Shadow Prey

bed beside Louise and touched her on the shoulder. “We’re investigating these murders with the Indians, like the one with your husband. So anyway, one of the Narcotics guys, his name is Sloan, came in this afternoon and said, ‘Guess what? You know that guy they got out in South Dakota? The guy who killed the attorney general? We just busted his kid.’ And then he said, ‘I guess the whole family is rotten.’ ”
    “We’re not rotten,” Louise protested. “I work hard . . . .”
    “Well, we’ve got some room to maneuver with Harold, your son,” Lily said in a quiet voice. “The court could treat him as a juvenile. But we have to give something to the Narcotics people. Some reason. We said, ‘Well, his father is refusing to talk, and that thing is a lot more important than another dope charge.’ We said, ‘If we can get him to tell us just a few things, could we promise that we’d treat Harold as a juvenile?’ The Narcotics officers thought it over, and we talked to the chief, and they said, ‘Yes.’ That’s why we’re here, frankly. To see if we can make a deal.”
    “You want John to sell out his friends,” Louise said bitterly. “Sell out the people.”
    “We don’t want any more murders,” Lucas said. “That’s all we want to do. We want to stop them.”
    Louise Liss had been pressing her hands to her cheeks as she listened to the pitch; now she dropped them into her lap. It was a gesture of either despair or surrender. Lily leaned closer to her. “Hasn’t your family paid enough? Your husband is going to prison. He’ll never walk again. You don’t see the people who are behind this thing, you don’t see those people in prison. They’re still out walking around. Walking around, Louise.”
    “I don’t know anything myself . . .” she said tentatively.
    “Could you talk to John?” Lily asked gently.
    “It would really be good if he could just give us a few names. We don’t need a lot of details, just a few names. Nobody would have to know, even,” Lucas said.
    There was a moment of silence, and then Louise said, “Nobody would have to know?”
    “Nobody,” Lily said flatly. “And it would save your family a lot of grief. I hate to bring this up, but I noticed that Harold was a very good-looking youth. I mean, if they put him in the prison up in St. Cloud, with some men who have not had sexual relationships in a long time . . . Well.”
    “Oh, no, not Harold.”
    “It’s not like they really have a choice,” Lucas said. “Some of those guys up there are bigger than football players . . . .”
     
    When Louise had gone, Lily asked, “How bad do you feel?”
    Lucas cocked his head and rolled his eyes up, as though thinking about it, and said, “Actually, not that bad.”
    “I don’t feel that bad myself. And I think we should. It makes me a little sad that we don’t feel worse,” Lily said. “We’re missing some parts, Davenport.”
    Lucas shrugged. “They got worn off. And . . .”
    “What?”
    “It’s a game, you know,” he said, testing her. “You can’t back off in a game and win. You either go balls to the wall, or somebody takes you out and you’re no good anymore.”
     
    Louise Liss was back from the hospital an hour later.
    “I had trouble getting in,” she apologized.
    “Did you talk to John?”
    “Yes . . . you’ll help Harold?”
    “If you help us, Mrs. Liss, I’ll do everything I can to see that Harold is released,” Lucas promised.
    “It’s some people named Crow,” she said in a low voice. “They may be brothers or cousins. They’re big Dakota medicine men.”
    “Dakota?” asked Lily.
    “That’s Minnesota Sioux,” Lucas said. “Where are they at?”
    “I wrote it down,” Louise said, fumbling a piece of paper out of her purse. It was the corner of an envelope, with a street address. “He thinks this is right . . . .”
    “Are there any more killings planned?” Lily pressed.
    “All he would give me are the names and that address,” Louise said. “I think it might kill him, just doing that.”
    “Okay, that’s fine,” Lily said. “We’ll see about Harold tonight. We’ll call on the telephone.”
    “Please,” Louise Liss said, snatching at Lily’s coat sleeve, “help him. Please?”
     
    “The Crows? He said the Crows?” Larry Hart was astonished.
    “You know them?” asked Daniel. Lucas was in a phone booth. Daniel, Anderson, Sloan and Hart were in Daniel’s office, using