Shadow Prey (39 page)

"But she'll make it?" Daniel said.

"Unless something weird happens," the surgeon nodded. "We'll keep her in intensive care overnight. If there aren't any problems, we'll have her sitting up and maybe walking around her bed in a couple of days. It'll take longer before she's feeling right, though. She's messed up."

"Aw, Jesus, that's good," said Lucas, turning to Daniel. "That's decent."

"Bad scars?" asked Daniel.

"There'll be some. With that kind of wound, we can't fool around. We had to get in to see what was going on. We'll have the entry wound from the slug, and then the surgical scars where I went in. In a couple or three years, the entry wound will be a white mark about the size and shape of a cashew on the lower curve of her breast. In five years, the surgical scars will be white lines maybe an eighth-inch across. She's olive-complected, so they'll show more than they would on a blonde, but she can live with them. They won't be disfiguring."

"When can we see her?"

The surgeon shook her head. "Not tonight. She won't be doing anything but sleeping. Tomorrow, maybe, if it's necessary."

"No sooner?"

"She's been shot," the surgeon said with asperity. "She doesn't need to talk. She needs to heal."

David Rothenburg came in at two o'clock in the morning on a cattle-car flight out of Newark, the only one he could get. Lucas met him at the airport. Daniel wanted to send Sloan, or go himself, but Lucas insisted. Rothenburg was wearing a rumpled blue seersucker suit and a wine-colored bow tie with a white shirt; his hair was messed up and he wore half-moon reading glasses down on his nose. Lucas had talked to the airline about the shooting, and Rothenburg was the first person out of the tunnel into the gate area. He had a black nylon carry-on bag in his left hand.

"David Rothenburg?" Lucas asked, stepping toward him.

"Yes. Are you..." They moved in a circle around each other.

"Lucas Davenport, Minneapolis Police."

"How is she?"

"Hurt, but she'll make it, if there aren't any complications."

"My God, I thought she was dying," Rothenburg said, sagging in relief. "They were so vague on the phone...."

"Nobody knew for a while. She's had an operation. They didn't know until they got inside how bad it was."

"But she'll be okay?"

"That's what they say. I've got a car...."

Rothenburg was two inches taller than Lucas but slender as a rope. He looked strong, like an ironman runner, long muscles without bulk. They walked stride for stride across the terminal and out to the parking ramp to the Porsche.

"You're the guy she bailed out of trouble. The hostage, when she shot that man," Rothenburg said.

"Yeah. We did some work together."

"Where were you tonight?" There was an edge to the question, and Lucas glanced at him.

"We split up. She went back to her hotel to read some stuff while I was out working my regular informant net. This guy we're looking for, Shadow Love, tracked her there."

"You know who did it?"

"Yes, we think so."

"Jesus Christ, in New York the guy'd be in jail."

Lucas looked directly across at Rothenburg and held the stare for a moment, then grunted, "Bullshit."

"What?" Rothenburg's anger was beginning to show.

"I said 'bullshit.' He fired one shot and got lost. He's got a safe house somewhere and he knows what he's doing. The New York cops wouldn't do any better than we're doing. Wouldn't do as good. We're better than they are."

"I don't see how you can say that, people are being shot down here."

"We have about one killing a week in Minneapolis and we catch all the killers. You have between five and eleven a night in New York and your cops hardly catch any of them. So don't give me any shit about New York. I'm too tired and too pissed to listen to it."

"It's my wife who's shot..." Rothenburg barked.

"And she was working with me and I liked her a lot, and I feel guilty about it, so stay off my fuckin' back," Lucas snarled.

There was a moment of silence; then Rothenburg sighed and settled further into his seat. "Sorry," he said after a moment. "I'm scared."

"No sweat," said Lucas. "I'll tell you something, if it makes you feel better. As of tonight, Shadow Love is a dead motherfucker."

Lucas left Rothenburg at the hospital and went back on the street. There were few places open; he found a bar in a yuppie shopping center, drank a scotch, then another, and left. The night was cold and he wondered where Shadow Love was. He had no way to find out, not without a break.

Chapter
25

Leo came in at three in the morning. "No sign of Clay, but his man's at home."

"Drake? You saw him?"

"Yeah. And he's got a girl with him."

"Blonde?" asked Sam.

"Yeah. Real small."

"Far out... real young?"

"Probably eight or ten years old. Took Drake's hand when they walked up to the door."

"Clay'11 be coming," Aaron said with certainty. "When you got his kind of twist, you don't get away from it." When he said 'twist,' he made a twisting motion with his fist.

Sam nodded. "Another night," he said. "Tomorrow night."

"Did you hear about the cop?" asked Aaron.

Leo took off his jacket and tossed it at the couch. "The woman? Yeah. It's Shadow."

"God damn, the fool will ruin us," Aaron said bitterly.

"One more night," said Leo. "One or two."

"Killing cops is bad medicine," Aaron said. He looked at his cousin. "If it's gonna happen with Clay, it's gotta be soon. We might start thinking about taking him at the hotel or on the street."

Sam shook his head. "The plan is right. Don't fuck with the plan. Clay's got a platoon of bodyguards with machine guns. They'd flat kill us on the street and Clay'd be a hero. If we can get him at Drake's, he'll be alone. And he won't be no hero."

"Tomorrow night," said Leo. "I'd bet on it."

Shadow Love hid in a condemned building six blocks out from the Loop. The building, once a small hotel, became a flophouse and finally was condemned for its lack of maintenance and the size of its rats. Norway rats: the fuckin' Scandinavians ran everything in the state, Shadow Love thought.

There were a few other men living in the building, but Shadow Love never really saw them. Just shambling figures darting between rooms, or moving furtively up and down the stairs. When you took a room, you closed the door and blocked it with a four-by-four from a pile of lumber on the first floor. You braced one end of the timber against the door, one end against the opposite wall. It wasn't foolproof, but it was pretty good.

The three-story structure had been built around a central atrium with a skylight at the top. When the men had to move their bowels-a rare event, most of them were winos-they simply hung over the atrium railing and let go. That kept the upper rooms reasonably tidy. Nobody stayed long on the bottom floors.

When Shadow Love moved in, he brought a heavy coat, a plastic air mattress, a cheap radio with earphones, and his gun. Groceries were slim: boxes of crackers, cookies, a can of Cheez Whiz, and a twelve-pack of Pepsi.

After the shooting, Shadow Love had run down the stairs, tried to stroll through the lobby, then hurried on to the Volvo. He drove it until he was sure he couldn't have been followed, and dumped it. He stopped once at a convenience store to buy food and then settled into the hideout.

There was nothing on the radio for almost two hours. Then a report that Detective Lillian Rothenburg had been shot. Not killed but shot. More than he'd hoped for. Maybe he got her....

Then, a half-hour later, word that she was on the operating table. And two hours after that, a prognosis: The doctors said she'd live.

Shadow Love cursed and pulled the coat around him. The nights were getting very cold. Despite the coat, he shivered.

The bitch was still alive.

Chapter
26

Lucas spent the next day working his net, staying in touch with the hospital by telephone. In the early afternoon, Lily woke up and spoke to David, who was sitting at her bedside, and later to Sloan. She could add little to what they knew.

Shadow Love, she said. She had never seen his face, but it felt right. He was middle-height, wiry. Dark. Ate sausage.

That said, she went back to sleep.

At nine, Lucas called a friend at the intensive care unit: he had been calling her hourly.

"He just left, said he was going to get some sleep," the friend told Lucas.

"Is she awake?"

"She comes and goes...."

"I'll be right there," he said.

Lily was wrapped in sheets and blankets, propped half upright on the bed. Her face was pale, the color of notebook paper. A breathing tube went to her nose. Two saline bags hung beside her bed, and a drip tube was patched into her arm below the elbow.

Lucas' friend, a nurse, said, "She woke up a while ago, and I told her you were coming, so she knows. Don't stay long, and be as quiet as you can."

Lucas nodded and tiptoed to Lily's bedside.

"Lily?"

After a moment, she turned her head, as if the sound of his voice had taken a few seconds to penetrate. Her eyes, when she opened them, were clear and calm. :

"Water?" she croaked. There was a bottle of water on the ! bedstand with a plastic straw. He held it to her mouth and she sucked once. "Damn breathing tube dries out my throat."

"You feel pretty bad?"

"Doesn't... hurt much. I feel like I'm... really sick. Like I had a terrible flu."

"You look okay," Lucas lied. Except for her eyes, she j looked terrible.

"Don't bullshit me, Davenport," she said with a small grin. "I know what I look like. Good for the diet, though."

"Jesus, it freaked me out." He couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Thanks for the rose."

"What?"

"The rose..." She turned her head away, then back and forth, as though trying to loosen up her neck muscle. "Very... romantic."

Lucas had no idea what she was talking about, and then she said, "I got through the first fifteen minutes... with David. I hurt so bad I wasn't thinking of you or anything, I was just happy to be here. And we were talking and when I thought of you, the first fifteen minutes were gone... and it was okay."

"Jesus, Lily, I feel so bad."

"Nothing you could do: but you be careful," she said in \ her rusty voice. Her eyelids drooped. "Are you getting anywhere?" j Lucas shook his head. "We've got a screen of people around Clay-I still think it's him. I just haven't figured out j how. We're watching the dumbwaiter, but that's not it."

"I don't know," she said. Her eyes closed and she took j two deep breaths. "I'm so damn sleepy all the time.... Can't think..."

And she was gone, sleeping, her face going slack. Lucas sat by her bed for five minutes, watching her face and the slow rise and fall of her chest. He was lucky, he thought, that he wasn't walking beside her coffin across another cemetery, just as with Larry....

Larry.

It came back in a flash, as real as the shotgun behind his ear. He'd been walking across the cemetery grass with Lily and Anderson, after leaving Rose Love's well-tended grave. Anderson was talking about the cost of grave maintenance and the perpetual-care contract he and his wife had bought....

And the question popped into his head: Who paid to take care of Rose Love's grave? Neither Shadow Love nor the Crows had enough money to endow a perpetual-care fund, so they must pay it annually or semiannually. But if they were on the road all the time, where would the bill be sent? Lucas stood, looked down at Lily's sleeping face, paced out of the ICU, past a patient who looked as though he were dying, and then back in, until he was standing by her bed again.

The Crows or Shadow Love, whoever paid for maintenance, might simply remember to write a check once or twice a year and mail it, without ever getting a bill. But that didn't feel right; there must be a bill. Maybe they had a postal box; but if they had their mail sent to a box, and didn't get back into town for a while, important messages might sit there for weeks. Lucas didn't know what the Crows had done, but he knew what he would do in their circumstances. He'd have a mail drop. He'd have the cemetery bill and other important stuff sent to an old, trustworthy friend. Somebody he could rely on to send the mail on to him. He half ran from the ICU to the nurses' station.

"I gotta have a phone," Lucas snapped at his friend. She stepped back and pointed at a desk phone. He picked it up and called Homicide. Anderson was just getting ready to leave.

"Harmon? I'm heading out to Riverwood Cemetery in a hurry. You get on the line, find out where Riverwood does its paperwork and call me. I've got a handset. If the office is closed, run down somebody who can open it up, somebody who does the bills. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"What have you got?" Anderson asked.

"Probably nothing," Lucas said. "But I've got just the smallest fuckin' hangnail of an idea...."