Wicked Prey

official daughter of the only husband and wife who’d ever behaved like parents with her . . .
    Letty had been born in the bleakest part of northwest Minnesota, the daughter of an alcoholic mother; her father took off when she was a child, and she hadn’t seen him since. They’d lived in an old farmhouse outside a small country town, so she hadn’t even had the benefit of close-by neighbors. They had no satellite TV, so there’d been only two weak over-the-air TV channels, and she’d grown up as a county library patron, and a reader.
    When she got into school, she’d encountered a man who made his living wandering through the local marshlands in the late fall and winter, trapping fur. He’d taught her how to do it—not much to learn, you could get most of it in a few days of observation—and she’d become a trapper, taking muskrats out of the marshes and raccoons out of the county landfill. That had gone on for most of her elementary school days; she’d taught herself to drive at the same time, and how to avoid the local highway patrolmen. The money from the trapping had become the family’s main source of income.
    A tough kid.
    A series of murders had torn up her life: had resulted in her mother’s death, and had brought Lucas Davenport and Del Capslock into town. She and Lucas had hit it off almost immediately, and he’d brought her home as his legal ward.
    Cinderella.
    Her job with Channel Three was more than decorative. Lucas’s cop pals kept her well-stocked with tips, and since they were always reported by other producers and reporters, her favored reporters did very well with her.
    A woman with a baby, sitting outside a tiny orange nylon tent, smiled at her and Letty smiled back and said, “Hello, there.”
    “You can’t really be a TV person,” the woman said, looking at the credential tags around Letty’s neck.
    “But I am,” Letty said happily.
    Across the park, in the street, a white van cruised by, the side door open, and a man in a wheelchair looking out at the park—and at her , Letty thought. Just a spark, an impression, their eyes clicking, and then he was gone.
    “How old are you?” the woman asked.
    “Almost fifteen.”
    “And you work for a TV station?” She was both amused and skeptical.
    “I’ve got an in,” Letty said. “See, my dad had a baby with this woman . . .”
    * * *
     
    LUCAS WORE faded jeans and a khaki military-style shirt rolled up to the elbows. He had a plastic credentials case strung around his neck like a baggage tag, one side with a yellow Session 1 Limited Access tag, the other side with a BCA identification card. Though he was still self-conscious about the camera resting against his chest, and the second one hanging off his shoulder, and the beat-up Domke bag, nobody was giving him a second look. He took a couple of crowd shots, trying to look bored.
    And he was bored. The convention was the biggest single cop-action in the Twin Cities’ history, and he was out of it, part of the crowd, and the crowd wasn’t doing much. Letty was supposed to be around here somewhere . . .
    * * *
    “HEY, DAD! DAD!”
    Letty was there, under a spreading elm tree, waving. He smiled and headed over. She had a couple of credentials hung on an elastic string around her neck, like his. She was standing next to an orange nylon tent, where a young woman in a tired blue blouse and blue-jean shorts sat on a blanket next to a baby in a papoose sling.
    The woman went straight for his liver: “Are you a cop?”
    He tried for a wry smile: “Do I look like a cop?”
    “Yup.” She wrinkled her nose, being funny about it, but the question was serious. Letty broke it up with, “Did you see John and Jeff? They were going to give me a ride over to the convention center.”
    “What are they doing here?” Lucas asked.
    “Just looking around. They got a car . . .”
    “Letty . . .”
    “I know, I know. They’re okay,” she said.
    “I know exactly what they’re like, because they’re exactly like I was,” Lucas said.
    “Dad, I can handle them, all right?” Fists on her hips.
    “All right. Be careful,” he said. He looked around. “Wasn’t a march supposed to go off five minutes ago? I need some street stuff.”
    The woman with the baby now had bought the cameras. She said, “Nothing is on time. These people couldn’t organize a phone call. My husband said he’d be back in five minutes and he’s been gone two hours.”
    “Yeah? He’s a marcher?” Lucas