Wicked Prey

dragging Shafer under our noses? I mean, I guess the big question is, what’re they up to? Something about the convention? Why haven’t they gotten out of town? We’re wondering, are they pointing at McCain’s big night? Is there something in that?”
    The lead agent nodded, and turned to his men: “Okay, you’ve heard it. We need to talk to the presidential details, we need to beef up the protection even more than it is. We need to work out new travel routes—we need to find new angles on everything. I want the goddamn X Center sterile. Sterile . McCain’s here in two days, Palin will be here . . .”
    “It’s not Palin,” Lucas said. “They were in town, all set to go, before she was even picked. If it’s anybody, it’s McCain—but we might be missing something completely obvious. What worries me most is that we have some ideas about Cohn, but we really don’t know him. What if it’s political?”
    “You mean . . . what if they really make a run at McCain?”
    “Yeah. Is that too weird?” Lucas asked.
    “Nothing’s too weird. You’ve got two dead cops.” The agent brushed his hand through his neatly trimmed silver hair. “Man: this is serious. We need more guys. If they planned this out way ahead of time . . .”
    Another agent said, “We got two days to figure it out.”
    * * *
    DEL GAVE UP on the interrogation and gave one of the Secret Service guys a shot at it. “We can hold him, but there’s not much—he had no idea about those .50-cal shells up on the hill. I got Nancy to run a quick comparo on the shells, and she says they came from the same gun, the extractor marks are right there. He says that when he was sighting the gun in, he always collected all his brass and keeps it in the back of the truck, in an army ammo can. I called Dick out at the motel, he looked in the can and says there were fourteen loose used shells, and Shafer says there should be twenty. He thinks this chick must have stolen them.”
    “Doesn’t he keep his truck locked?” Lucas asked.
    “Yeah, but with somebody like Shafer, dealing with somebody like this what’s-her-name . . .”
    “Elena Diaz.”
    “Yeah. I mean, she got the key, somewhere along the way,” Del said. “That’s all we could come up with.”
    “You’re okay with that story?”
    “Yup. Lucas—this kid is no planner. He’s gonna wind up eating out of garbage cans, if he doesn’t wind up facedown dead before that,” Del said. “He’s being set up. I keep thinking about that Kennedy assassination movie, Lee Harvey Oswald. Some people think he was set up.”
    “He wasn’t; he did it.”
    “The point is, that idea could be floating around in some nutcake’s head,” Del said. “Like Cohn’s. Shoot McCain, shoot somebody, and blame Shafer. I mean, Justice is defenseless. He’s a goof.”
    * * *
    WHEN LUCAS GOT HOME, the house was asleep—Weather always went to bed early on nights before she was operating, and she operated on most days. The baby and the housekeeper went to bed almost as early. But as he turned in the drive, he saw a glow from under the blind in Letty’s room. A night owl like Lucas, she was sneaking a read.
    Lucas went inside, checked all the doors, took his shoes off before he tiptoed upstairs, left his shoes on his bedroom floor, listened to Weather’s even breathing for a couple of seconds, then tiptoed down to Letty’s door and tapped a couple of times.
    “Yes. Come in,” she said.
    She was finishing To Kill a Mockingbird in the light of a bedside lamp. He asked, “You almost done?”
    “Almost; but I can sleep in tomorrow. I’m going back downtown with Jen.”
    “Your mom says you’re getting some serious airtime,” Lucas said. “I wish I’d been here to see it.”
    “Ah—it’s kid stuff. They won’t let me get near the better stories,” Letty said. “Too young.”
    “Just . . . be patient.” He perched on the end of the bed. “Beverly called this morning, before I caught the plane. I was going to call and tell you, but I got really busy. Anyway, we’re set for Monday.”
    “Monday.”
    “Yup. We go see the judge on Monday afternoon, three-thirty. The last decision you’ve got to make is what to do about your name. You can be Letty Jean West, or Letty Jean West Davenport, or Letty Jean Davenport, or Letty West Davenport—however you want to do it.”
    “Huh.” She made a moue. “The thing is, I never knew my father, hardly. He wasn’t really my father, he ditched us, but