Silent Prey

case? Kennett?” Lucas asked.
    “O’Dell pulled some strings. Kennett’s one of the best we’ve got on this kind of thing, organizing and running it.”
    “He and O’Dell don’t like each other.”
    “No. No, they don’t. I don’t know why O’Dell pulled him, exactly, but I can tell you one thing: he wouldn’t have done it unless he thought Kennett would find Bekker. Back in Minneapolis, you can control the bureaucratic fallout, because the department’s small and everybody knows everybody else. But here . . . We’ve got to find Bekker, or heads’ll start rolling. People are pissed off.”
    Lucas nodded, thought about it for a second, and said, “Kennett’s an intelligence guy: are you sure he’s not involved with Robin Hood?”
    Lily looked down at her hands. “In my heart, I’m sure. I couldn’t prove it, though. Whoever’s running this thing must have a fair amount of charisma, to hold it together, and good organizational skills . . . and certain political opinions. Kennett fits.”
    “But . . . ?”
    “He has too much sense,” Lily said. “He’s a believer in, what? Goodness, maybe. That’s what I feel about him, anyway. We talk about things.”
    “Okay.”
    “That’s not exactly proof,” Lily said. She was tight, unhappy with the question, chewing at it.
    “I wasn’t asking for proof, I was asking for an opinion,” Lucas said. “What about O’Dell? He seems to be running everything. He runs you, he runs Kennett. He’s running me, or thinks he is. He picked Fell out of the hat . . . .”
    “I don’t know, I just don’t know. Even the way he picked Fell, it seems more like magic than anything. We may be on a complete wild-goose chase.” She was about to go on, but chimes sounded from the door. She hopped off her stool and walked down the hall and pushed her intercom button. A man’s voice said, “Bobby Rich, Lieutenant.”
    “I’ll buzz you in,” Lily said. To Lucas, she said, “Get the lights.”
    Lucas turned off the lights and sat on the floor, legs crossed. Sitting in the dark, he watched Lily as she waited by the door, a tall woman, less heavy than she once was, with a long, aristocratic neck. Charisma. Good organizational skills. Certain political opinions.
    “How did you talk O’Dell into bringing me here?” he asked abruptly. “Was he reluctant? How hard did you have to press?”
    “Bringing you here was more his idea than mine,” Lily said. “I’d told him about you and he said you sounded perfect.”
    Rich knocked on the door as Lucas thought, Really?
     
    Rich was a tall black man, balding, athletic, hair cropped so closely that his head looked shaven. He wore a green athletic jacket with tan sleeves, and blue jeans. He said, “Hello,” and edged inside the apartment. Lily pointed him at a chair where Lucas could see his face, and then said, “There’s another guy in the apartment, in the kitchen.”
    “What?” Rich, just settling on the chair, half rose and looked down the hall.
    “Don’t get up,” Lily snapped. She pointed him back into the chair.
    “What’s going on here?” Rich asked, still peering toward the kitchen.
    “We have a guy who’s getting close to Robin Hood. Maybe. He doesn’t want you to see his face. He doesn’t know who to trust . . . . If you don’t want to talk about it, with him back there, we can cut it off right here. You can go back into the bedroom while he leaves. Then it’ll be just you and me . . . but I wanted you to know.”
    Rich’s tongue slid over his lower lip, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. After a minute, he relaxed. “I don’t see how he can hurt me,” he said.
    “He can’t,” Lily said. “He’s mostly going to listen, maybe ask a couple of questions. Why don’t you just tell me what you told Walt? If either of us has questions, we’ll break in.”
    Rich thought about it for another moment, looked into the dark, trying to penetrate it, then nodded. “Okay,” he said.
    He’d been at home when he got a call from an ex-burglar he’d busted a couple of times, a man named Lowell Jackson. Jackson was trying to go straight, as a sign painter, and was doing okay.
    “He said an acquaintance of his had called, a kid named Cornell, nicknamed Red. Cornell had said he’d seen Fred Waites go down and that it wasn’t no gang-bangers—that one of the guys in the car was an old white guy and Cornell thought he was a cop. Jackson gave me an address.”
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