Shadow Prey

cousins and his old man and his old lady. They got an ocean of money and two oceans of political clout. They want blood.”
    “And they think whoever killed Andretti was working with this Bluebird guy?” asked Lucas.
    “Look at the killings,” Daniel said, spreading his arms. “It’s obvious. And there’s more to it. Andretti’s office building had a videotape monitor on a continuous loop. The witnesses picked out the killer. It’s a horseshit picture and they’ve only got him for about ten seconds, walking throughthe lobby, but they released it to the television stations an hour ago. A few minutes after they put it on TV, a motel owner from Jersey called up and said the guy might have been at his motel. The Jersey cops checked and they think he’s right. They’ve got no license-plate number—it wasn’t that kind of motel—but the owner remembers the guy had Minnesota plates. He remembers that when the guy was checking out, he said he was heading back home. The motel owner said there was no question about him being an Indian. And then there was the other thing.”
    “What’s that?” Sloan asked.
    “The New York cops held back the part about the stone knife,” Daniel said. “They told the media that Andretti had been stabbed, but nothing about the knife. So this motel owner asked the Jersey cops, ‘Did he stab him with that big fucking stone knife?’ The cops say, ‘What?’ And this motel owner, he says his Indian wore a stone knife around his neck, on a leather thong. He saw him at the Coke machine, wearing an undershirt with the knife hanging down.”
    “So we know for sure,” Sloan said.
    “Yeah. And he seems to be coming this way.” Daniel leaned back in his chair, put his hands on his stomach and twiddled his thumbs.
    Lucas pulled his lip, thinking about it. After a moment of silence, he looked up at the chief. “This guy have braids?”
    “The killer? Didn’t say anything about braids . . .” He hunted around his desktop for a moment, picked up a piece of computer printout, read it and said, “Nope. Hair down over the tops of his ears and just over his shirt collar. Longish, but not long enough for braids.”
    “Shit.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the guy who did Cuervo had braids.”
    The others glanced at each other and Daniel said, “He could have cut it.”
    “I said the same thing about Bluebird, when we took him down,” Lucas said.
    “Oh, boy,” Lester rasped, rubbing the back of his neck. He was the department’s front man on cases that drew media attention. “That’d make three. If there are two, themedia’s gonna go nuts. If there’s three . . . I’ve been burned before, I don’t need this shit.”
    Sloan grinned at him. “It’s gonna be bad, Frank,” he said, teasing. “This guy sounds like big headlines. When the networks and the big papers get a whiff of conspiracy, they’ll be on you like white on rice. Especially with the part about the stone knives. They’ll love the stone knives.”
    “The local papers already figured it out. Five minutes after the news came across on the Indian angle, we were getting calls on Bluebird. StarTribune, Pioneer Press, all the stations. AP’s got it on the wire,” said Anderson.
    “Like flies on a dead cat,” Sloan said to Lester.
    “So we’re setting up a team, just like we did with the Maddog. I’ll announce it at a press conference tomorrow morning,” said Daniel. “Frank will run the out-front investigation and handle the press on a daily basis. Harmon will get the database going again. Just like with the Maddog. Every goddamn scrap of information, okay? Notebooks for everybody.”
    “I’ll set it up tonight,” Anderson said. “I’ll get somebody to duplicate copies of the Bluebird mug shot.”
    “Good. Get me a bunch for the press conference.” Daniel turned to Sloan. “I want you to backtrack everybody connected with Bluebird. He’s our hold on this thing. If we get an ID on the New York killer, I want you to track down everybody who knew him. You’ll be pretty much independent, but you report to Anderson every day, every move. Everything you get goes into the database.”
    “Sure,” Sloan nodded.
    “Lucas, you’re on your own, just like with the Maddog,” Daniel said. “Our contacts with the Indian community are fuckin’ terrible. You’re the only guy who has any.”
    “Not many,” said Lucas.
    “They’re all we got,” said Daniel.
    “What about bringing in Larry Hart?