SHE WAS WATCHING an old Letterman rerun, and critiquing technique, when headlights swept through the yard. After a moment, they died, and she walked out to the front door. Boots clunked across the porch, the door rattled, and her mother stepped inside.
Martha West was moderately loaded—bars weren’t open on Sunday so, like the old man, she’d also done her drinking privately. “Hi, honey. Whose truck is that?”
“Reese Culver. He was drinking and asked me to drive him. I’m gonna take it back in the morning.”
“Okay. You got traps out?”
“Yeah, down at the dump.”
“You better get upstairs, then, get to bed. It’s after eleven o’clock,” Martha said. Letty would have to get up at five o’clock to make it out to the dump. “You had something to eat?”
“Had some Honey Bunches of Oats,” Letty said. She stood up and stretched. “There’s some left, and I got a bottle of milk.”
Martha yawned. “Okay. Get to bed.”
Letty took the social studies book up the stairs with her, closed her bedroom door, dug a notebook out of her school pack, sprawled on the bed, and started working through the questions. If Lucas and Del didn’t come through, she’d need the answers. Besides, with Reese’s truck outside, she could sleep an extra forty-five minutes in the morning, and take the truck up to the dump before she returned it.
THE PROBLEM WITH Broderick, Singleton thought, was that there weren’t any back roads to the place. If you wanted to go there, you went on Highway 36, or you didn’t go. He took the .380. He’d have to get rid of it, he thought, and the thought pained him. He’d paid $350 for it at a gun show in Fargo, and he hated to lose it. It’d worked just fine with the Sorrells. Couldn’t ask for more, not for $350, not in this world.
At eleven o’clock, with the sky black with the daily overcast, he went on the air to tell the sleepy dispatcher that he’d take a quick run down south, to show the flag—the sheriff emphasized that when nothing was going on, he wanted his deputies out to be seen. The dispatcher said okay and went away. He turned north.
Broderick showed scattered speckles of light when he crept into the south side of town. He pulled in behind Calb’s shop and got out, let the wind bite at him for a moment, listening. Then, satisfied that he was alone, he pulled his parka up around his head, hunched his shoulders, and started off. He’d brought a penlight, and used it in quick flicks to guide himself along the back of the building, then past the old power transfer station, through an empty lot behind the darkened convenience store, and finally out on the open highway.
The West house was maybe six hundred yards down the road, a quarter-mile to a half-mile. Not far. Once or twice around the track at Custer High. He might have been walking into a coal pit, for as much as he could see. Not a single vehicle passed in either direction. The only sound was the wind, the scuffle of his feet on the road, and his own breathing.
When he reached the West house, he found that it was not entirely dark. Light glowed through a shade on a north-facing window on the second floor, and a variety of small lights—a TV power light, a bathroom night light, a green light that might have been on a telephone, a small row of red lights that looked like a power supply—actually gave his dilated eyes enough light to navigate.
Moving slowly, he felt with his feet for the track that crossed the culvert into the driveway. When he got close, he sensed a bulk to his right. Martha’s Jeep? Too big. Pickup. Goddammit. Who was here? He moved around behind it, looked for any movement in the house, then squirted the penlight at the back of the truck.
He recognized it, all right. The dented corner panels, where old Reese Culver tended to back into solid objects, like phone poles. What was the old man doing here, with virtually all the lights out? There’d been rumors, off-and-on, that Martha West might fuck for money, but nobody paid them much attention. It was generally taken as wishful thinking in a town that needed somebody who fucked for money. But Reese Culver? If he was staying the night, the old fart, he had to be paying.
He thought about it for a minute, two minutes. Shit. He put his hand in the pocket, gripped the pistol, took it out once to make sure he wouldn’t snag the pocket, put it back in, and walked up to the porch.
MARTHA WEST HAD just crawled into bed when she heard the knock at the door. She thought the knock was Letty, upstairs, until it came a second time. She looked at a clock. Almost midnight. Who was it, at this time of night?—and a sudden chill went through her shoulders and she thought: Deon Cash and Jane Warr. Just at midnight. The knock came a third time, and she picked up a ratty old terrycloth robe and threw it on, and walked through the darkened front room to the front door.
The porch light was burned out, so she turned on the interior light and looked out through the glass cut-out on the front door. The first thing she saw was the embroidered star on the parka, and then Loren Singleton’s face. No ghosts, anyway. Had something happened?
Puzzled, she opened the door. “Hi . . . ”
“Martha, sorry to bother you,” Singleton said. “I know it’s late, but Loretta Grupe called in and said she was worried about Reese—he’d been drinking some and she was worried about whether he got home. I happened to see his truck out here.”
“He, uh, was drinking, and, uh, well—Letty drove him home, and he told her to go ahead and bring the truck up here, so she’d have a ride. You know how she is.” Singleton kept looking past her, looking for something else. She didn’t care for him, and pushed the door closed an inch or so, ready to go back to bed. “Anything else?”
“Okay. So he’s home. And Letty’s home, everything’s all right.”
“Yeah, she’s asleep, everything’s okay.” She smiled, not her best smile. “Okay?”
NO POINT IN messing around. Singleton put his left arm out and straight-armed the door, and it flew open, bouncing Martha West straight back. She was startled, just beginning to get scared, and he pulled the pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at her eyes and said, “Tell Letty to come down here. She’s under arrest.”
Martha hesitated just a second, looking down the barrel of the gun, and knew in her heart that Letty wasn’t under arrest, that something terrible was happening here and she thought she knew what. She mimed a turn, as if to shout up the stairs, and then instead, she threw herself at Singleton, avoiding the gun barrel, grabbing his arm, going right straight into his body, screaming and spitting at him, clawing at him; the sleeve of his coat jerked up and she got some skin, saw some blood. He fought back and she realized that she was going to lose him, and she screamed, “LETTY RUN LETTY RUN LETTY RUN . . . ” and Singleton hit her and she went over a loveseat and crashed through a glass-topped coffee table, still screaming and saw Singleton coming, reaching out to her, and then she realized, just in a tiny fragment of time that she had left that he was pointing, not reaching, and she screamed “RUN LETTY . . . ”
THE BOOM OF the gun was deafening in the small room, but the noise stopped instantly. Singleton had never liked that kind of noise, that high-emotion squealing that women did, and when he shot Martha West in the forehead and the squealing stopped, his first feeling was that of sudden relief—and he thought, Letty, and looked at the open door to the second floor. Martha West had been screaming at the stairway . . . He went that way, taking the stairs two at a time.
LETTY HAD FINISHED the last of the social studies problems and was packing her bag when she heard the knock on the front door. She couldn’t see the front yard from her room, so she paused, listening. Was it her mother? Then she heard the knock again, and stepped toward the door, heard her mother’s footsteps leaving the downstairs bedroom.
She listened, heard her mother’s voice and a male rumbling—maybe it was Lucas and Del, with something important?—and then the voices went up, and her mother began screaming RUN LETTY and Letty turned and stepped across the room and picked up her rifle, which was unloaded because her mother made her swear to keep it unloaded except when she was using it, and she fumble
d in the pocket of her trapping parka for a box of shells and then heard a crash of breaking glass and a RUN LETTY and she broke the gun open and there was a sudden tremendous boom and the sounds of fighting stopped . . .
Too late.
She looked wildly around the room, flipped the old turn-lock on the door, grabbed the steel-legged kitchen chair at the foot of her bed, and without thinking about it, hurled it through the east window. There were two layers of glass, the regular window and the storm, but the chair was heavy and went through. Running footsteps on the stairs, like some kind of Halloween movie—and Letty threw her parka over the windowsill to protect herself from the broken glass, and still hanging onto the rifle, went out the window.
She hung on to the coat with her left hand and she dropped, pulling it after her; the coat snagged on glass and maybe a nail, held her up for just a second, then everything fell. She landed awkwardly, in a clump of prairie grass, felt her ankle twist, and hobbled two steps sideways, her ankle on fire, clutching the parka in the cold, and saw a silhouette at the window and she ran, and there was a crack of light and noise like a close-in lightning strike, and something plucked at her hair and she kept hobbling away and there was another boom and her side was on fire, and then she was around the corner of the house and into the dark.
Hurt, she thought. She touched her side and realized that she was bleeding under the arm, and her ankle screamed in pain and something was wrong with her left hand. She kept going, half-hopping, half-hobbling. Cold, she thought. She pinned the rifle between her legs and pulled the parka on. She had no hat or mittens, but she pulled the hood up and began to run as best she could, and her left hand wasn’t working right . . .
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 the 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.
Lucas Davenport Collection: Books 11-15 Page 124
