Satan’s Lambs by Lynn Hightower Page A

Lena had seen them when she went to call for help, forgetting, in her panic, that the phone had been ripped from the wall. A bowl full of batter had overturned and dripped down the side of the cabinet, drying like beige enamel. One of the kitchen chairs lay on its side. Someone had set the pieces of the telephone neatly on the chipped Formica table. GenTel was going to be pissed.
    Lena saw Mendez pass from the kitchen to the hallway.
    Eloise had lost a lot of blood. The thick oval stain would be drying to a brown crust on the fringes of the worn shag carpet.
    Lena shifted her weight, back aching, uncomfortable on the stool where Eloise Valetta had faced her this afternoon. She heard the bedroom door open. One of the uniforms frowned when she got up, but didn’t say anything. The lab techs were in the hallway, so she could only stare down the tunnel of darkness at Mendez’s back. He stood in the bedroom doorway, then turned and faced her.
    â€œToo late again,” Lena said. And saw, from the look in his eyes, that she’d scored a hit.

13
    Lena’s hands were trembling. Patrolman Geer leaned close and showed her how to buckle the seat belt as if it were a new form of technology. Lena fumbled it twice before the latch snapped home.
    A woman’s voice, wrapped in static, crackled from the radio. Something to somebody—call dispatch.
    Lena felt strange in the police car. Strange, cold, important.
    They had driven her crazy, asking how she felt—the ambulance crew, Mendez, even the woman from next door. Ms. Kilmer in 1B, kind but ridiculous in pink bicycle shorts and a black tube top. She had come immediately at Lena’s knock, and had called for help while Lena tried to staunch Eloise’s bleeding.
    Lena looked at her hands. Clean now; she’d washed them. But there were dark brown stains on her Royal Robbins hiking shirt, on the front of her blue jeans, and on the tops of her shoes.
    â€œHe gouged her eye out,” Lena said.
    The patrolman glanced at her once, and kept driving.
    â€œMendez will get him,” he said. “You be sure of that.”
    The radio crackled again.
    â€œGetting busy out tonight,” Geer said. “Usually not like this till the weekends. Gets going around eleven, then tapers down around three A.M. Nobody seems to sleep these days.”
    White swirls of fog drifted across the headlights.
    â€œFoggy,” Geer said.
    Lena sat forward, trying to see the road ahead.
    â€œWhere I used to live, in Virginia, it would get foggy sometimes in the morning? We’d have forty- or sixty-car pileups on the interstate.” He shook his head. “People are funny. Some slow way down, and others speed up, and nobody can see a thing.”
    â€œWhich is it you do?”
    A stoplight burned red through the haze and Geer eased the car to a stop. A Cadillac with dark-tinted windows and throbbing speakers paused, then went left, trailing irritation into the night.
    Lena leaned her head against the side window, feeling cool glass on her right cheek.
    â€œWhat I do is pull off,” Geer said. The light turned green, and he eased the cruiser forward.
    Lena glanced at his face, young and tired in the glow from the dash.
    â€œYou carry a baseball bat everwhere you go?” Geer asked.
    Lena pushed hair out of her eyes. “In the trunk of my car. And one under the bed.”
    â€œGun be easier,” Geer said.
    â€œWe were afraid to have guns,” Lena said softly. “With Kevin in the house.”
    The patrol car cruised the familiar territory of her neighborhood. It was odd to find her street looking just the same. Her house was dark.
    â€œKevin your son?”
    â€œNephew.”
    â€œI got a niece in Wilmington.”
    â€œNo, don’t,” Lena said, when Geer opened his door. “Just drop me right here. And thanks.”
    â€œSure you’re okay?”
    She’d been dying to tell someone how okay she was. That it felt