Shadow Prey

prison.”
    “Jesus,” Lucas said.
    “We’ll have a whole file on him later this afternoon,”Anderson said. “Pictures, prints, everything. Pretty recent too. Last five years, anyway.”
    There was nothing on the Crows. “Zilch,” Anderson said.
    “Nothing?”
    “Well, Larry’s heard of them and he knows some stuff. Mostly rumors, or legend. Nothing that would track them.”
    “Where is Larry?” asked Daniel, looking around.
    Sloan shrugged. “He’s been pretty down in the mouth since that business with the Liss kid, and us putting the money on the street.”
    “What the fuck, he think we’re playing tic-tac-toe or something?” Daniel asked angrily.
    Sloan shrugged again and Lucas asked Anderson, “What about the feebs and the fingerprints? What about the truck?”
    “The FBI’s still running the prints, but they say if they’re old . . . it could take a while. The truck has different plates front and back. When we checked, the plates were supposedly lost off trucks out in South Dakota. There was no theft report, because the owners thought they’d just bounced off. So we got more prints, but no IDs.”
    “What you’re telling us is, we’ve probably got them in the system, pictures and all, but we don’t have any way to figure out which ones they are?” Daniel asked.
    “That’s about it,” said Anderson. “The feebs are giving top priority to picking out the prints . . . .”
    “Maybe you could check with State Vital Records. Look for a birth certificate on Shadow Love, see who the father is, if one is listed,” Lucas suggested.
    “I’ll do that,” Anderson said. He made a note on a file cover.
    “What else?” asked Daniel. The question met with silence. “Okay. Now. Something’s going to happen. It’s given me the creeps. We gotta get these motherfuckers. Today. Tomorrow. God damn it. And when you see Larry, tell him I want his ass in here for these meetings.”
     
    Two kids found Hart’s body. They were playing on the hillside in the late-afternoon shadows when they saw him, crumpled in the weeds. For a few seconds, the older of thetwo thought it was a bum; but the lump was so unmoving, so awkwardly piled on itself without regard to tendon or muscle strain that even the younger one quickly realized that it must be death.
    They looked at the body for a moment, then the older boy said, “We better go get your mom to call the cops.”
    The younger boy stuck his thumb in his mouth; it was something he hadn’t done for two years. When he realized what he was doing, he pulled his thumb out and thrust his hands in his pants pockets. The older one grabbed him by the shirt and tugged him up the hillside.
    The first cop on the scene was a patrolman riding single in his squad. He stepped close enough to see the blood, leaned forward to feel the cold neck and backed away. If there was evidence around the body, he didn’t want to destroy it.
    Two Homicide cops arrived fifteen minutes later, but nobody had yet recognized Hart.
    “Throat cut,” one cop said. “Could be a Crow hit. That’d be bad. Look at his clothes—decent clothes, the guy’s got some bread.”
    The second cop, the same bespectacled investigator who’d caught the Benton murderer, eased Hart’s billfold out of his hip pocket, stood up, opened it and looked at the driver’s license behind the plastic window.
    “Sweet bleedin’ Jesus,” he said aloud, his face suddenly ashen.
    His partner, who was on his knees, looking at the side of Hart’s head, looked up when he heard the tone of his voice. “What?”
    “This is Larry Hart, the guy working with the special squad on the Indian killings.”
    His partner stood up and said, “Gimme the license.” His voice was tight, choked. He took the license and carefully pinched a lock of Hart’s hair and tugged on it, rolling the dead man’s face just slightly. He compared it to the photo on the license.
    “Aw, fuck,” he said. “It’s him.”
    • • •
    Lily picked up the bedside phone and said hello. It was Daniel: “Lily, is Lucas there?”
    “Lucas?” she said.
    “Lily, don’t dog me around, okay? We got big fuckin’ trouble.”
    “Just a minute.”
    Lucas was in the shower. She pulled him out, and wet as a duck dog, he took the phone. “Daniel,” Lily told him quietly.
    “Yeah?” Lucas said.
    “Larry Hart’s been hit,” Daniel said, his voice shaky. “He’s dead. Throat cut.”
    “Sonofabitch,” Lucas groaned.
    “What?” Lily