“When you say ‘the devil’—”
“Pilot. Pilot. We told you about Pilot. Pilot was in Sturgis with his disciples. They were camping out there and they were pretending to be bikers and some of the women were turning tricks out of their RV. I told Henry to stay away, but he disappeared. We were supposed to meet, and he didn’t show up. We had a backup meet, and he never showed there, either. All the bikers left, and the town was almost empty. I spent three days walking around, looking for him, and he’s not there. Then I was in a grocery store and the blond bitch came in and when I went out, she came out at the same time, she said that they killed Henry and they ate part of him and Pilot put his heart in a Mason jar. He said Pilot made some guy roast Henry’s dick over a fire and eat it.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Letty said.
“I’m calling because you said your old man was a cop, and because . . . you’re the only friend I got,” Skye said.
Letty was on her feet now, pacing. “Let me call and charge a bus ticket for you, to get you here, where we can figure something out. Stay in the station until you’re on the bus.”
“I got money for a bus, but I didn’t know where to go. Then I thought about you. What about Henry? What if they killed him?”
“They’re probably trying to freak you out, but I’ll get you with my dad, and he can check around,” Letty said. “The main thing is, to get you somewhere safe. How much money do you have?”
“Two hundred dollars. It’s left over . . . we got lucky. Two hundred dollars.”
“Can you buy a ticket to Minneapolis?”
“Wait a minute.”
Letty heard some talk in the background, and then said, “Yes, it’s a hundred dollars.”
“Then do it. I’ll give you the money back, no problem,” Letty said. “Call and tell me when you’ll get here.”
“It’s the Jefferson Lines, I can get a ticket now. Wait a minute, let me ask this guy.” She was gone for a minute, and Letty could hear some talk in the background. Skye came back to the phone and said, “The bus leaves here at midnight and arrives in Minneapolis at noon tomorrow.”
“All right. All right, I’ll meet you at the bus station. Stay away from Pilot and stay away from that blonde.”
“I will. Oh, Jesus, what about Henry?”
“We’ll work that out. I’ll get my dad, and we’ll work that out.”
? ? ?
HER DAD WAS Lucas Davenport.
Lucas was a tall man, dark-haired except for a streak of white threading across his temples and over his ears, dark-complected, heavy at the shoulders. He had blue eyes, a nose that had been broken a couple of times, and a scar that reached from his hairline down over one eye, not from some back-alley fight, but from a simple fishing accident. He had another scar high on his throat, where a young girl had once shot him with a piece-of-crap street gun. So his body was well lived in, and he’d just turned fifty, and didn’t like it. Some days, too many days lately, he felt old—too much bullshit, not enough progress in saving the world.
For his birthday, his wife, Weather, a surgeon, had bought him an elliptical machine: “You’ve been pounding the pavement for too long. Give your knees a break.”
He used it from time to time, but he really liked running on the street, especially after a rain. He liked running through the odors of the night, through the air off the Mississippi, through the neon flickering off the leftover puddles of rainwater. He needed to run when he was dealing with people like Ben Merion.
By the time he reached the last corner toward home, he’d worked through his grouchiness. He turned the corner and picked up the pace, not quite to a full-out sprint, but close enough for a fifty-year-old.
And through the sweat in his eyes, saw Letty standing under the porch light, hands in her jeans pockets: looking for him.
Letty had gotten herself laid: he and Weather agreed on that, although Weather called it “becoming sexually active.” Lucas was ninety percent sure that she hadn’t been sexually active in high school, aside from some squeezing and rubbing, though she’d been a popular girl. Once at Stanford, she’d apparently decided to let go.
Lucas deeply hoped that the sex had been decent and that the guy had been good for her, and kind. When he was college-aged, he hadn’t always been good for the women in his life, or kind, and he regretted it. He also knew that there was not much he could do about Letty’s sex life, for either good or bad. Keep his mouth shut and pray, that was about it. Trust her good instincts.
He turned up the driveway and called out, “Whatcha doing?”
“Waiting for you. Something’s come up,” Letty said.
He stopped short of the porch, bent over, his hands on his knees, gulping air. When he’d caught his breath, he stood up: “Tell me.”
? ? ?
WHEN SHE’D TOLD HIM, he said, “Have you thought about the possibility that she’s nuts? Or that she’s working you?”
“Of course. I don’t think she’s crazy—I mean, I don’t think she’s delusional,” Letty said. “I have to admit that she talks about a guy being the devil, which doesn’t sound good, but when she does it . . . you almost have to hear it. She’s not talking literally: not a guy with horns and a tail. She’s talking about, what? A Charlie Manson type. A Manson family guy. He calls himself Pilot.”
“Pilot.”