Shadow Prey

around with a gun and I’ve shot people . . . . He was freakedout when I went back home. I mean, he wanted to know all about it. He had this friend come over, a shrink, Shirley Anstein, to make sure I was all right. He was wild when he heard I was coming back. He said I was damaging myself.”
    “You think he’s screwing this Anstein broad?”
    “Shirley?” She laughed. “I don’t think so. She’s about sixty-eight. She’s like an adoptive mother.”
    “He’s faithful, then.”
    “Oh, yeah. He’s so faithful it’s almost like it’s part of the weight on me. I can’t even get away from that.”
     
    “Walnut Grove,” Lily said, looking at a highway sign as they rolled through the edge of another small town. The sun was dipping toward the horizon. It’d be dark before they got to Brookings. “When I was a kid, I used to read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I loved them. Then they put the TV show on, you know, Little House on the Prairie. I was grown-up and the show was pretty bad, but I watched anyway, because of Laura . . . . The show was set in a place called Walnut Grove.”
    “This is it,” Lucas said.
    “What?” Lily looked at the sign again. “Same place?”
    “Sure.”
    “Jesus . . .” She looked out the windows as they went through and saw a small prairie town, a little shabby, very quiet, with side streets that Huckleberry Finn would have been comfortable on. When they were out of the town, she still looked back, and said, “Walnut Grove . . . Damn. You know, given the change in time, it looks right.”
     
    They found Louise Liss through the Brookings Police Department and went to her motel. She was in the coffee shop, sitting by herself, staring into a glass of Coke. She was overweight, worn, with tired eyes now rimmed with red. She’d been crying, Lucas thought.
    “This’ll be bad,” Lily muttered.
    “Let’s get her down to her room,” Lucas said.
    “I’ll talk,” Lily said.
    They closed in the last few steps to the table and Lily took her ID case from her purse. “Mrs. Liss?”
    Louise Liss looked up. Her eyes were flat, dazed. “Who are you?”
    “We’re police, Mrs. Liss. I’m Lily Rothenburg and this is Lucas Davenport from Minneapolis . . . .”
    “I’m not supposed to talk to police,” Louise said defensively. “Mr. Meadows said I wasn’t supposed . . .”
    “Mrs. Liss, we don’t want to talk about your husband. We want to talk about your son, Harold.” Lily sounded like somebody’s mother, Lucas thought, then remembered that she was.
    “Harold?” Louise reached out and gripped the Coke, her knuckles turning white. “What happened to Harold? Harold’s okay, I talked to him before I left . . . .”
    “I think we should talk in your room . . . .” Lily took several steps away from the table and Louise slipped out of the booth, following.
    “Your purse,” Lucas said.
    She reached back to get her purse, saying, “What happened, what happened?” And she started to cry. The cashier was watching them. Lucas handed him three dollars, flashed his badge and said, “Police.”
    Outside the coffee shop, they turned toward the room. Louise grabbed Lily’s coat and said, “Please . . .”
    “He was arrested on cocaine charges, Mrs. Liss.”
    “Cocaine . . .” She suddenly pulled herself together and looked at Lucas; her voice rose to a screech. “You did this, didn’t you? You framed my boy to get at John.”
    “No, no,” Lucas said as he tried to keep her walking toward her room. “He’ll tell you himself. The Narcotics people saw him touch a dealer. They stopped him and found two eight-balls in his pockets . . . .”
    “Eight-balls?”
    “Eighth-ounce packets. That’s a lot of cocaine, Mrs. Liss.” They got to her room and she opened the door with the key. Lily followed her inside and Lucas stepped in and closed the door. Louise sat on the bed. “It’s what they call a presumptive amount. With that big an amount of cocaine, the law presumes he’s dealing and it’s a felony.”
    “He’s just seventeen,” Louise said. She seemed barely able to hold up her head.
    Lucas put a sad expression on his face. “With that much cocaine, the county attorney will put him on trial as an adult. If he’s convicted, it’d be a minimum of three years in prison.”
    The blood drained out of Louise’s face. “What do you want?” she whispered.
    “We’re not Narcotics people,” Lily said. She sat on the