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."
AYOUNG 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 get 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."
"Mmm. I kind of suggested that, and she said she hit him. Said there was no way she missed. I kind of think she might have hit him."
"Better get the word out to the local hospitals."
"We can do that."
THEY WERE STILL talking about it when Weather called back. "Turns out there's an air evac service out of Brainerd, which is almost halfway up there, and they can have a helicopter on its way in a half-hour. They'll call you when they're coming, and give you a time estimate. He says there's a landing pad right there at the hospital. He said it wouldn't be much more than an hour before they're coming in up there. I can meet her when she gets down here."
"Excellent."
BACK IN THE hospital he told the doc, "We're medevacing her, sending her down to Hennepin General and a hand guy. A chopper'll be here in an hour or so. We need to get her stable."
"The hand is the only big problem," the doc said. "She's got a groove in her side where she was shot, but that's minor. So's the leg. The hand… the hand is a problem."
"So how soon can she go?"
"I'll start some pain medication, and she can be ready in a half-hour. If the chopper's coming in here, we're good."
Lucas said to Letty, "I told you my wife is a doctor. She's setting up everything down in the Cities, and she's gonna meet you. You'll be okay, but they want to fix your hand as soon as they can."
"Okay," she said. "Did you check on Mom?"
"We're gonna do that now," Lucas said. "I'm gonna head right back up there-you'll be okay, just ride along and do what everybody tells you. They'll take care of you."
"Mom's dead," she said.
"We'll go see what happened," Lucas said. He touched her good leg. "You take care of yourself."
BACK AT THE West house, the fire was virtually out-there was almost nothing left to burn, and what had been a four-square farmhouse was now a hole in the ground. A deputy, who said that he'd met Lucas at the hanging scene, shook his head when they asked about Martha West. "Nobody's seen her. Car's here. There was this… " He gestured at the house. "There was this smell… "
"I know. Letty said her mother was downstairs. She heard a knock on the door, then her mother started screaming, there was a shot, the screaming stopped, and Letty went out the window. Never saw her mother or heard her again."
"We're sure she's telling the truth? I don't want to suggest anything, but they were out here alone."
"Letty was shot herself, and it's not self-inflicted, believe me," Lucas said. "Somebody shot her from behind and above. And nobody would do to themselves what happened to her, just to cover up. Her hand-there's a possibility that she's gonna be crippled."
The deputy winced. "Okay. You know, out here on the prairie… strange things happen when people are alone too much."
"In the city, strange things happen when they're together too much," Del said.
"Strange things happen," the deputy said.
Lucas suspected they were about to lurch off into some philosophical black hole and hastily interjected. "We need to alert all the local hospitals and doctors that the killer may have been shot."
"That's something. Since she didn't hit him in the head, I hope she hit him in the nuts," the deputy said. "I'll call it in."
ONCE SINGLETON GOT the fire going, he'd slipped out the front of the West home and begun jogging down the highway. He'd thought about one more look around, one more quick search for Letty, but she had that gun, and she'd see him coming. He gave up on that, and jogged.