Stolen Prey

accessory to murder because I won’t help them.”
    “Just stay cool.”
    W HEN L UCAS GOT HOME , Weather was asleep, but Letty was still up. “Mom said to tell you she saw the autopsy stuff on your desk, and she says she’s got a bad feeling about it. Something’s not right. She says she can’t imagine how Rivera got shot, if it happened the way you said it did.”
    Lucas frowned and said, “Did she say why?”
    “No, she says she just couldn’t imagine it,” she said. “You know, if it was the way you said.”
    Lucas went to his desk, found the autopsy file, and thumbed through it. Letty, munching on a PowerBar, came to look over his shoulder.
    “You don’t have to see this,” Lucas said.
    “I already did,” Letty said. “I couldn’t figure out what she meant, either. Maybe we should go wake her up.”
    “Is she cutting tomorrow?”
    “She’s got a nose … rhinoplasty.” Weather had outlawed the phrase “nose job” in the Davenport household.
    “So we let her sleep,” Lucas said.
    He looked through the photos, of both the crime scene and the autopsy, along with the autopsy notes.
    “You see it?” Letty asked.
    “No, because I’m going to have to imagine it, and I can’t do that with you crunching the PowerBar in my ear,” Lucas said.
    “Chill.”
    L UCAS LOOKED at the photos, closed his eyes. Simple enough. Rivera walked up the front steps, cocked his gun, made sure the safety was off, got his guts up, and kicked the door. He landed with one foot inside, saw the two men off to his right, turned that way. One of them went for his gun and he fired twice and the third man, whom he hadn’t seen, who was standing next to the picture window to his left, peeking through the drapes, that man swivels with a gun and shoots….
    He looked at the pictures.
    Closed his eyes. The man on the left shoots…
    He shoots…
    Lucas opened his eyes and said, “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”
    “I’m Letty,” said Letty. “You had a stroke, or something?”
    L UCAS SPENT a restless night working through it, realized he should have seen it a lot sooner. He’d sensed it, back at the shooting scene, but hadn’t been able to put his finger on the problem. But better late than never.
    Weather’s alarm went off at six o’clock. He usually slept right through it, but this time he rolled out of bed with her, shaved, gave her a good scrub in the shower, which might have grown interesting if they’d only had more time, but they were both in a hurry. He took the time to say, “Thanks for the tip on the autopsy.”
    “That’s something?” she asked.
    “I’m afraid it is.”

16
    L ucas began by calling Shaffer, taking a certain amount of satisfaction at the thought of blowing him out of bed. Shaffer answered the phone on the second ring and sounded unnaturally alert, saying, “Yeah? What’s up?”
    “You’ve been up for two hours and you’ve already done your yoga exercises and now you’re drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice, aren’t you?” Lucas asked.
    “Carrot juice,” Shaffer said. “Getting ready to run. You’re calling for juice advice?”
    “No. I need to meet with you at eight o’clock instead of nine, and out of sight. You drink coffee?”
    “You broke something?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Tell me where.”
    D EL WAS not quite as alert. “Jesus. Is the sun up?”
    “I need to talk to your brother-in-law, the real estate guy,” Lucas said. “I need to talk to him right now.”
    “We’re not an early-up family,” Del said.
    “Well, you’re up, so why shouldn’t your brother-in-law be up?” Lucas asked.
    “That’s a point. I’ll call him,” Del said.
    W HEN HE GOT off the phone, Lucas went to his study and got out a yellow pad and started making a list. When he finished, after some thought, the list had only three items.
    —Rivera choreography.
    —Sanderson apartment.
    —Insider information.
    He worked through it all again and was convinced. He wasn’t sure Shaffer would be.
    D EL’S BROTHER-IN-LAW called. His name was Dominic and he worked the east side of St. Paul. “Dom, I need an empty east side house, a little run-down, not occupied. I can get you a thousand dollars for three days, starting today. You got somebody?”
    “This for a sting?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Let me call around.”
    L UCAS AND S HAFFER met at an east side coffee shop. They got a couple of cups of something that looked and tasted like Folgers, and found a corner where they could talk.