Shadow Prey

Pictures . . .
    Half an hour later Lucas was back in bed, falling into unconsciousness again. Just before he went out, he thought, So this is what it’s like to be nuts . . . .
     
    “Lucas?” It was Lily.
    “Yup.”
    He looked down at the bed. He could see the outline ofwhere his body had been from the sweat stains. The dreams had stayed with him until he woke, a little after seven in the morning. He reached out, popped up the window shade, and light cut into the gloom. A moment later, the phone rang.
    “Jesus, where were you yesterday?” Lily asked.
    “In and out,” he lied. “Tell you the truth, I went back to my old net, to see if any of my regulars had heard anything. They’re not Indians, but they’re on the street . . . .”
    “Get anything?” she asked.
    “Naw.”
    “Daniel’s pissed. You missed the afternoon meet.”
    “I’ll talk to him,” Lucas said. He yawned. “Have you had any breakfast yet?”
    “I just got up.”
    “Wait there. I’ll get cleaned up and come get you.”
    “Turn on a TV before you do that. Channel Eight. But hurry.”
    “What’s on?”
    “Go look,” she said, and hung up.
    Lucas punched up the TV and found an airport press conference with Lawrence Duberville Clay.
    “ . . . in cooperation with local enforcement officials . . . expect to have some action soon . . .”
    “Bullshit, local officials,” Lucas muttered at the television. The camera pulled back and Lucas noticed the screen of bodyguards. There were a half-dozen of them around Clay, professionals, light suits, identical lapel pins, backs to their man, watching the crowd. “Thinks he’s the fuckin’ president . . .”
     
    Lucas’ heart jumped when Lily came out of the hotel elevator. The angles of her face. Her stride. The way she brushed at her bangs and grinned when she saw him . . .
     
    Anderson had a stack of files for the morning meeting. South Dakota, he said, had files on Sunders and Close. There were photos in the driver’s-license files, bad but recent. And when the white names were run through the NCIC files, a list of hits came back, along with fingerprints.With a direct comparison available, fingerprint specialists confirmed that Sunders and Close were the men the Minneapolis cops had just missed in the apartment raid. An FBI computer specialist said later that the wide-base search of the fingerprint files would have identified them in “another four to six hours, max.”
    The South Dakota files had been faxed to Minneapolis, and the best possible reproductions of the driver’s-license photos arrived on an early-morning plane. Copies were being made for distribution to all the local police agencies, the FBI and the media.
    “Press conference at eleven o’clock,” Daniel said. “I’ll hand out the photographs of the Crows.”
    “We got some more coming from the feds,” Anderson announced. “Sunders spent time in federal prison, fifteen years ago. He shot a guy out at Rosebud, wounded him. He spent a year inside.”
    “Old man Andretti has agreed to put up an unofficial reward for information leading to the Crows. They don’t have to be arrested or anything. He’ll pay just to find out where they are,” Daniel said. He looked at Lucas. “I’d like to get that out to the media through the back door . . . . I’ll confirm it, but I don’t want to come right out and say there’s a price on their heads. I want to keep some distance from it. I don’t want it to sound like we’re turning a bunch of vigilantes loose on the Indians. We’ve got to live with these people later.”
    Lucas nodded. “All right. I can set that up. I’ll get the guy from TV3 to ask a question at the press conference.”
    Daniel flipped through his Xerox copies of the rap sheets. “It doesn’t seem like they’ve done much. A couple of small-time crooks. Then this.”
    “But look at the pattern,” Lily said. “They weren’t small-time crooks like most small-time crooks. They weren’t breaking into Coke machines or running a pigeon-drop. They were organizing, just like Larry said.”
    The files on Sunders and Close showed a sporadic history of small crime, except for the shooting that sent Sunders to prison. Most of it was trespassing on ranches, unlawful discharge of firearms, unlawful threats.
    The latest charge was six years old, on Sunders, who had been arrested for trespassing. According to the complaint file, he had entered private property and