Shadow Prey

asked.
    “It’s a reservation up north.”
    “Let’s get going. We’ll have to stop at my—”
    “Whoa. We’ve got things to do. We’ll start with our identification people tonight, see if we can figure out exactly where he lives. The Indians are always back and forth from here to the res. For all we know, he may be down here, with Bluebird. If he’s not, we’ll arrange some contacts up north, then go. If we head up there tonight, we’d spend most of our time thrashing around.”
    Lily stood and put her hands on her hips and leaned toward him. “Why do guys always have to wait another day? Jesus, in New York . . .”
    “You’re not in New York. In New York, you want to go somewhere, you take a taxi. You know how far Red Lake is from here?”
    “No. I don’t know.”
    “About the same distance as it is from New York to Washington, D.C. It ain’t just a taxi ride. I’ll get some calls going tonight, and tomorrow . . .”
    “We go.”

CHAPTER
8
    “You heard?” She called.
    Lily strode down the hall toward him, a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand. Before, she’d always worn soft pinkish lipstick, and just a touch. This morning, her lipstick was hard and heart-red, the color of street violence and rough sex. She had changed her hair as well; black bangs curled down over her brow, and she looked out from under them, like the wicked queen in Snow White.
    “What?” Lucas was carrying a paper cup of microwaved coffee and had a Trib pinched under his arm.
    “We found Hood. Right here in town. Anderson got on the computers early this morning,” she said. The papers were computer printouts with notes scrawled in the margins in blue ink. She looked down at the top one. “Hood used to live at a place called Bemidji. It’s not on a reservation, but it’s close.”
    “Yeah. It’s right next to Red Lake,” Lucas said. He opened the metal door of his office and led the way in.
    “But we got a problem,” Lily said as she settled into the second chair in the office. Lucas put the coffee on his desk, pulled off his sport coat, hung it on a hook and sat down. “What happened is . . .”
    Lucas rubbed his face and she frowned. “What’s wrong?”
    “My face hurts,” Lucas said.
    “Your face hurts?”
    “It’s sensitive to morning light. I think my grandfather was a vampire.”
    She looked at him for a moment and shook her head. “Jesus . . .”
    “So what’s the problem?” Lucas prompted, smothering a yawn.
    She got back on track. “Hood’s not driving his own car. He’s the listed owner of a 1988 Ford Tempo four-wheel-drive. Red. That car’s still at his former home up in Bemidji, along with his wife and kid. The Bemidji cops have some kind of source in his neighborhood—some cop’s sister-in-law—and the red car’s been there all along. We’re not sure what Hood was driving out of that Jersey motel, but it was big and old. Like a ’seventy-nine Buick or Oldsmobile. It had bad rust.”
    “So we’ve got no way to spot him on the highway.”
    “Unfortunately. But . . .” She thumbed through the printouts. “Anderson did a computer run on him and talked to the state people. He’s got a Minnesota driver’s license but no second-car registration. So Anderson went through everything else in the computers and bingo. Found him listed as a defendant in a small-claims-court filing. He bought a TV on time and couldn’t make the payments.”
    “And his address was on the filing.”
    “Nope. Anderson had to call Sears. They looked up the address on their accounts computer. It’s an apartment on Lyndale Street.”
    “Lyndale Avenue,” Lucas said. He sat forward now, intent.
    “Whatever. The thing is, the apartment’s rented to a guy named Tomas Peck. Sloan and a couple of Narcotics guys are over in the neighborhood now, trying to figure it out.”
    “Maybe he moved.”
    “Yeah, but Peck has been listed as the occupant for two years. So maybe Hood’s living with him.”
    “Huh.” Lucas thought it over as she sat leaning forward,waiting for a comment. “Are you sure you’ve got the right Bill Hood? There have got to be a lot of them . . . .”
    “Yeah, we’re sure. The Sears account had a change of address.”
    “Then I’d bet he’s still living at that apartment,” Lucas said. “We’re on a roll, and when you get on a roll . . .”
    “ . . . it all works,” Lily said.
     
    Lily had not gone down to look for Hood, she said, because