Shadow Prey

symphony?”
    “Yeah.”
    “How was it?”
    “It was okay,” she said. “I’ll go with him again if he asks, but I won’t be sleeping with him.”
    “Ah. Decent of you to tell me.”
    “He’s just too fuckin’ nice,” Jennifer said. “No edges. Everything I said, he agreed with.”
    “He’s probably hung like a Tennessee stud horse.”
    Jennifer’s forehead wrinkled. “Men worry about the goddamnedest things,” she said.
    “I wasn’t worried.”
    “Sure. That’s why you mentioned it,” she said. “Anyway, even if I did plan to sleep with him, I’d put it off for a while. I keep looking at the baby, and I keep thinking I want to do it again. With the same daddy.”
    Lucas turned on his side and kissed her on the forehead.
    “I’d like to help, whenever you want to. Soon?”
    “I think so. In a couple, three months. This time, I’ll tell you when I go off the Pill.”
    He kissed her again and his hand crept over her breast, circling and pressing her nipple with the palm of his hand.
    “I’d like a boy,” she said.
    “Whatever,” said Lucas. “Another daughter would be fine with me.”
    “Maybe we could move it up. Next month, maybe.”
    “I’ll be on the job,” he said.
    She laughed, shook her head and looked at her watch.“Think you could stand some more succor? I’ve got barely enough time.”
    “Christ, I don’t know, I’m getting old . . . .”
    They made love again, more sedately, and later, when Jennifer was getting dressed, Lucas said, hoarsely, “I didn’t want the world to go away. I would never have known, but I kept thinking . . . I don’t even know if I was thinking it, but I was feeling it . . . I wanted more. More life. Jesus, I was afraid I’d just wink out, like a soap bubble . . . .”
     
    After Jennifer left for the airport, Lucas tried again to nap. Failing, he turned on the television and caught the cable news from Sioux Falls. John Liss was out of surgery; he’d live, but he’d never walk again. The cowboy’s shot had taken out a piece of spinal cord just above the hips. They ran the tape of the shooting again, then another time, in slow motion, and then cut to a picture of Lawrence Duberville Clay. It was a well-known shot, the director in shirtsleeves on the Chicago waterfront, working a cocaine bust. He had a huge Desert Eagle automatic pistol packed under his arm in an elaborate shoulder holster.
    “In a related development, FBI director Lawrence Duberville Clay has announced that he will go personally to Brookings to take charge of the investigation, and said he expects to set up a temporary national FBI headquarters in Minneapolis until the conspirators are captured,” the anchorwoman said. “Clay said the move should be accomplished in the next two or three days. This is the third time that the FBI director has involved himself with a specific investigation. His action is seen as an administration effort to emphasize the importance given to its war on crime . . . .”
    Lucas poked the remote control and Clay’s face went away. Three o’clock. He stood, thought a moment, then went back in the kitchen for the rest of the Tanqueray.

CHAPTER
13
    Shadow Love saw Billy Hood’s death on a television set in the corner of a Lake Street grill. The camera was a full block from the scene, but up high, and it was all as clear as a running play on Monday Night Football.
    Billy and the hunter cop. The woman with the purse. Billy moving. Why did he do that? Why did he take his finger off the trigger? The woman’s hand coming up with the pistol. The shot, Billy going down like a rag doll, and Davenport kneeling on the pavement, vomiting . . .
    Shadow Love watched it once, watched it again, watched it a third time as the station endlessly ran the tape loop. “ The following news broadcast contains scenes of violence and death and may not be appropriate for children. If there are any children in the viewing area  . . .”
    And then a running press conference at the shooting scene. Larry Hart: “ . . . have developed evidence that these people are not just killing whites, but have killed one of our own, a Dakota man from Fort Thompson, Yellow Hand  . . .”
    Larry Hart on the TV. Sweating. Pleading. Twisting his hands like Judas Iscariot.
    The black spot popped up, twitching, growing, blurring his vision. Shadow Love tried to blink it away, but the anger was stirring through his chest.
    Judas. Sweating,