John Sandford

by Shadow Prey

  “Why not?” Shadow Love asked, his words like an ax-edge. “I’m part of the group; I have a stone knife.”

  “This action is not for you. If you want to help, go out to Rosebud and talk to the old men. Learn something.”

  “You don’t want me here,” Shadow Love said.

  “That’s right,” Aaron said.

  “You assholes,” Shadow shouted. “You fuckin’ assholes.”

  “Wait, wait, wait . . .” Sam said, pointing at the television.

  Clay and his gun: “ . . . to Brookings and will establish a temporary national headquarters in Minneapolis. This is the third time . . .”

  The mood changed in an instant:

  “The sonofabitch is coming,” Sam whooped. “The cocksucker’s on his way.”

  They had a quiet lunch, the three of them sitting around a rickety table eating cold-cut sandwiches with mustard and Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

  “So what now?” Shadow asked. “There are cops all over the place, and the FBI. In a few more days, we won’t be able to go on the streets.”

  Aaron glanced at Sam. “I’ll call Barbara. Tell her we may be coming. I don’t want to go in too soon; we’d fuck up, go outside, somebody’d see us.”

  “If you’re not going out to Bear Butte, you ought to come over to Barbara’s,” Sam told Shadow Love. “She talks like you were her kid.”

  Shadow Love nodded. “Yeah. I saw her before I went to L.A. I don’t know . . . we’ll be a danger to her.”

  “She knows that,” Aaron said. “We’ve been on the run before. She says we’ll be welcome, no matter what.”

  “She didn’t know exactly what you were planning to do . . . .”

  “She’ll take us,” said Sam.

  “Not a bad piece of ass either,” Aaron said with a grin.

  Sam snorted and even blushed. He and Barbara had been lovers. Nothing had been said when he talked to her on the telephone a month before, but he knew it would start again. He looked forward to it. “Jealousy. It’s an ugly sight,” he said into his soup.

  Shadow Love stepped to the couch, picked up the cardboard box and opened it. Inside was a flat black assault rifle. He took it out of the box. “M-15,” he said. He pointed it out the window at a streetlight.

  “Where’d you get it? What’s it for?” asked Sam.

  “I got it on the street. It’s for the cop, maybe. Or Hart.”

  Aaron had stepped toward the stove, reaching for the teapot. He stopped in mid-stride and whirled toward his son. “No. Not Hart. You don’t kill the people,” he said furiously.

  Shadow Love looked at him with a cold glint in his eye. “I do what I think best. You and Sam disagree all the time, but you still act.”

  “We always agree before we do anything,” said Aaron.

  “That’s a luxury you won’t have much longer. You can argue. You can sit and think. You can fuck up. I’ll try to buy you some time.”

  “We don’t want that,” Aaron said furiously.

  Shadow Love shook his head, aimed out the window again and squeezed the trigger. The click hung in the air between them.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Hart worked through an Indian-dominated housing project while Sloan did background on John Liss. Lucas, fighting a blinding hangover, made the rounds of barbershops, bars, fast-food joints and rooming houses.

  A little after noon, Lucas called the dispatcher to check on Lily and was told that she was still meeting with the county attorney. He stopped at an Arby’s, ordered a roast beef sandwich and carried it outside. He was leaning on his car when his handset squawked and the shotgun touched him behind the ear again. He almost dropped the sandwich. He stood paralyzed, and the cold metal pressed against his head and Hood’s apartment rose up in front of his eyes, the circle of squad cars, the radios squawking . . . A few seconds later, it all faded and Lucas staggered from the car and half fell onto a mushroom-shaped concrete stool. He sat sweating for a few moments, then got up and walked shakily to the car and started off again.

  A half-hour later, the dispatcher gave him a number to call. Lily’s hotel. Lucas called from a street booth across from a leather shop, staring at a Day-Glo-green sign advertising hand-tooled belts.

  “Lunch?” Lucas asked, when Lily said hello.

  “I can’t,” she said. There was a second’s silence, and then she said, “I’m going home.”

  Lucas considered it, staring at the Day-Glo sign, then down at the telephone receiver in his hand. After a few seconds he said, “I thought you might stay over, see what happens.”

  “I thought about it, but then . . . I finished with the county attorney and called to see when I could get a flight out. I was thinking tonight, but they said they could get me on a flight at one-thirty. I’ve got a cab coming downstairs . . . .”

  “I could come . . .”

  “No, don’t,” she said quickly. “I’d really prefer that you didn’t.”

  “Jesus, Lily . . .”

  “I’m sorry . . .” she said. There was a moment’s silence before she finished the sentence. “I hope you’re okay. And I’ll see you. Maybe. You know, someday.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “So. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  She hung up and Lucas stood leaning against the booth. “God damn it,” he said aloud.

  Two young girls were passing, carrying schoolbooks. They heard him, glanced his way and hurried on. Lucas walked slowly back to his car, confused, unsure whether he was feeling disappointment or relief. He spent another hour touring Lake Street bars, apartment buildings and stores, looking for a toehold, an edge, a whisper, anything. He came up dry; and although he was given more names, more people to check, his heart wasn’t in it. He looked at his watch. Ten after two. She’d be off the ground, on her way to New York. Lily.

  Daniel was in his office. He had turned the overhead fluorescent lights off and sat in a pool of yellow light cast by an old-fashioned goosenecked desk lamp. Larry Hart was sitting in the chair in front of his desk, Sloan, Lester and Anderson off to the side. Lucas took the last chair.

  “Nothing?” asked Daniel.

  “Not a thing,” Hart said. Lucas shook his head as he sat down.

  “We’ve been getting some stuff about Liss. He worked for a metal fabrication plant out in Golden Valley. They said he was all right, but weird, you know, about Indian stuff.”

  “Big help,” Anderson said.

  Sloan shrugged. “I got some names of his friends, I can feed them to you, maybe the computer’ll have something.”

  “Family?” asked Lucas.

  “Wife and kid. Wife works a couple of jobs. She’s a check-out at Target and works at a Holiday store at night, part-time. And they got a kid. Harold Richard, aka Harry Dick, seventeen. He’s trouble, a doper. He’s been downtown a half-dozen times, minor theft, possession of pot, possession of crack. Small stuff.”

  “That’s it?” asked Daniel.

  “Sorry,” Sloan apologized. “We’re hitting it as hard as we can.”

  “What about Liss himself? Are they getting anything out of him?”

  Anderson shook his head. “Nope. About fifteen minutes after Liss went down, Len Meadows flew in from Chicago in his private jet. The first thing he did was bar any cops from talking to his client.”

  “Fifteen minutes? Did Meadows know in advance?” Lucas asked.

  “It wasn’t really fifteen minutes—” Sloan started.

  Hart interrupted. “The Fire Creek Reservation office is in Brookings. When they heard about the shooting, they got scared about what might happen. They called Meadows” office. He’d done some pro bono criminal work for them. So then Meadows had his people call around, working with the information they were getting off the TV. They found out who Liss’ old lady was. Meadows called her—Louise, that’s her name—and offered his services. She said yes, so he flew out to Brookings. When Liss woke up after the docs got finished with him, Meadows went in and t
alked to him. That was it. No more cops.”

  “Damn it,” Lucas said, chewing his lip. “Meadows is pretty good.”

  “He’s a grandstanding asshole,” said Lester.

  “Frank, you’re an asshole, but nobody ever said you weren’t pretty good,” said Daniel.

  “I did once,” Sloan said. “He made me go out and investigate supermarket thefts.”

  Lester grinned. “And I’d do it again,” he said.

  “The problem with Meadows is, he won’t deal,” Lucas said. “He’s an ideologue. He prefers the crucifix to the plea bargain.”

  They all chewed it over for a minute, then Daniel said, “Our Indian friends are putting out press releases now.”

  “Say what?” asked Hart.

  “We got a press release. Or rather, the media got press releases. All of them—newspapers, TV stations, WCCO radio. We got copies. They’re supposedly from the killers,” Daniel said.

  Lucas sat up. “When did this happen?”

  “They started arriving in the morning mail.” Daniel passed out photocopies of the press releases. “Channel Eight was out on the street for the noon news, asking Indians to read the press releases and then asking them if they agreed.”

  Lucas nodded absently as he read. The authors took responsibility for all four killings, the two in the Cities, and those in New York and Oklahoma City. Nothing about the Brookings killing, so they were mailed before that. The killings were done as the beginning of a new uprising against white tyranny. There were unconvincing quotes from the Oklahoma assassin, but there were also details from Oklahoma that Lucas hadn’t seen.

  “This Oklahoma stuff . . .” he said, looking up at Daniel.

  The chief nodded. “They got it right.”

  “Huh.” He finished the release, glanced at the second sheet Daniel had given him, a copy of the envelope the release had arrived in, and said “Huh” again.

  “Interesting envelope,” Sloan remarked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s that?” asked Hart. He had been looking at the press release and now turned to the envelope.

  “Look at the cancellation,” Lucas said. “Minneapolis.”

  Anderson looked up. “We thought they were working out of here.”

  “Now everybody will know,” Daniel said. “That’ll crank up the pressure.”

  “That TV stuff we put out about Yellow Hand last night, blaming this group, I think it backfired,” Hart said. “A lot of people knew Yellow Hand. They know he was a crackhead. They figure he was killed by a dealer or another crackhead. Some kind of ripoff. They think the TV stuff is just more white-cop bullshit.”

  “Shit,” Daniel said. He pulled at his lip, then looked at Lucas. “Any ideas? We gotta break something loose.”

  Lucas shrugged. “We could try money. There’re a lot of poor people out there. A little cash might loosen things up.”

  “That’s ugly,” Hart objected.

  “We’re about to get lynched by the media,” Daniel snapped. He looked at Lucas. “How much?”

  “I don’t know. We’d be on a blind trip, just fishing. But I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got no net with the Indians. You show me a problem with the black community, I can call two hundred guys. With the Indians . . .”

  “You won’t make any friends by spreading money around,” Hart insisted. “That’s too . . . white. That’s what the people will say. That it’s just like the white men. They get in trouble, and they go out and buy an Indian.”

  “So it’s not the best way. The question is, Will it work?” Daniel said. “We can worry about rebuilding community relations later. Especially since we don’t have any in the first place.”

  Hart shrugged. “There’s always some people who’ll talk for money. Indians are no different than anybody else, that way.”

  Daniel nodded. “And we have a source of money,” he said. “We don’t even have to tap the snitch fund.”

  “What’s that?” Lucas asked.

  “The Andretti family. When the word got out that we’d nailed Billy Hood, I got a call from old man Andretti himself, thanking us for our help . . . .” He frowned, remembering, and looked at Lucas. “Where’s Lily? I haven’t seen her.”

  “She headed back to New York,” Lucas said. “She was done here.”

  “God damn it, why didn’t she check out with me?” Daniel asked irritably. “Well, she’ll just have to come back.”

  “What?”

  “The Andrettis were happier’n hell about Hood, but apparently they’re no longer satisfied with getting what the old man calls ‘small fry.’ He’s convinced the NYPD that Lily should stay out here and observe until this whole crazy bunch is busted.”

  “So she’s coming back?” Lucas asked, his breath suddenly coming harder.

  “I expect she’ll be back tomorrow, as hot as the Andrettis are,” Daniel said. “But that’s neither here nor there. Anderson has started putting together some interview files . . . .”

  Daniel kept talking, but Lucas lost track of what he was saying. A slow fire of anticipation spread though his chest and stomach. Lillian Rothenburg, NYPD. Lucas bit his lip and stared into a dark corner of Daniel’s office, as the chief rambled on.

  Lily.

  A moment later he realized Daniel had stopped talking and was staring at him.

  “What?” asked Daniel.

  “I got an idea,” Lucas said. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

  An hour after dark, Lucas found Elwood Stone standing under a streetlight on Lyndale Avenue. This time, Stone didn’t bother to run.

  “What the fuck you want, Davenport?” Stone was wearing sunglasses and a brown leather bomber jacket. He looked like an advertisement for rent-a-thug. “I ain’t holding.”

  Lucas handed him a deck of photographs. “You know this kid?”

  Stone looked them over. “Maybe I seen him around,” he said.

  “They call him Harry Dick?”

  “Yeah. Maybe I seen him around,” Stone repeated. “What you want?”

  “I don’t want anything, Elwood,” Lucas said. “I just want you to give the boy some credit on a couple of eight-balls.”

  “Shit, man . . .” Stone turned away and looked up the street, doing a comic double-take in disbelief. “Man, I don’t give no credit, man. To a crackhead? You fuckin’ crazy?”

  “Well, it’s like this, Elwood. Either you give Harry a little credit—and it’s got to be tomorrow—or I’ll talk to Narcotics and we’ll run your little round ass right off the street. We’ll have somebody in your back pocket every day.”

  “Shit . . .”

  “Or, I can have a talk with Narcotics and tell them you’re temporarily on my snitch list. I’ll give you some status for say . . . two months? How about that?”

  “Why me?”

  “ ’Cause I know you.”

  Stone considered. If he went on the snitch list, he’d have virtual immunity from prosecution. It was an opportunity not to be missed, as long as nobody else found out.

  “Okay,” Stone said after a moment. “But keep it between you and me. You don’t tell Narcotics, but if I get hassled, you jump in.”

  Lucas nodded. “You got it.”

  “So where do I find this motherfucker, Harry Dick? It’s not like I know where he lives.”

  “We’ll spot him for you. You give me your beeper number and I’ll call you. Tomorrow. Probably early afternoon.”

  Stone looked at him for another long minute, then nodded. “Right.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  Lucas put a thousand dollars on the street between ten o’clock and noon, then headed out to the airport in a city car. Sloan called him on the way.

  “He’s there,” Sloan said. “I talked to the next-door lady. She said he’s usually out of there in the early afternoon. Sleeps late, usually leaves between one and two. His mother’s gone out to South Dakota to see the old man.”

  “All right. Keep an eye on the
place,” Lucas said. “You got our friend’s number?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lily’s plane’s on time, so I ought to hook up with you before one. If our boy goes for a walk before then, take him. No fuckin’ around.”

  “Gotcha. Uh, our little Indian helper . . .”

  “I’ll pick him up. Don’t worry about Larry.”

  “He could be a problem, the way he’s talking,” Sloan warned.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Lucas said.

  Hart bitterly fought the idea of putting money on the street, and threatened to quit. Daniel went to the director of Welfare and Hart got a call.

  When Lucas talked to him that morning, Hart seemed more sad than angry, but the anger was there too.

  “This could fuck me forever, man,” Hart said. “With the Indian people.”

  “They’re killing guys, Larry,” Lucas said. “We gotta stop it.”

  “This is not right,” Hart said.

  And when Lucas outlined the proposal to pick up Harold Richard Liss, Hart laughed in disbelief.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Lucas,” he said. “You’re setting that boy up. You’re going to plant the stuff on him.”

  “No, no, this is a legitimate tip,” Lucas lied.

  “Bullshit, man . . .”

  They’d left it like that, Hart heading down to Indian Country with a pocket full of cash and a growing anger. He could be handled, Lucas thought. He loved his job too much to risk it. He could be cooled out . . . .

  Lily’s plane was early. He found her in the luggage pickup area, watching the carousel with the suppressed embarrassment of somebody who suspects she has been stood up.

  “Jesus, I missed you at the gate,” Lucas said, hurrying over. She was wearing a beige silk blouse with a tweed skirt and jacket and dark leather high heels. She was beautiful and he had trouble saying the words.

  “God damn it, Davenport,” she said.