Wicked Prey

sides, and she could see people working in front of cameras: MSNBC. A crowd was watching, and she threaded through it, past the fountain with the bronze girl, and a guy, thirty-something, geeky, wearing a McCain button, looked her over and said, “Hi there,” and she kept going, around the park and down Fourth Street, against the stream of people walking toward the Xcel Center, where the convention was being held, and back to the Radisson.
    And around again, and then off the loop, down St. Peter, to an open-air mall that ran between St. Peter and Wabasha, with people sitting outside, eating lunch, and watching the passersby; and she saw the wheelchair, at a bar called Juicy’s.
    Whitcomb was in it, talking to a man on a bench, and they were drinking beer. She watched for five minutes, staying back in the crowd, and never saw the girl.
    She was out there, somewhere.
    Would Letty be more likely to find her by walking the street, or by watching Whitcomb? Since the woman seemed to drive the car, she had to come back—but then she and Whitcomb might go somewhere else, and she had no way to stay with them. She thought it over, one eye on Whitcomb as she scanned the crowd, and decided that the best bet was to work along St. Peter Street, between the park at one end and the mall at the other, with occasional checks a block over on Wabasha.
    She began working the loop. How long would it take, anyway, an appointment with a guy? When she was a kid, her mom would come home with men sometimes, and if they didn’t stay over, they usually weren’t more than a couple of hours . . . and sometimes only an hour or so. But her mom wasn’t getting paid, so the guys probably felt like they ought to hang around for a while, and talk. Or whatever.
    Not with Whitcomb’s girl . . .
    She worked the crowded streets for an hour before she saw her, and when she did, she was a hundred yards away and not more than a hundred feet from the corner of the mall, where Whitcomb was drinking. Letty hurried after her, moving fast, but there was no chance: the woman turned the corner. Whitcomb was farther down the mall, and she took the corner carefully, so she didn’t blunder into them, if he’d moved—and threading through the crowd, saw him in the same place, saw the woman sit down next to him.
    She was there fifteen minutes, Letty watching from fifty or sixty yards away, back in the doorway of a sandwich place. She thought they might be arguing, that the woman might be crying. Then the woman stood, heavily, as though she were old, and she started walking back toward Letty. Letty thought the sadness came off her like a morning fog, a sadness that you could almost touch.
    * * *
    LETTY CAUGHT HER two hundred yards down the sidewalk. She called, “Hey! Girl!”
    Briar turned, her eyes uncertain. “Are you . . . Me?”
    “Yes.” Letty gave her a TV smile. “You’re Randy’s friend. We talked in a McDonald’s. I was with a couple of friends.”
    “Oh . . . I didn’t recognize you . . . here. What are you . . . ?”
    “I’m with a TV crew. I report on young people. So what’s up with you?”
    Briar’s eyes seemed to recede in her face: she was thinking about Randy, Letty thought, and what he might do about this conversation. She said quickly, “I won’t tell Randy.”
    The woman’s tongue flicked out: “Please.”
    “What’s your name?” Letty asked.
    “I shouldn’t talk to you. Do you want to get Randy? He’s right around the corner,” Briar said.
    “I know,” Letty said. “I was watching you, but I don’t want to see Randy, because Randy’s a violent asshole and he beats you with a stick. Doesn’t he?”
    She looked at Letty without saying anything, then past her, checking for Randy, then said, “Tiara.”
    “What?”
    “That’s my name. Tiara.”
    “What’s your real name?” Letty asked.
    “That is my real name . . .” she began, but when she saw Letty’s head shake, she said, after a couple more seconds, “Juliet. Briar.”
    “How are you, Juliet? I’m Letty. Did you know that? My name? Or just my dad’s name?”
    “You know?”
    “Sure I know. Look at Randy. He’s been trashed so many times that he’s living in a wheelchair. He’s not the brightest guy in the universe. Come on, I’ll buy you a Coke.”
    Briar frowned: “Are you really with a TV crew? You don’t act like it.” She looked around. “If you’re with TV, where’s your TV stuff?”
    “Down by Mears Park. Hang on.” Letty