Shadow Prey

few more. The casket was closed.
    The cortege to the cemetery shut down traffic in central Minneapolis for five minutes. The line of funeral cars ran bumper to bumper through the Loop, escorted by cops on motorcycles.
    “It’s better out here,” Lily said as they walked into the cemetery. “Churches make me nervous.”
    “This is the first place I ever saw you,” Lucas said. “Bluebird’s buried here.”
    “Yup. Weird.”
    Gravestones were scattered over twelve acres of slightly shaggy grounds, beneath burr oaks. Lucas supposed it would be a spooky place on moonlit nights, the oaks looming like shadows cast by the Headless Horseman. Anderson, stiff in a black suit, looking more like an undertaker than the undertaker, wandered over to stand beside them.
    “This is where Rose E. Love is buried,” he said after a while.
    “Oh, yeah? Where’d you find that out?” Lucas said.
    “I found it in some notes with the old coroner’s files. There weren’t any relatives handy when she died, so they made a note on the death certificate about the funeral home and cemetery, in case somebody came looking for her.”
    “Hmph.”
    “Bluebird too,” Lily said.
    “Mmm.”
    After a while, Anderson wandered away, edging around the accumulation of funeralgoers. Film crews from all the local television stations and several foreign and national news services stood as close as seemed circumspect, as the cops rolled out their most martial ceremony. When it was over, they passed a folded flag to Hart’s mother and fired a military salute.
    When the service ended, Anderson strolled up again.
    “She’s right along here,” he said.
    “Who?”
    “Rose E. Love. I had them look up the gravesite in the cemetery office.”
    Lucas and Lily, pulled along by Anderson’s interest, followed him a hundred yards to a gravesite under the boughs of an aging oak, a dozen feet from the wrought-iron fence surrounding the cemetery.
    “Nice spot,” Anderson said, looking up into the spreading oak tree with its hand-size leaves still clinging to the branches.
    “Yeah.” The grave had been kept up spotlessly; on the oblong pink granite stone was inscribed ROSE E . LOVE , in large letters, and below that MOTHER , in smaller script. Lucas looked around. “The grave looks a lot better than the other ones around here. You don’t think maybe Shadow Love stops by and works on it?”
    Anderson shook his head. “Naw. The cemeteries don’t allow that. They’d get all kinds of shit going on. Me and my old lady bought our plots, you know, a couple of years back. They had all these care plans you could sign up for. Give them two thousand bucks now and they’ll take care of your grave in perpetuity. It’s called Plan Perpetual. You can put it right in your will.”
    “That’s a little steep, isn’t it?” Lily asked. “Two thousand bucks?”
    “Well, I mean, it’s forever, ” Anderson said. “When the next ice age comes through, they’ll have a guy out here with a heater . . . .”
    “Still a little steep.”
    “If you can’t afford it all at once, you can pay by the year. You know, like seventy-five, a hundred bucks.”
    “Gives me the creeps thinking about it,” Lucas said.
    “He doesn’t plan to die,” Lily confided to Anderson.
    “I hate to tell you this,” Anderson said as they wandered away from Rose Love’s grave, “but there comes a time in every man’s life . . .”
    Lucas thought of a question for Anderson. As he opened his mouth to speak, the cold steel of a gun barrel touched him behind the ear. He jerked to a halt, staggered, closed his eyes, slapped his neck and let out a deep breath.
    “Lucas?” asked Lily. She had stopped and was looking up at him. “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing,” he said after a moment. “I was just daydreaming.”
    “Jesus, I thought you had a heart attack or something.” Anderson was looking at him curiously, but Lucas shook his head and took Lily’s arm. Anderson broke off just before they got to the fence, and headed across the slope toward the cemetery road. Lily and Lucas strolled out of thecemetery through a side exit, away from the remnants of the somber crowd.
    The question was lost.
     
    “What do you want to do?” Lily asked.
    “I think I might go back out on my regular net,” Lucas said. He had been thinking about his lie of the day before, and decided that talking to his regulars might be a good idea.
    “Okay. You can drop me at the hotel,” Lily said.