Shadow Prey

CHAPTER 17

Two pickups and a car with a Sioux Falls television logo were angle-parked outside the all-night coffee shop. A single man in a cowboy hat sat in a window booth, hunched over a cup of coffee and a grilled-cheese sandwich. Lucas hesitated outside the window, looking in, then followed Lily through the door.

"Checking for Jennifer?" she asked with a small smile.

Lucas blushed. "Well, it'd be better if she weren't…"

"Sure." He followed her down the row of booths, watching her hips. She'd changed from slacks to a dress and low heels. She still carried the shoulder bag with the.45.

The waitress, a tired young woman with vagrant strands of black hair dangling in her face, took their order of cheeseburgers and coffee and slouched away.

"What do you think about this Crows business?" Lily asked while they waited for the food.

"I don't know. Larry sounded weird. And shit, I was talking to this other guy, this Shadow Love. I knew at the time there was something not right about him. He… vibrated, you know?"

"Fruitcake?"

"There was something wrong. I don't know." The coffee came, scalding hot, oily.

There was nothing like the Minneapolis Indian community in New York, Lily said. Indians were there, all right, but weren't as visible. "They look kind of… mysterious," she said. "You see them on the street, on the corners. They're not threatening, not hostile. They just seem to watch…"

Lucas nodded. "Sometimes they're like the biggest up-country Scandinavian redneck shitkickers in the world. They bang around in old pickups and work in the lumber business or ranching. Then other times you'll be out fuckin' around somewhere and you'll come across a bunch of Indians doing a ceremony. It looks like a tourist thing, but it's not. It's real…"

They talked for an hour. Lucas at one point decided he was babbling. On the way back to the motel, in the car, they spoke almost not at all. Lucas parked behind the motel and locked the car.

"Think they'll know anything?" she asked as they walked down the hall toward their rooms.

"Maybe. We can call."

"Come on in. We can call from my room." She pushed the door open and Lucas followed her inside. She gestured at the phone, and he sat on the bed, picked up the receiver and dialed. Daniel answered on the first ring.

"Chief: Lucas. What happened?"

"We went in, but we missed them," Daniel said. "They're the right guys, though. There were a couple of press releases balled up and tossed in a garbage bag under the sink and the typewriter's right…"

"They left the typewriter?"

"Yeah. Sloan's down there, with Del, and they say it's kind of odd. They left a lot of junk behind, but the personal stuff is gone. Sloan thinks they blew out of the place in a hurry-maybe when they heard that Liss wasn't dead. Figured he might talk."

"Are you talking to the neighbors?"

"Yeah. Nobody saw them much. They are two old Indians, though. And they left prints all over the place, the FBI's running them now. And somebody said they drove a truck, and that's still parked out front…"

"Jesus. Maybe you ought to shut down the scene and watch it, maybe they'll be back…"

"We're doing that, but Del doesn't think it'll work. He says word'll be up and down the street in an hour, about the raid."

"That's probably right," Lucas said. "Damn."

"We'll talk to you tomorrow-we ought to have everything figured out by then. We'll meet at one o'clock, if you can make it."

"We'll be there," Lucas said. He hung up and turned to Lily, shaking his head. "Missed them."

"But they're the right guys?"

"Yeah, they left some stuff behind. They got a definite ID."

"God damn it," Lily said irritably. She dropped her head and reached back with one hand and rubbed her neck. She was less than a foot away and Lucas could smell the elusive scent she'd worn the first day he'd met her.

"How much longer are we going to fool around?" he asked quietly.

"I'm all done," she said.

"Say what? You're all done?"

"Yeah." She stood and stepped across the room. Lucas started after her, but she reached the lights, snapped them off and then stepped back into the dark, her arms crossed in front of her breasts.

"I'm really scared," she said.

"Jesus." He wrapped her tightly with his left arm, caught the back of her neck in his right hand and pulled her face to his. The kiss locked them together, swaying, for ten seconds; then she pulled her chin back, gasping, and they stumbled sideways together and fell on the bed.

"Lucas, dammit, give me a minute in the shower…"

"Fuck the shower," he said. His voice was coarse, fevered. He kissed her again, his body pressing her into the bed, one hand tugging at the buttons that held the top of her dress together.

"Jesus, let me…"

"I got it." A button popped and his hand was on her warm skin, her stomach, then around behind, unlatching her brassiere. Lily began to moan, trying to catch his lips. They rolled across the bed, she fumbling with his belt, he with his hand now beneath her dress, pulling at her underpants.

"My God, a garter belt, what's it made out of, steel mesh? I can't…"

"Slow down, slow down…"

"No."

He got the garter belt off one leg, though it was still twisted around her ankle, and then her underpants were off one leg, and his hands were on her. Finally he entered her and she nearly screamed with the intensity of the feeling… and sometime later, she thought, she did scream.

"Christ, I wish I still smoked," he said. He'd turned on a bedside lamp and was sitting up, still mostly dressed. She was gasping for air. Like a carp, she thought. She'd never seen one, but had read in good books about carp gasping for air on riverbanks. He looked down at her. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. My God…"

"Can I… let me take some of this stuff…" After the violence of the first episode, he was suddenly tender, moving her body, lifting her, stripping off her remaining clothing. She felt almost like a child, until he kissed her on the front of her thigh, just where it joined her hip, and the fire ran through her belly again and she gasped. Lucas was on her again and the bedside lamp seemed to grow dimmer. Then again, after a while, she thought, she may have screamed again.

"Did I scream?" she blurted. She stood facing the shower head, the water beating off her breasts. Lucas stood behind her. She could feel him pressing against her buttocks, his soapy hand on her stomach.

"I don't know. I thought it was me," he said.

She giggled. "What are you doing?"

"Just washing."

"I think you already washed there." "A little more couldn't hurt."

She closed her eyes and leaned back against him, his soapy hand moving, and it started once again…