Shadow Prey

books . . . .
    When Leo Clark woke the next morning, the white manwas dead. He was lying facedown on the cold ground and had taken a few convulsive bites of the earth as he died: his mouth was half full of oily dirt. Leo Clark could see one of his eyes. It was open, and as flat and silvery and empty as the dime that the steam tunnels wouldn’t cost him.
    “He died in a fuckin’ cave, man; they let him die in a fuckin’ hole in the ground,” Leo told the cops. The cops didn’t give a shit. Nobody else did either: the body went unclaimed, and was eventually dumped in a pauper’s grave. Dental X rays were filed with the medical examiner in the improbable case that somebody, someday, showed up looking for the dead man.
    After the white man died in the cave, Leo Clark stopped drinking. It didn’t happen all at once, but a year later he was sober. He drifted west, back to the res. Became a spiritual man, but with a twist of hate for people who would let men die in holes in the ground. He was forty-six years old, with a face and hands like oak, when he met the Crows.
     
    Leo Clark hid in a corner of a dimly lit parking ramp, between the bumper of a Nissan Maxima and the outer wall of the ramp. He was thirty feet from the locked steel door that led into the apartment building.
    A few minutes earlier, he had looped a piece of twelve-pound-test monofilament fishing line around the doorknob. He led the line to the bottom of the door, fastened it with a piece of Magic mending tape and trailed it on to the Maxima. In the low light, the line was invisible. He was waiting for somebody to walk through the door—going in, he hoped, but out would be okay, as long as it wasn’t to the Maxima. That would be embarrassing.
    Leo Clark lay bathed in the odors of exhaust and oil and thought about his mission. When he had killed Ray Cuervo, the overwhelming emotion had been fear—fear of failure, fear of the cops. He’d known Ray personally, had suffered from his greed, and anger and hate had been there too. But this judge? The judge had been bribed by an oil company in a lawsuit involving the illegal disposal of toxic wastes at the Lost Trees reservation. Leo Clark knew that, but hedidn’t feel it. All he felt was the space in his chest. A . . . sadness? Was that what it was?
    He had thought his years on the street had burned all of that away: that he’d lost all but the most elemental survival emotions. Fear. Hate. Anger. He wasn’t sure whether this discovery, this renewal of feeling, this sadness, was a gift or a curse. He would have to think about that: Leo Clark was a careful man.
    As for the judge, it would make no difference. He had been weighed and he would die.
    Leo Clark had been waiting for twenty minutes when a car pulled into an empty space halfway down the garage. A woman. He could hear her high heels rapping on the concrete. She had her keys in her hand. She opened the door into the building, stepped inside. The door began to swing shut and Leo pulled in the line, popping off the Magic mending tape, putting tension on the line, easing the door shut . . . but not quite enough to latch. He kept up the tension, waiting, waiting, giving the woman time for the elevator, hoping that nobody else came out . . . .
    After three minutes, he slid from beneath the car. Keeping the line tight, he walked to the door and eased it open. Nobody in the elevator lobby. He stepped inside, walked past the elevator to the fire stairs, and went up.
    The judge was on the sixth floor, one of three apartments. Leo listened at the fire door, heard nothing. Opened the door, looked through, stepped into the empty hallway. Six C. He found the door, rapped softly, though he was sure it was empty. No answer. After another quick look around, he took a bar from his jacket, slipped it into the crack between the door and the jamb and slowly put his weight to it. The door held, held; then there was a low ripping sound and it popped open. Leo stepped inside, into the dark room. Found a chair, sat down and let the sadness flow through him.
    Judge Merrill Ball and his girlfriend, whose name was Cindy, returned a few minutes after one in the morning. The judge had his key in the lock before he noticed the damage to the door.
    “Jesus, it looks like . . .” he started, but the door flewopen, freezing him. Leo Clark was there, his long black braids down on his chest, his eyes wide and straining, his mouth half open, his hand driving