Secret Prey

them.’’
    ‘‘Any reason they might want to torch it?’’
    ‘‘Nothing obvious—it’s a good neighborhood, they could probably sell it for a lot more than they’d ever get from insurance. And they’re pretty reputable people.’’
    ‘‘Shit,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘All that stuff that was in the paper last winter . . . The LaChaises . . .’’
    ‘‘Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of,’’ Lucas said.
    Brown tapped his desk: ‘‘But one thing doesn’t fit with that. Whoever did this wasn’t trying real hard to kill her. I mean, if it was a pro job. They didn’t even come close. She was in the back bedroom, ran out when she heard the window break, saw the fire, called 911, and if she hadn’t tried to save her pictures, she wouldn’t have been hurt at all.’’
    ‘‘She was hurt?’’ Lucas sat up, angry now. ‘‘I was told she wasn’t . . .’’
    ‘‘Not bad, not bad,’’ Brown said. ‘‘She got a couple of small cuts on her feet from broken glass, and her hair was singed, and she got some small spark burns on one hand. But she told us she has some operations tomorrow and she expects to do them.’’
    LUCAS TOOK IT SLOW DRIVING BACK TO MINNEAPOLIS, pulling threads together. Black checked in on Lucas’s car phone: ‘‘I had to do some psychotherapy on this Markham asshole, but the bottom line is, he thinks O’Dell couldn’t do it.’’
    ‘‘All right. You got another one yet?’’
    ‘‘L. Z. Drake,’’ Black said. ‘‘Went to school with McDonald.’’
    ‘‘Call when you get done.’’
    ‘‘Yeah. Hey, you know about Weather?’’
    ‘‘Yeah. How’d you hear?’’
    ‘‘They had some pictures of the house in a news brief . . . Markham had his TV on the whole time I was talking to him. They said she was okay.’’
    ‘‘Yeah, yeah . . .’’
    ‘‘You think there’s any chance it’s another comeback from LaChaise?’’
    ‘‘I don’t know what to think.’’
    ‘‘All right,’’ said Black. ‘‘I’ll call you after I talk to Drake.’’
    SLOAN AND FRANKLIN WERE WAITING OUTSIDE LUCAS’S office when Lucas got back. Both of them had been involved in the shoot-out that killed the two LaChaise women the winter before, though Sloan hadn’t fired his weapon and hadn’t been a direct target of the reprisal attacks. Franklin, on the other hand, had been shot in his own driveway.
    ‘‘We’ve been talking, man,’’ Franklin said in his booming voice. Lucas was large; Franklin dwarfed him. ‘‘We gotta look into this, unless there’s some motive for somebody hittin’ Weather.’’
    ‘‘How’d you hear about it?’’
    ‘‘It’s all over the department, it’s been on TV,’’ Sloan said.
    ‘‘You think I oughta call my folks, get them out of the house?’’ Franklin asked.
    ‘‘I don’t know,’’ Lucas said. They were milling in the hall, and he saw Sherrill starting down toward them. ‘‘I don’t know what’s going on. Nobody’s got a motive that I can figure, and there’s a possibility that it was a pro job.’’
    ‘‘Why a pro job?’’ Sloan asked. As Sherrill came up, Franklin said to her, ‘‘Could’ve been a pro job.’’
    ‘‘You’re sure?’’ Sherrill asked.
    Lucas told them about the scored bottle. ‘‘That’s it,’’ Franklin said. ‘‘I’m putting the old lady in a motel.’’
    Black arrived as they were talking about it, stood on the edge of the discussion: he hadn’t been in the shoot-out, hadn’t been a target.
    ‘‘I think what we need to do before we panic, is we need to get everybody we got out on the street,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’ll talk to Intelligence and Narcotics and the gang people, I’ll talk to St. Paul, and every one of us has got people . . . Let’s get out there and dig for a few hours. If this is a group, somebody’ll know.’’
    ‘‘Loring’s got the good biker contacts,’’ Franklin said. ‘‘He’s been working nights, he’s probably home asleep. You want me to roust him?’’
    ‘‘Get him moving,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘I’ll find Del, get him started,’’ Sloan said.
    ‘‘I’m outa here,’’ said Franklin.
    As the group started to break up, Black said, ‘‘Lucas, I talked to this guy Drake about McDonald.’’
    ‘‘Oh, yeah.’’ Old news; he wasn’t thinking about McDonald anymore.
    Black continued: ‘‘I had to push him, but he says he knew McDonald all the way through school, and he has a real violent streak.