"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.

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.