was just trying to stay out of the way of the fire guys. You never saw the guy?”

  “Only his outline. It was way dark. But . . . he talked to me. He knew who I was. He called me Letty. And he sounded like . . . he was from around here. He sounded like one of us.”

  “Did you see his car?”

  After a moment of silence, she said “He didn’t have a car. He didn’t have a car. I shot him and he fell down and then he got up and walked back to the house while I was trying to reload, and then I just sat there and the house caught on fire and I couldn’t get up, and then the house burned and then you came. No car ever drove away.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “No car. He didn’t have a car.”

  “Okay. Listen . . .”

  He was about to say something, but she pushed a hand out of her coat sleeve and tried to look at it, and Lucas saw a huge gash that started at her wrist and ran across the palm and disappeared between her middle and ring fingers.

  “Better keep your hand down,” he said. “It’s bleeding a little.”

  “Coming up on the patrol car,” Del said. Lucas looked down the highway, and saw the light bar. Del clicked the high beams off and on, and the patrol car pulled out on the highway, rolled slow until they’d gotten close, and then sped up and led them through town to the medical center’s Emergency Room. Three people were standing on the ramp, and then a fourth joined them, pushing a gurney, and Del pulled up next to them.

  THE FOUR MOVED Lucas and Del out of the way and loaded Letty onto the gurney and pushed her inside, and Lucas went over to a plastic trash barrel and punted it out into the driveway, where it rolled around spewing its garbage.

  “Her fuckin’ hand,” he said to Del. “Her fuckin’ hand looks like it’s almost cut in half.”

  “What about the chest? Was she shot in the chest?”

  “She was pretty alert for anything deep,” he said. Then: “I gotta get inside.”

  “I’ll park the car . . .”

  Lucas stopped at the door and looked back: “You getting pissed yet?”

  “Yeah. I’m pissed.”

  A YOUNG RESIDENT had been hustled out of bed when Lucas called in, and he was looking at Letty when Lucas pushed his way into the examination room. “How is she?”

  Letty tried to push up, and the doc turned, looked at Lucas over his mask: “Who’re you?”

  “I’m a cop. How is she?”

  The resident turned back to Letty, and as an aside to a nurse, in exactly the wrong tone, said, “Get that guy out of here.”

  Lucas snarled, “Listen, asshole, I’m not going into all the background, but if you want to keep your license in Minnesota, don’t fuck with me. Now, how is she? Is she shot?”

  The doc looked at a nurse, who shrugged, and showed no inclination to throw Lucas out. The doc said, “She has what might be a gunshot wound, but it’s not life-threatening. Her hand is badly cut. We haven’t fully evaluated it yet. We need to X-ray her foot. It’s badly swollen and she complains of pain. It might be broken—it’s at least badly sprained. Is that good enough?”

  “What about the hand? That looked bad.”

  “I cut it on the broken window,” Letty said. “Did you find Mom?”

  “The hand will take, mmm, take some special attention,” the resident said. “There’s a surgeon in Fargo . . .”

  “Fuck Fargo,” Lucas said. He banged back out of the examining room, and went outside, met Del, told him what he was doing, pulled out his cell phone and called home. A sleepy Weather answered on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me—I’ve got a problem.”

  He told her about it quickly, and when he was done, Weather said, “Get her down here as fast as you can. We need her while the wound is fresh. I don’t do hands, but I can get Harry Larson to do her. How fast can you ge
t her here?”

  “I’ll have to check. Go back to sleep—I’ll call you. Are you cutting tomorrow morning?”

  “Not until ten. What are you going to do?”

  “See if I can find a plane. If I can’t, I’ll drive her down, or something. Get an ambulance.”

  “Listen: let me call over to Regions, see what they’ve got. Maybe it’d be quicker to get a fast helicopter out of here, rather than messing around.”

  “Good. Call me back.”

  “Who’s paying?”

  “We are. I am.”

  “Won’t be cheap.”

  “Call ’em.”

  DEL ASKED, “WHAT’RE we doing?”

  “We’re gonna take her out of here in a helicopter—Weather’s taking care of it. She’s gonna call back.”

  “I don’t think her mom made it,” Del said. “When I came running around the ditch, going back to where you were . . . somebody inside the house was burning.” He wrinkled his nose, then made a spitting gesture off to the side. Burning people smelled like pork barbeque, and left a stink in your nose and mouth.

  “She knows it,” Lucas said. “She hasn’t admitted it yet. Sounds like Mama took on the asshole, whoever he is.”

  “Wonder why he burned the house down? If he hadn’t done that, Letty might have died out there. I’d figure he was after Letty . . .”

  “Why? I mean, why was he after her?”

  Del thought. “I dunno.”

  “What if he was after Mom?”

  Del shook his head. “That doesn’t feel right.”

  “Okay. But the whole thing is pretty interesting. Why was he after her? What was he burning? Where is he now, especially if he was shot?”

  “I have my doubts about him being shot. I mean, we both know cops who’ve emptied a whole goddamn Glock at somebody down the hall, and didn’t hit shit.”