Shadow Prey

cheeseburgers and coffee and slouched away.
    “What do you think about this Crows business?” Lily asked while they waited for the food.
    “I don’t know. Larry sounded weird. And shit, I was talking to this other guy, this Shadow Love. I knew at the time there was something not right about him. He . . . vibrated, you know?”
    “Fruitcake?”
    “There was something wrong. I don’t know.” The coffee came, scalding hot, oily.
    There was nothing like the Minneapolis Indian community in New York, Lily said. Indians were there, all right, but weren’t as visible. “They look kind of . . . mysterious,” she said. “You see them on the street, on the corners. They’re not threatening, not hostile. They just seem to watch . . . .”
    Lucas nodded. “Sometimes they’re like the biggest upcountry Scandinavian redneck shitkickers in the world. They bang around in old pickups and work in the lumber business or ranching. Then other times you’ll be out fuckin’ around somewhere and you’ll come across a bunch of Indians doing a ceremony. It looks like a tourist thing, but it’s not. It’s real . . . .”
     
    They talked for an hour. Lucas at one point decided he was babbling. On the way back to the motel, in the car, they spoke almost not at all. Lucas parked behind the motel and locked the car.
    “Think they’ll know anything?” she asked as they walked down the hall toward their rooms.
    “Maybe. We can call.”
    “Come on in. We can call from my room.” She pushed the door open and Lucas followed her inside. She gestured at the phone, and he sat on the bed, picked up the receiver and dialed. Daniel answered on the first ring.
    “Chief: Lucas. What happened?”
    “We went in, but we missed them,” Daniel said. “They’re the right guys, though. There were a couple of press releases balled up and tossed in a garbage bag under the sink and the typewriter’s right . . .”
    “They left the typewriter?”
    “Yeah. Sloan’s down there, with Del, and they say it’s kind of odd. They left a lot of junk behind, but the personal stuff is gone. Sloan thinks they blew out of the place in a hurry—maybe when they heard that Liss wasn’t dead. Figured he might talk.”
    “Are you talking to the neighbors?”
    “Yeah. Nobody saw them much. They are two old Indians, though. And they left prints all over the place, theFBI’s running them now. And somebody said they drove a truck, and that’s still parked out front . . . .”
    “Jesus. Maybe you ought to shut down the scene and watch it, maybe they’ll be back . . . .”
    “We’re doing that, but Del doesn’t think it’ll work. He says word’ll be up and down the street in an hour, about the raid.”
    “That’s probably right,” Lucas said. “Damn.”
    “We’ll talk to you tomorrow—we ought to have everything figured out by then. We’ll meet at one o’clock, if you can make it.”
    “We’ll be there,” Lucas said. He hung up and turned to Lily, shaking his head. “Missed them.”
    “But they’re the right guys?”
    “Yeah, they left some stuff behind. They got a definite ID.”
    “God damn it,” Lily said irritably. She dropped her head and reached back with one hand and rubbed her neck. She was less than a foot away and Lucas could smell the elusive scent she’d worn the first day he’d met her.
    “How much longer are we going to fool around?” he asked quietly.
    “I’m all done,” she said.
    “Say what? You’re all done?”
    “Yeah.” She stood and stepped across the room. Lucas started after her, but she reached the lights, snapped them off and then stepped back into the dark, her arms crossed in front of her breasts.
    “I’m really scared,” she said.
    “Jesus.” He wrapped her tightly with his left arm, caught the back of her neck in his right hand and pulled her face to his. The kiss locked them together, swaying, for ten seconds; then she pulled her chin back, gasping, and they stumbled sideways together and fell on the bed.
    “Lucas, dammit, give me a minute in the shower . . . .”
    “Fuck the shower,” he said. His voice was coarse, fevered. He kissed her again, his body pressing her into the bed, one hand tugging at the buttons that held the top of her dress together.
    “Jesus, let me . . .”
    “I got it.” A button popped and his hand was on her warm skin, her stomach, then around behind, unlatching her brassiere. Lily began to moan, trying to catch his lips.