Shadow Prey

straight out from his sides as though he had been crucified. His legs were spread wide, his blood-flecked wingtips pointing away from each other at forty-five-degree angles. His shirt and sport coat were saturated with blood. There were footprints and kneeholes in the puddle of blood, where the paramedics had tracked through, but no medical debris. Usually the packaging from the syringes, sponges, tape and compresses was all over the place. With Benton, they hadn’t bothered.
    Lucas sniffed at the coppery smell of the blood as the detective came in behind him.
    “Looks like the same guy who did Ray Cuervo,” Lucas said.
    “Maybe,” Wentz said.
    “You better get him or the papers’ll start peeing on you,” Lucas said mildly.
    “Could be worse than that,” the Homicide cop said. “We got a rough description of the guy who did Cuervo. He had braids. Everybody says this guy had short hair.”
    “Could have cut it,” Lucas suggested. “Got scared . . .”
    “I hope, but it don’t feel right.”
    “If it’s two guys, that’d be big trouble . . . .” Lucas was getting interested.
    “I know, fuck, I know.” Wentz took off his glasses and rubbed a heavy hand up and down the side of his face. “Christ, I’m tired. My daughter piled up the car last Saturday. Right downtown by the IDS building. Her fault, she ran a light. I’m trying to deal with the insurance and the body shop and this shit happens. Two hours later and I’d be off . . . .”
    “She okay?”
    “Yeah, yeah.” He settled his glasses back on his nose. “That’s the first thing I asked. I say, ‘You okay?’ She says, ‘Yeah.’ I say, ‘I’m coming down and I’m gonna kill you.’ ”
    “As long as she was okay,” Lucas said. The toe of his right loafer was in the blood puddle and he stepped back a few inches. He was looking at Benton’s face upside down. It occurred to him that Benton resembled someone famous, but with the face upside down, he couldn’t tell who.
    “ . . . the apple of my eye,” Wentz was saying. “If anything happened to her . . . You got a kid now, right?”
    “Yeah. A daughter.”
    “Poor fuck. Wait a few years. She’ll wreck that Porsche of yours and the insurance company will own your ass.” Wentz shook his head. Goddamned daughters. It was nearly impossible to live with them and clearly impossible to live without them. “Look, you might know this kid we got in the car. He said we weren’t to mess with him ’cause Davenport was his friend. We think he’s one of your snitches.”
    “I’ll go see,” Lucas said.
    “Any help . . .” The Homicide cop shrugged.
    “Sure.”
    Outside, Lucas asked a patrolman about the junkie and was directed to the last car in line. Another patrolman sat behind the wheel and a small dark figure sat behind him, the two separated by a steel screen. Lucas bent over the open front window on the passenger side, nodded to the patrolman and looked into the backseat. The kid was bouncing nervously, one thin hand tangled in his dark hair. Yellow Hand.
    “Hey, Dick,” Lucas said. “How’s things at K Mart?”
    “Oh, man, Davenport, get me outta here.” Yellow Hand’s eyes were wide and frightened. He kept bouncing, faster now. “I didn’t do nothing, man. Not a fuckin’ thing.”
    “The people at K Mart would like to talk to you about that. They say you were runnin’ for the door with a disc player . . . .”
    “Shit, man, it wasn’t me . . . .”
    “Right. But I’ll tell you what: You give me a name, and I’ll put you on the street again,” Lucas said.
    “I don’t know who it was, man,” Yellow Hand squealed.
    “Bullshit,” grunted the uniform officer in the driver’s seat. He shifted a toothpick and looked at Lucas. He had a wide Irish face and a peaches-and-cream complexion. “You know what he said to me, Lieutenant? He said, ‘You ain’t getting it out of me, dickhead.’ That’s what he said. He knows who it was.”
    “That right?” Lucas asked, turning back to Yellow Hand.
    “Fuck, man, I didn’t know him,” Yellow Hand whined. “He was just this fuckin’ guy . . . .”
    “Indian guy?”
    “Yeah, Indian guy, but I didn’t know him . . . .”
    “Bullshit,” said the uniform.
    Lucas turned his head and looked at the uniform. “You hold him here, okay? If anybody wants to transport him, you tell them I said to hold him here.”
    “Okay. Sure. Whatever.” The uniform didn’t care. He was