Shadow Prey

cemetery, just as with Larry . . . .
    Larry.
    It came back in a flash, as real as the shotgun behind his ear. He’d been walking across the cemetery grass with Lily and Anderson, after leaving Rose Love’s well-tended grave. Anderson was talking about the cost of grave maintenance and the perpetual-care contract he and his wife had bought . . . .
    And the question popped into his head: Who paid to take care of Rose Love’s grave? Neither Shadow Love nor the Crows had enough money to endow a perpetual-care fund, so they must pay it annually or semiannually. But if they were on the road all the time, where would the bill be sent? Lucas stood, looked down at Lily’s sleeping face, paced out of the ICU, past a patient who looked as though he were dying, and then back in, until he was standing by her bed again.
    The Crows or Shadow Love, whoever paid for maintenance, might simply remember to write a check once or twice a year and mail it, without ever getting a bill. But that didn’t feel right; there must be a bill. Maybe they had a postal box; but if they had their mail sent to a box, and didn’t get back into town for a while, important messages might sit there for weeks. Lucas didn’t know what the Crows had done, but he knew what he would do in their circumstances. He’d have a mail drop. He’d have the cemetery bill and other important stuff sent to an old, trustworthy friend. Somebody he could rely on to send the mail on to him. He half ran from the ICU to the nurses’ station.
    “I gotta have a phone,” Lucas snapped at his friend. She stepped back and pointed at a desk phone. He picked it up and called Homicide. Anderson was just getting ready to leave.
    “Harmon? I’m heading out to Riverwood Cemetery in a hurry. You get on the line, find out where Riverwood does its paperwork and call me. I’ve got a handset. If the officeis closed, run down somebody who can open it up, somebody who does the bills. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
    “What have you got?” Anderson asked.
    “Probably nothing,” Lucas said. “But I’ve got just the smallest fuckin’ hangnail of an idea . . . .”
     
    Clay and a security man stood in the parking garage and argued.
    “It’s a fuckin’ terrible idea,” the security man said intently.
    “No, it’s not. When you get a little higher in management, you’ll recognize that,” Lawrence Duberville Clay replied. An undertone in his voice hinted that it was unlikely the security man would ever rise higher in management.
    “Look: one car. Just one. You wouldn’t even see it.”
    “Absolutely not. You put a car on me and you better warn the people inside that I’ll fire their asses. And you with them. No. The only way for me to do this is to go out on my own. And I’ll probably be safer than if I was here. Nobody’ll expect me to be out on the street.”
    “Jesus, boss . . .”
    “Look, we’ve been through this before,” Clay said. “The fact is, when you’re surrounded by a screen of security, you don’t have any feel for anything. I need to get away, to be effective.”
    They had a car for him, a nondescript rental that one of the agents had picked up at the airport. Clay took the wheel, slammed the door and looked out at the unhappy security man.
    “Don’t worry, Dan. I’ll be back in a couple, three hours, no worse for the wear.”
     
    Lucas had to wait ten minutes at the cemetery office, watching the moon ghost across the sky behind dead oak leaves. He shivered and paced impatiently, and finally a Buick rolled up and a woman got out.
    “Are you Davenport?” she asked in a sour voice, jingling her keys.
    “Yes.”
    “I was at a dinner,” she said. She was a hard woman in her early thirties, with a beehive hairdo from the late fifties.
    “Sorry.”
    “We really should have some kind of papers,” she said frostily as she unlocked the door.
    “No time,” Lucas said.
    “It’s not right. I should call our chairman.”
    “Look, I’m trying to be fuckin’ nice,” Lucas said, his voice rising as he spoke. “I’m trying as hard as I can to be a nice guy because you seem like an okay woman. But if you drag your feet on this, I’ll call downtown for a warrant. It’ll be here in five minutes and we’ll seize your whole goddamn billing system. If you get lucky, you’ll get it back sometime next year. You can explain that to your chairman.”
    The woman stepped away from him and a spark of fear touched her eyes.