Shadow Prey

Tears started down his cheeks. The cold, he thought. Just the cold.
    He was taking it all in, breathing it, feeling the eagle soar, when Shadow Love put a hand on his shoulder. Hart turned his head, but the other man had stepped behind him.
    “What—” Hart began to say, and then he felt the fire in his throat, a stinging, and looked stupidly at the blood on his coat, pouring like a stream onto his hands. Hart sank to his knees in wonder, then fell on his face, rolled a few feet and stopped, the eagle gone forever.
    Shadow Love watched his body for a moment, then put the knife back in his jacket and looked around. Nobody.
    That’s two, he thought. He turned and climbed the embankment, and as he did, the TV tape of the killing of Billy Hood unrolled before his eyes, the woman cop with her pistol, blasting young Billy in the face. Lillian Rothenburg, the TV said.
    He crossed the top of the hill, walked down the street, turned the corner and got in the car with Barbara.
    “You okay?” Barbara asked fearfully. She looked quickly around. “See anybody around? Where’s Hart?”
    “Hart’s gone,” Shadow Love said, slumping in the passenger seat, his eyes half closed. “Saw an eagle. Great big fuckin’ bald eagle, floating out over the river.”
    He looked away from her fear, out the window. In the reflections on the glass, he saw Lily’s face, and nodded to it.

CHAPTER
21
    Daniel was in a dark mood. He prowled his office, peering at the political photographs that lined his walls.
    “I thought we were doing good,” Sloan ventured.
    “So did I,” said Lester. He had his loafers off and his feet hung over the side of his chair. He was wearing white sweat-socks with his blue suit.
    “I can’t complain,” Daniel admitted. He was nose to nose with a black-and-white photo of Eugene McCarthy that dated back to the Children’s Crusade of ’68. McCarthy looked pleased with himself. Daniel scowled at him and counted the coups.
    “One: We took out Bluebird and cleared the only killings on our turf. Two: We got Hood with Lily’s help. Three: We broke the names out of Liss and damn near nailed the Crows at their apartment. That’s all good.”
    “But?” Lily asked.
    “Something’s going to happen,” Daniel said, turning back toward the group around his desk. “And it’ll happen here. I feel it in my bones.”
    “Maybe the Crows’ll call it off for a while, cool out,” Lucas suggested. “Maybe they’ll figure that if they lie low, the heat’ll die down, give them a break.”
    Daniel shook his head. “No. The tempo’s wrong,” hesaid. “This has been a planned progression. They kill two people to establish a philosophical basis, then Andretti to grab major headlines, then the judge and the attorney general, major federal and state law officials. The next act is going to be something big. It won’t get smaller.”
    Anderson arrived as Daniel was talking. He took a chair and nodded to Lucas and Lily.
    “Got something?” Daniel asked.
    Anderson cleared his throat. “It ain’t good,” he said.
    South Dakota authorities had located Shadow Love’s driver’s license. The license showed an address at Standing Rock. Standing Rock cops said he hadn’t lived there for years. They had no idea where he was. The news from the National Crime Information Center was both bad and good: there was plenty of information on Shadow Love, and it was all frightening. Most of it came from California, where he’d served two years on an assault charge.
    “Two years? Must have been a hell of an assault,” Lily said.
    “Yeah. There was a race fight outside a bar. Shadow Love took some guy down and put the boot to him. Damn near kicked him to death.”
    “How about here in Minnesota?” Daniel asked. “He grew up here?”
    “Yeah. Went to Central. We’ve got Dick Danfrey over at the school board now, looking through their records. He should be getting back anytime. We’re looking for addresses, friends, attorneys, anything that might make a connection.”
    “Is he a psycho? Shadow Love?” asked Lucas.
    “The California people did a pretty thorough psychiatric evaluation on him,” Anderson said, shuffling through his papers. “They’re going to fax the records to us. There were indications of schizophrenia. They say he talked to invisible friends and sometimes invisible animals. And the prison shrink said the other inmates were scared of him. Even the guards. And this was in a hard-core California