'If you're not going out to Bear Butte, you ought to come over to Barbara's,' Sam told Shadow Love. 'She talks like you were her kid.'
Shadow Love nodded. 'Yeah. I saw her before I went to L.A. I don't know… we'll be a danger to her.'
'She knows that,' Aaron said. 'We've been on the run before. She says we'll be welcome, no matter what.'
'She didn't know exactly what you were planning to do…'
'She'll take us,' said Sam.
'Not a bad piece of ass either,' Aaron said with a grin.
Sam snorted and even blushed. He and Barbara had been lovers. Nothing had been said when he talked to her on the telephone a month before, but he knew it would start again. He looked forward to it. 'Jealousy. It's an ugly sight,' he said into his soup.
Shadow Love stepped to the couch, picked up the cardboard box and opened it. Inside was a flat black assault rifle. He took it out of the box. 'M-15,' he said. He pointed it out the window at a streetlight.
'Where'd you get it? What's it for?' asked Sam.
'I got it on the street. It's for the cop, maybe. Or Hart.'
Aaron had stepped toward the stove, reaching for the teapot. He stopped in mid-stride and whirled toward his son. 'No. Not Hart. You don't kill the people,' he said furiously.
Shadow Love looked at him with a cold glint in his eye. 'I do what I think best. You and Sam disagree all the time, but you still act.'
'We always agree before we do anything,' said Aaron.
'That's a luxury you won't have much longer. You can argue. You can sit and think. You can fuck up. I'll try to buy you some time.'
'We don't want that,' Aaron said furiously.
Shadow Love shook his head, aimed out the window again and squeezed the trigger. The click hung in the air between them.
CHAPTER 14
Hart worked through an Indian-dominated housing project while Sloan did background on John Liss. Lucas, fighting a blinding hangover, made the rounds of barbershops, bars, fast-food joints and rooming houses.
A little after noon, Lucas called the dispatcher to check on Lily and was told that she was still meeting with the county attorney. He stopped at an Arby's, ordered a roast beef sandwich and carried it outside. He was leaning on his car when his handset squawked and the shotgun touched him behind the ear again. He almost dropped the sandwich. He stood paralyzed, and the cold metal pressed against his head and Hood's apartment rose up in front of his eyes, the circle of squad cars, the radios squawking… A few seconds later, it all faded and Lucas staggered from the car and half fell onto a mushroom-shaped concrete stool. He sat sweating for a few moments, then got up and walked shakily to the car and started off again.
A half-hour later, the dispatcher gave him a number to call. Lily's hotel. Lucas called from a street booth across from a leather shop, staring at a Day-Glo-green sign advertising hand-tooled belts.
'Lunch?' Lucas asked, when Lily said hello.
'I can't,' she said. There was a second's silence, and then she said, 'I'm going home.'
Lucas considered it, staring at the Day-Glo sign, then down at the telephone receiver in his hand. After a few seconds he said, 'I thought you might stay over, see what happens.'
'I thought about it, but then… I finished with the county attorney and called to see when I could get a flight out. I was thinking tonight, but they said they could get me on a flight at one-thirty. I've got a cab coming downstairs…'
'I could come…'
'No, don't,' she said quickly. 'I'd really prefer that you didn't.'
'Jesus, Lily…'
'I'm sorry…' she said. There was a moment's silence before she finished the sentence. 'I hope you're okay. And I'll see you. Maybe. You know, someday.'
'Okay,' he said.
'So. Bye.'
'Bye.'
She hung up and Lucas stood leaning against the booth. 'God damn it,' he said aloud.
Two young girls were passing, carrying schoolbooks. They heard him, glanced his way and hurried on. Lucas walked slowly back to his car, confused, unsure whether he was feeling disappointment or relief. He spent another hour touring Lake Street bars, apartment buildings and stores, looking for a toehold, an edge, a whisper, anything. He came up dry; and although he was given more names, more people to check, his heart wasn't in it. He looked at his watch. Ten after two. She'd be off the ground, on her way to New York. Lily.
Daniel was in his office. He had turned the overhead fluorescent lights off and sat in a pool of yellow light cast by an old-fashioned goosenecked desk lamp. Larry Hart was sitting in the chair in front of his desk, Sloan, Lester and An-derson off to the side. Lucas took the last chair. 'Nothing?' asked Daniel.
'Not a thing,' Hart said. Lucas shook his head as he sat down.
'We've been getting some stuff about Liss. He worked for a metal fabrication plant out in Golden Valley. They said he was all right, but weird, you know, about Indian stuff.'
'Big help,' Anderson said.
Sloan shrugged. 'I got some names of his friends, I can feed them to you, maybe the computer'll have something.'
'Family?' asked Lucas.
'Wife and kid. Wife works a couple of jobs. She's a checkout at Target and works at a Holiday store at night, part-time. And they got a kid. Harold Richard, aka Harry Dick, seventeen. He's trouble, a doper. He's been downtown a half-dozen times, minor theft, possession of pot, possession of crack. Small stuff.'
'That's it?' asked Daniel.
'Sorry,' Sloan apologized. 'We're hitting it as hard as we can.'
'What about Liss himself? Are they getting anything out of him?'
Anderson shook his head. 'Nope. About fifteen minutes after Liss went down, Len Meadows flew in from Chicago in his private jet. The first thing he did was bar any cops from talking to his client.'
'Fifteen minutes? Did Meadows know in advance?' Lucas asked.
'It wasn't really fifteen minutes-' Sloan started.
Hart interrupted. 'The Fire Creek Reservation office is in Brookings. When they heard about the shooting, they got scared about what might happen. They called Meadows' office. He'd done some pro bono criminal work for them. So then Meadows had his people call around, working with the information they were getting off the TV. They found out who Liss' old lady was. Meadows called her-Louise, that's her name-and offered his services. She said yes, so he flew out to Brookings. When Liss woke up after the docs got finished with him, Meadows went in and talked to him. That was it. No more cops.'
'Damn it,' Lucas said, chewing his lip. 'Meadows is pretty good.'
'He's a grandstanding asshole,' said Lester.
'Frank, you're an asshole, but nobody ever said you weren't pretty good,' said Daniel.
'I did once,' Sloan said. 'He made me go out and investigate supermarket thefts.'
Lester grinned. 'And I'd do it again,' he said.
'The problem with Meadows is, he won't deal,' Lucas said. 'He's an ideologue. He prefers the crucifix to the plea bargain.'
They all chewed it over for a minute, then Daniel said, 'Our Indian friends are putting out press releases now.'
'Say what?' asked Hart.
'We got a press release. Or rather, the media got press releases. All of them-newspapers, TV stations, WCCO
