Shadow Prey

by John Sandford

  “I looked up Bluebird. He’s just about the last of the family. A lot of Bluebirds went East and married into the Mohawks and that bunch. There are still quite a few Yellow Hands out at Crow Creek and Niobrara. Those used to be Minnesota Indians before they got run out. But I know this Yellow Hand you talked to. He doesn’t have much to do with the other Yellow Hands. This one is a loser.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “ ’Fraid not.” Hart checked his watch. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “When will you know? About the pictures?” asked Lily.

  “About five minutes after I get off the plane. Do you want me to call tonight?”

  “Could you? I’ll come back here and wait for the call,” Lucas said.

  “So will I,” Lily added.

  “ ’Bout seven-thirty, we should know,” Hart said.

  “So now what?” Lily asked. They were standing on the sidewalk. Hart was on his way to the airport, riding in a squad.

  Lucas glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to see my kid, get something to eat,” he said. “Why don’t we meet back here at seven o’clock? We can wait for Larry to call and figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

  “Depending on what he finds out,” Lily said.

  “Yeah,” Lucas said, flipping his key ring around his finger. “Need a ride down to your hotel?”

  “No, thanks.” She smiled, starting away. “It’s a nice walk.”

  Sarah was crawling around on the living room rug when Lucas arrived. He got down on his hands and knees, his tie dragging on the carpet, and played backup with her. First he backed up and she crawled toward him, gurgling; then, with her eyes wide, she backed away and he prowled forward.

  “That’d be a lot more charming if you didn’t have that big bump on your ass,” Jennifer said from the kitchen. Lucas reached back, pulled out the P7 and put it on a lamp table.

  “Jesus, not there,” Jennifer said with asperity. “She could pull herself up and grab it.”

  “She can’t pull herself up yet,” Lucas objected.

  “She will soon. It’s a bad habit.”

  “Okay.” Lucas stood up, slipped the pistol back in its holster and scooped up his daughter, who had been quivering in anticipation of the flight. He bounced her in his hands as he wandered toward the kitchen and propped himself in the doorway. “Have we got some kind of problem?”

  Jennifer was making a salad. She turned her head. “No. Not unless you have.”

  “I just got here and I’m fine,” Lucas said. “You sound a little tight.”

  “Not at all. I just don’t want guns lying around the house.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Come on, Sarah, time for bed. Besides, your mom’s being a grouch.”

  Lucas waited for it during dinner, watching Jennifer’s face. Something was going on.

  “Any lines on the guy from New York?” Jennifer asked finally. Rumors about the meeting at the StarTribune were circulating through all the media. Daniel had already fended off a half-dozen inquiries, but leaks were inevitable. Jennifer, called by her former partner at TV3, had spent the afternoon talking to old sources by phone. By the time Lucas had arrived, she had most of the story.

  “Maybe. I’ve got a call coming in at seven-thirty.”

  “You’re going back?”

  “Yeah. Around seven.”

  “If Kennedy called you from the station, could you give him something for the ten-o’clock broadcast?”

  “He’d have to talk to Daniel,” Lucas said.

  “Is he going to be there tonight?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “How about this New York cop lady?”

  Lucas thought, Ah, and said, “She’ll be there.”

  “I hear she’s terrific-looking,” Jennifer said. She looked up from her dinner plate, straight into Lucas’ eyes.

  “She’s pretty good,” Lucas said. “A little chubby, maybe . . . Is this going to be a problem? Who I work with?”

  “No, no.” Jennifer looked down at her plate again. “There’s something else too,” she said.

  “Okay,” Lucas said, putting his fork down. “Let’s have it.”

  “A guy at the station asked me out.”

  “Who?”

  “Mark Seeton.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said . . . I’d get back to him.”

  “So you want to go?”

  Jennifer stood up, picked up her plate and carried it to the sink. “Yes, I think so,” she said. “No big heavy deal. Mark’s a nice guy. He wants somebody to go to the symphony with.”

  Lucas shrugged. “So go.”

  She looked sideways at him. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “I’d mind. I just wouldn’t try to stop you.”

  “Jesus, that’s worse than trying to stop me,” she said, one fist planted against her hip. “You’re trying to mind-fuck me, Davenport.”

  “Look, if you want to go, go,” Lucas said. “You know I’m not going to take you to the symphony. Not on any regular basis.”

  “It’s just that you have your friends and the things you do, the games, the fishing, the police work . . . me and Sarah. You see somebody almost every day, one way or another. I hardly see anybody at all, outside of work. And you know what I’m like about music . . . .”

  “So go,” Lucas said shortly. Then he grinned. “I can take Mark Seeton, I’m not worried,” he said. He pointed a finger at her. “But I don’t want to hear any shit about this New York cop. She is good-looking, but she’s also happily married to a big-shot professor at NYU. Shearson made some kind of move on her yesterday and he’s now carrying his nuts around in his lunch box.”

  “You’re protesting too much,” Jennifer said.

  “No, I’m not. But you’re looking for an excuse . . . .”

  “Let’s not fight, okay?”

  “Are we still in bed?” Lucas asked.

  “You might get lucky,” Jennifer said. “A little romance wouldn’t hurt, though.”

  • • •

  Lily had a short white line on her upper lip when she got back to Lucas’ office. They were alone in the tiny office, the door open on the darkened hallway.

  “Did you have a glass of milk?”

  She cocked her head. “You’re also psychic, right? In addition to the game-making and the money.”

  He grinned and reached out and wiped his thumb across her lip. “No. Just a little rim of milk, here. Like my daughter.”

  “What’s her name? Your daughter?”

  “Sarah.”

  “We’ve got a Marc and a Sam,” Lily said. “Marc’s fifteen now, God, I can’t believe it. He’s started high school and he plays football. Sam’s thirteen.”

  “You’ve got a kid who’s fifteen?” Lucas asked. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “I thought maybe thirty-four.”

  “Oh, la, such a gentleman,” Lily laughed. “How about you?”

  “Forty-one.”

  “Poor guy. Your daughter will be hanging out with all the metal-heads at the high school and you’ll be too old and feeble to do anything about it.”

  “I’m looking forward to my feebletude,” Lucas said. “Sit around in a good leather chair, read poetry. Go up to the cabin, sit on the dock, watch the sun go down . . .”

  “With your fly down and your dick hanging out because you’re senile and can’t remember how to dress yourself . . .”

  “Jesus, I can barely stand the flattery,” Lucas said, laughing despite himself.

  “You were getting a little carried away with the retirement bullshit,” Lily said wryly.

  Hart called at quarter to eight from the Rapid City airport. “They knew him right away,” he said. “His name’s Bill Hood. He’s a Sioux from Rosebud, but he married a Chippewa woman a few years ago. He lives in Minnesota. Somewhere up around Red Lake, they think.”

  “What?” Lily said. There was no extension in the o
ffice and she was watching Lucas’ face.

  Lucas nodded at her and said into the phone, “How about the other people. You got any more names?”

  “Yeah, they know quite a few of them. During the trouble with the bikers, they did a bunch of IDs. I’ll give them to Anderson, get him to crank them through the computer.”

  “What?” Lily asked again, when Lucas got off the phone.

  “Your man’s name is Bill Hood. He supposedly lives somewhere up by Red Lake . . . .”

  “Where’s Red Lake?” she asked.

  “It’s a reservation up north.”

  “Let’s get going. We’ll have to stop at my—”

  “Whoa. We’ve got things to do. We’ll start with our identification people tonight, see if we can figure out exactly where he lives. The Indians are always back and forth from here to the res. For all we know, he may be down here, with Bluebird. If he’s not, we’ll arrange some contacts up north, then go. If we head up there tonight, we’d spend most of our time thrashing around.”

  Lily stood and put her hands on her hips and leaned toward him. “Why do guys always have to wait another day? Jesus, in New York . . .”

  “You’re not in New York. In New York, you want to go somewhere, you take a taxi. You know how far Red Lake is from here?”

  “No. I don’t know.”

  “About the same distance as it is from New York to Washington, D.C. It ain’t just a taxi ride. I’ll get some calls going tonight, and tomorrow . . .”

  “We go.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  “You heard?” She called.

  Lily strode down the hall toward him, a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand. Before, she’d always worn soft pinkish lipstick, and just a touch. This morning, her lipstick was hard and heart-red, the color of street violence and rough sex. She had changed her hair as well; black bangs curled down over her brow, and she looked out from under them, like the wicked queen in Snow White.

  “What?” Lucas was carrying a paper cup of microwaved coffee and had a Trib pinched under his arm.

  “We found Hood. Right here in town. Anderson got on the computers early this morning,” she said. The papers were computer printouts with notes scrawled in the margins in blue ink. She looked down at the top one. “Hood used to live at a place called Bemidji. It’s not on a reservation, but it’s close.”

  “Yeah. It’s right next to Red Lake,” Lucas said. He opened the metal door of his office and led the way in.

  “But we got a problem,” Lily said as she settled into the second chair in the office. Lucas put the coffee on his desk, pulled off his sport coat, hung it on a hook and sat down. “What happened is . . .”

  Lucas rubbed his face and she frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “My face hurts,” Lucas said.

  “Your face hurts?”

  “It’s sensitive to morning light. I think my grandfather was a vampire.”

  She looked at him for a moment and shook her head. “Jesus . . .”

  “So what’s the problem?” Lucas prompted, smothering a yawn.

  She got back on track. “Hood’s not driving his own car. He’s the listed owner of a 1988 Ford Tempo four-wheel-drive. Red. That car’s still at his former home up in Bemidji, along with his wife and kid. The Bemidji cops have some kind of source in his neighborhood—some cop’s sister-in-law—and the red car’s been there all along. We’re not sure what Hood was driving out of that Jersey motel, but it was big and old. Like a ’seventy-nine Buick or Oldsmobile. It had bad rust.”

  “So we’ve got no way to spot him on the highway.”

  “Unfortunately. But . . .” She thumbed through the printouts. “Anderson did a computer run on him and talked to the state people. He’s got a Minnesota driver’s license but no second-car registration. So Anderson went through everything else in the computers and bingo. Found him listed as a defendant in a small-claims-court filing. He bought a TV on time and couldn’t make the payments.”

  “And his address was on the filing.”

  “Nope. Anderson had to call Sears. They looked up the address on their accounts computer. It’s an apartment on Lyndale Street.”

  “Lyndale Avenue,” Lucas said. He sat forward now, intent.

  “Whatever. The thing is, the apartment’s rented to a guy named Tomas Peck. Sloan and a couple of Narcotics guys are over in the neighborhood now, trying to figure it out.”

  “Maybe he moved.”

  “Yeah, but Peck has been listed as the occupant for two years. So maybe Hood’s living with him.”

  “Huh.” Lucas thought it over as she sat leaning forward, waiting for a comment. “Are you sure you’ve got the right Bill Hood? There have got to be a lot of them . . . .”

  “Yeah, we’re sure. The Sears account had a change of address.”

  “Then I’d bet he’s still living at that apartment,” Lucas said. “We’re on a roll, and when you get on a roll . . .”

  “ . . . it all works,” Lily said.

  Lily had not gone down to look for Hood, she said, because Daniel wanted to keep the police presence in the neighborhood to a minimum. “The FBI’s all over the streets. They must have half a dozen agents going through the community,” she said.

  “Isn’t he going to tell them about identifying Hood?”

  “Yeah. He’s already talked to a guy.” She glanced at her watch. “There’s a meeting in half an hour. We’re supposed to be there. Sloan should be back and Larry Hart’s coming in sometime this morning,” Lily said. She was quivering with energy. “God damn, I was afraid I’d be here for a month. I could be out of here tomorrow, if we get him.”

  “Did Daniel say who the FBI guy is?” Lucas asked.

  “Uh, yeah. A guy named . . .” She looked at her notes. “Kieffer.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Not good?” She looked up at him and he shook his head, frowning.

  “He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him. Gary Kieffer is a most righteous man. Most righteous.”

  “Well, get your phony smile in place, then, because we’re meeting with him in twenty-seven minutes.” She looked at her watch again, then at his nearly empty coffee cup. “Where can we get more coffee and a decent Danish?”

  They walked through the tunnel from City Hall to the Hennepin County Government Center, took a couple of escalators to the Skyway level, walked along the Skyway to the Pillsbury building. Standing on the escalator a step above him, she could look straight into his eyes; she asked if he had had a long night.

  “No, not particularly.” He glanced at her. “Why?”

  “You look a little beat.”

  “I don’t get up early. I usually don’t get going until about noon.” He yawned again to prove it.

  “What about your girlfriend? Is she a night person too?”

  “Yeah. She spent half her life reporting for the ten-o’clock news, which meant she got off work about eleven. That’s how we met. We’d bump into each other at late-night restaurants.”

  Going across the Skyway, Lily looked through the windows at the glossy downtown skyscrapers, monuments to the colored-glass industry. “I’ve never been in this part of the country,” she said. “I made a couple of cross-country trips when I was doing the hippie thing, back in college, but we always went south of here. Through Iowa or Missouri, on the way out to California.”

  “It’s out of the way, Minnesota is,” Lucas conceded. “Lake Michigan hangs down there and cuts us off, with Wisconsin and the Dakotas. You’ve got to want to come here. And I suppose you don’t often get out of the Center of the Universe.”

  “I do, once in a while,” she said mildly, refusing to rise to the bait. “But it’s usually on vacation, down to the Bahamas or the Keys or out to Bermuda. We went to Hawaii once. We just don’t get into the middle part of the country.”

  “It’s the last refuge of American civilization, you know—out here, between the mountains,” Lucas said, looking out the windows. “Most of
the population is literate, most people still trust their governments, and most of the governments are reasonably good. The citizens control the streets. We’ve got poverty, but it’s manageable. We’ve got dope, but we’ve still got a handle on it. It’s okay.”

  “You mean like Detroit?”

  “There are a couple of spots out of control . . .”

  “And South Chicago and Gary and East St. Louis . . .”

  “ . . . but basically, it ain’t bad. You get the feeling that nobody even knows what goes on in New York or Los Angeles and that nobody really cares. The politicians have to lie and steal just to get elected.”

  “I think my brain would shrivel up and die if I was living here. It’s so fuckin’ peaceful I don’t know what I’d do,” Lily said. She looked down at a street-cleaning machine. “The night I came in, I got here late, after midnight. I caught a cab at the airport and went downtown, and I started seeing these women walking around alone or waiting for buses by themselves. Everywhere. Jesus. That’s such . . . an odd sight.”

  “Hmph,” Lucas said.

  They left the Skyway and got on an escalator to the main floor of the Pillsbury building. “You have a little hickey on your neck,” she said lightly. “I thought maybe that’s why you looked so tired.”

  They sat in the dining area of a bakery, Lily eating a Danish with a glass of milk, Lucas staring out the window over a cup of coffee.

  “Wish I was out there with Sloan,” she said finally.

  “Why? He can handle it.” Lucas sipped at the scalding coffee.

  “I just wish I was. I’ve handled a lot of pretty serious situations.”

  “So have we. We ain’t New York, but we ain’t exactly Dogpatch, either,” Lucas said.

  “Yeah, I know . . . .”

  “Sloan’s good at talking to people. He’ll dig it out.”

  “All right, all right,” she said, suddenly irritable. “But this means a lot to me.”

  “It means a lot to us too. We’re up to our assholes in media; Jesus, the street outside the office this morning looked like the press parking lot at a political convention.”

  “Not the same,” she insisted. “Andretti was a major figure . . . .”

  “We’re handling it,” Lucas said sharply.