Shadow Prey

the phone book. “What else?”
    “Check the front-room closets. I gotta finish here.”
    There was a box under Hood’s bed. Lucas pulled it out. A photo album, apparently some years old, covered with dust. He glanced through it, then pushed it back under the bed. A moment later, Lily called, “Shotgun.” Lucas stepped into the living room just as she cracked open an old single-shot twelve-gauge.
    “Shit,” Lucas said. “No point in trying to jam that. He’ll be looking right through the barrel when he puts a shell in.”
    “Don’t see any shells,” Lily said. “Should we take it?”
    “Better not. If his roommates are involved, we don’t want anything missing . . . .”
    Lucas went back to the bedroom and looked through the other man’s boxes. There was nothing of interest, no letters or notes that might tie the others more intimately to Hood. He went back into the living room. “Lily?”
    “I’m in the bathroom,” she called. “Find anything else?”
    “No. How about you?” He poked his head into the bathroom and found her carefully going through the medicine cabinet.
    “Nothing serious.” She took a prescription-drug bottle out of the cabinet and looked at it, her forehead wrinkling. “There’s a prescription here for Hood. Strong stuff, but I don’t see how you could abuse it.”
    “What is it?”
    “An antihistamine. The label says it’s for bee stings. My father used it. He was allergic to bees and fire ants. If he got stung, his whole body would swell up. It used to scare the shit out of him; he’d think he was smothering. And hemight have too, if he didn’t have his medicine around. The swelling can pinch off your windpipe . . . .”
    Lucas shrugged. “No use to us.”
    Lily put the plastic bottle of pills back in the cabinet, closed it and followed him into the living room. “Anything else?”
    “I guess not,” Lucas said. “We fucked up a gun; I hope there aren’t any shells for the shotgun.”
    “Didn’t see any. Are you going to do any pictures?”
    “Yeah. Just a few views.” Lucas took a half-dozen Polaroid photos of the rooms and paced off the main room’s dimensions, which he dictated into the tape recorder.
    “You know, we really could spend more time going through the place,” Lily suggested.
    “Better not. What you get quick is probably all you’re going to get,” Lucas said. “Never push when you’re inside somebody else’s house. All kinds of shit can happen. Friends stop by unexpectedly. Relatives. Get in and get out.”
    “You sound more and more experienced . . . .”
    Lucas shrugged. “You got the warrant?”
    “Oh, yeah.” Lily took it out of her purse and stuck it in the sleeve of a winter coat in the living room closet. “We’ll tell the court we put it one place he’d find it for sure. Of course, he’s got to put on the coat.”
    “Which he probably wouldn’t do until winter . . .”
    “Which is not that far away,” Lily said.
    “So all right,” Lucas said. “Did we change anything?”
    “Nothing I can see,” Lily said.
    “Let me take a last look in the bedroom.” He stepped into the bedroom, looked around and finally opened the closet door an inch. “I’m slipping,” he said. “The damn door was open when I came in and I closed it.”
    Lily was looking at him curiously. Lucas said, “What?”
    “I’m really kind of impressed,” she conceded. “You’re pretty good at this.”
    “That’s the nicest thing you ever said to me.”
    She grinned and shrugged. “So I’m a little competitive.”
    “I’m sorry about ragging you this morning,” Lucas said, the words tumbling out. “I’m not a responsible human being before noon. I don’t daylight; I really don’t.”
    “I shouldn’t have picked on you,” she said. “I just want to get this job done.”
    “Are we making up?”
    She turned away toward the door, her back to him.
    “It’s all right with me,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.” She opened the door and peered down the hallway.
    “Clear,” she said.
    Lucas was just behind her. “If we’re going to make up, we ought to do it right,” he said.
    She turned and looked at him. “What?”
    He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, and the kiss came back for just the barest fraction of a second, a returned pressure with a hint of heat. Then she pulled away and stepped out into the hall, flustered.
    “Enough of that shit,” she said.
     
    It was a five-minute walk