His chest hurt. Hurt a lot-but he wasn't spitting blood, wasn't having any trouble breathing. If he could just keep going…
Running hurt. He ran halfway back to Broderick, then he stopped, stooped over, braced his hands on his knees, and tried to ease the pain. The pain was coming in waves now, and if he hadn't been shot, he might have thought he was having a heart attack. Behind him, the fire was growing. He ran on, hurting, made it to the car, running through the dark behind the convenience store and the shop.
This was the dangerous part. This was where somebody might see him. He eased the patrol car out from behind the shop, pointed it south, and took off. No lights in any windows that he could see, but in the rearview mirror, the fire was going like crazy.
A mile out of town, two miles, four-then his handset burped, and he heard the comm center calling over to the fire station. He dropped the hammer on it. He was still two miles from the nearest road that would take him away from Highway 36.
He made it by ten seconds. He'd made the turn when he saw the light bar on the first responder truck. He continued east, and out the side window could see the huge balloon of fire at the West house; then the comm center was squawking at him and he said he was on the way back but he was pretty far south and he heard the siren come up…
And he hurt. Goddamn Letty West.
He was sweating from the pain: he could smell himself. He made another mile, crossed a gravel road heading south, into the backside of Armstrong. Four minutes later, he was at his garage, running the door up.
Inside the house, he peeled off his parka, took off his shirt and undershirt, and examined the hole in his chest. It was a hole: a purplish,.22-sized dot on his chest, already surrounded by a nasty bruise. He pushed on the skin around it, and winced: won't do that again. Blood trickled steadily from the hole-not much, but it wouldn't stop.
He went into the bathroom, got a roll of gauze, made a thick pad, went into the kitchen, found some duct tape, and taped the pad to his chest. He couldn't help fooling with the area around the hole, squeezing gently to see if he could feel the slug. He couldn't, but he hurt himself again.
"Fuckin' dummy," he said.
The phone rang. He let it ring. Probably Katina, with news about the fire. He got enough tape on his chest that he was sure he wouldn't bleed through his shirt, then checked his arm. Martha West had scratched him, not too badly, but there would have been skin under her fingernails. Good idea about the fire. He washed the scratches with soap and warm water, smeared on some disinfectant ointment, and duct-taped it.
All right. No blood showing. He could still walk around. He got a fresh shirt, eased into it. Touched his chest, and the pain ran through him. The phone started ringing again. He ignored it, touched his chest again, gasped with the pain, and headed out to the car.
THE FIRE STATION was lit up-and empty. Every man was out at the fire. Singleton pulled into the station, pushed through the main door and called out, "Hey. Anybody home?"
Nobody answered, though a Hank Williams, Jr., song was drawling through the open truck slots.
"Hey. Anybody?"
No? Excellent. He headed up the stairs, to the sleeping loft, went straight through it to a storeroom where the medical gear was kept. The fire department was also the backup paramedic service. He pulled down a paramedic's pack, ripped off the sealer tab, and zipped it open.
Shit: no pills. He needed some painkillers, and there wasn't a goddamn thing. He'd been sure there'd be some-firefighters always seemed to have a few pills around, supposedly because of the small burns they took on the job. If so, they didn't get the pills from the paramedic packs. He zipped the pack up, replaced it.
Where else? The hospital, the drugstore. The hospital would probably be on alert, with the fire, and he didn't know how he'd get the drugs anyway. The drugstore had a safe…
He touched his chest. Goddamnit, that hurt.
He was on his way out when he got lucky. All the lockers were open and he saw a tube of pills in one of them. He looked at it: Advil. Not good enough. Then he checked all the lockers, quickly, found a dozen more bottles of pills, mostly vitamins and nonprescription painkillers. Finally, in the locker of one of the two full-time firemen, he found two tubes of Dilaudid. Twenty orange tabs, in total. Both tubes carried the notation, "One tablet every four to six hours."
Excellent. He took the tubes. Dug further through the locker and found another tube: penicillin. Good. Took that, too.
Have to think about Katina, though. He was gonna be out of action for a while, and he needed a reason. Had to think.
Made it out to the car, touched his chest. Goddamn, that hurt.
Then he thought, Wonder where Letty West got to? He'd gone out to her house to solve a problem, and hadn't. She was still out there, Letty was.
Singleton got into his car and headed for the fire. Halfway there, a new thought occurred to him: Mom was gonna be pissed.
16
THE FIRE WAS out, and a couple of the firemen were gingerly working through the blackened jumble of burnt wood and plaster in the now-open basement; it looked like a bomb crater. Lucas and Del took turns watching the work, and getting warm in the car. Ray Zahn showed up in his Highway Patrol cruiser, and they chatted for a while. "The comm center called the sheriff. He told them to handle it, and to coordinate with you guys, and then he went back to bed. I guess this isn't important enough."
"We're not being fair to him," Del observed.
"No, we're not," Zahn said. "I'm sure we don't know all the problems and contingencies he has to deal with. The miserable twat."
Zahn left on a drag-racing call, and Lucas and Del lingered, watching. More sheriff's deputies came in, apparently working on their own time. Zahn came back, and wanted to talk about how Rose Marie Roux might change the Highway Patrol.
They'd been back at the fire site for an hour, when a gray Toyota Land Cruiser pulled off to the side of the highway and two women got out. Lucas recognized one of them as the woman he'd talked to at the church. He dug around in the back of his mind for a moment, then came up with her name-Ruth Lewis.
Ruth walked down to a cluster of the firemen, as the other woman popped open the back of the Land Cruiser. Lewis talked to the firemen for a moment, then two of them broke away and followed her back to the truck. The second woman was doing something in the back, then produced a carton of white paper cups, and the firemen who came back with Lewis took the cups and stepped out of sight, behind the truck.
"Coffee," Del said.
"Like to talk to that woman," Lucas said. "Want some coffee?"
"Take a cup," Del said. They got out of the Acura and walked over to the Toyota. More firemen and cops were clustering around the back of it, taking cups, and Lucas and Del edged into the line. When they got their coffee, Lucas took a sip and stepped over next to Lewis.
"You heard what happened? You heard about Letty?"
"Some of it. I heard she was at the hospital, that you took her in," Lewis said.
"She's hurt," Lucas said. "She was shot, not too bad, but when she was getting away, she had to jump out her window. She slashed her hand open, really bad-we're flying her down to the Cities so a hand guy can look at her. Her ankle is either busted or twisted so bad that she can't walk."
"That's terrible. I heard her mom… " Lewis's eyes went to the house, "… might still be in there."
"We're waiting, but Letty thinks she was shot to death. Right at the beginning of it. She apparently fought the guy long enough for Letty to get away."
"This doesn't happen in Custer County," Lewis said. "Somebody told me that the last murder here was fifteen years ago."
"Our operating theory is that Deon Cash, Jane Warr, and probably Joe Kelly kidnapped the Sorrell girl and killed her, and probably another girl named Burke."
"Twoof them?"