Naked Prey Read Online Free PDF Page B

and on, servicing the local farm folks. Just a crossroads. Then some people moved up here, to be close to work at Calb’s—houses are really cheap—and now, there must be twenty or thirty people around the place.”
    “So what the hell was an interracial couple from Kansas City doing there?” Lucas asked.
    “That seems to be a question,” Zahn agreed. They’d come up on the line of cop cars, which were parked on both sides of the narrow lane. A half-dozen cops were standing around, backs to the wind, ducking their heads briefly to see who Zahn was bringing in. Zahn threaded between them, slowed, pointed to a tall white-haired man in sunglasses, a camo hunting jacket, and nylon wind pants, who stood withhis hands in his pockets talking to two other men. Zahn said, “That’s the sheriff, Dick Anderson. I’ll let you out here. I’m gonna find someplace to get turned around. I get claustrophobic when I’m pointed the wrong way.”
    L UCAS AND D EL climbed out, and the sheriff and the two men he was talking to looked down at them, and the sheriff said something to the other two and they both smiled. Del, who was coming up behind Lucas, muttered, “We’re city slickers.”
    “For a while, anyway,” Lucas agreed. He smiled as he came up to the sheriff. Lucas’s blue eyes were happy enough, but his smile sometimes made people nervous. “Sheriff Anderson? Lucas Davenport and Del Capslock with the BCA. We understand you’ve got a situation.”
    “If that’s what you’d call it,” the sheriff said. The sheriff was about forty, Lucas thought, with a pale pinkish complexion; he ran to fat, like a clerk, but wasn’t fat yet. His hands stayed in his pockets. A statement of some kind, Lucas thought.
    Anderson nodded to the two men with him: “These are deputies Braun and Schnurr. We understood that Hank Dickerson was coming up from Bemidji with a crime scene crew.”
    Lucas nodded, still smiling. “Yes. They should be here anytime. Del and I were sent by the governor to make sure everything was handled right.”
    “The governor knows about this?” Anderson asked doubtfully.
    “Yes. I talked to him this morning before I left. He said to say hello and that he hoped we could get this cleared away in a hurry.”
    “Maybe I should give him a call,” Anderson suggested.
    “I’m sure he’d be happy to hear from you,” Lucas said. He looked around. “Where are the victims?”
    Anderson turned toward the stand of trees north of the road, took a hand out of his jacket pocket, and pointed. “Back in there, where the guys in the orange hats are.”
    Lucas said to Del. “Let’s go take a look.”
    “Are you running this, or Hank?” Anderson asked.
    “Both of us, in a way,” Lucas said. “I report directly to the commissioner of Public Safety and to the governor. Hank reports up through the BCA chain of command.”
    “So what exactly do you do?” Deputy Schnurr asked. “Handle the politics or what?”
    “I kick people’s asses,” Lucas said. His eyes flicked over Schnurr and the other deputy, then went back to the sheriff. “When they need to be kicked.”
    He and Del both stepped away at the same time, toward the men in the orange caps. The sheriff and his two deputies hesitated, and Del and Lucas got a few steps away and Del said, “That was cool.”
    “Hey, the guy didn’t even shake hands.”
    “Yeah.” They pushed through a tangle of brush and caught a glimpse of the bodies hanging from the ropes; passed a few more trees and then saw them fully, in the clear. Lucas focused on them, got careless, pushed back a springy branch and got snapped in the face by a twig. His cheek stinging, he said, “Careful,” to Del, and went back to staring at the bodies.
    They looked like paintings, he thought, or maybe an old fading color photo from the 1930s, two gray, stretched-out bodies dangling from a tree, half facing each other, ropes cutting into their necks, with four white men not looking at