John Sandford - Shadow Prey

"What's that?" Sloan asked.

"The New York cops held back the part about the stone knife," Daniel said. "They told the media that Andretti had been stabbed, but nothing about the knife. So this motel owner asked the Jersey cops, 'Did he stab him with that big fucking stone knife?' The cops say, 'What?' And this motel owner, he says his Indian wore a stone knife around his neck, on a leather thong. He saw him at the Coke machine, wearing an undershirt with the knife hanging down."

"So we know for sure," Sloan said.

"Yeah. And he seems to be coming this way." Daniel leaned back in his chair, put his hands on his stomach and twiddled his thumbs.

Lucas pulled his lip, thinking about it. After a moment of silence, he looked up at the chief. "This guy have braids?"

"The killer? Didn't say anything about braids…" He hunted around his desktop for a moment, picked up a piece of computer printout, read it and said, "Nope. Hair down over the tops of his ears and just over his shirt collar. Long-ish, but not long enough for braids."

"Shit."

"Why?"

"Because the guy who did Cuervo had braids."

The others glanced at each other and Daniel said, "He could have cut it."

"I said the same thing about Bluebird, when we took him down," Lucas said.

"Oh, boy," Lester rasped, rubbing the back of his neck. He was the department's front man on cases that drew media attention. "That'd make three. If there are two, the media's gonna go nuts. If there's three… I've been burned before, I don't need this shit."

Sloan grinned at him. "It's gonna be bad, Frank," he said, teasing. "This guy sounds like big headlines. When the networks and the big papers get a whiff of conspiracy, they'll be on you like white on rice. Especially with the part about the stone knives. They'll love the stone knives."

"The local papers already figured it out. Five minutes after the news came across on the Indian angle, we were getting calls on Bluebird. StarTribune, Pioneer Press, all the stations. AP's got it on the wire," said Anderson.

"Like flies on a dead cat," Sloan said to Lester.

"So we're setting up a team, just like we did with the Maddog. I'll announce it at a press conference tomorrow morning," said Daniel. "Frank will run the out-front investigation and handle the press on a daily basis. Harmon will get the database going again. Just like with the Maddog. Every goddamn scrap of information, okay? Notebooks for everybody."

"I'll set it up tonight," Anderson said. "I'll get somebody to duplicate copies of the Bluebird mug shot."

"Good. Get me a bunch for the press conference." Daniel turned to Sloan. "I want you to backtrack everybody connected with Bluebird. He's our hold on this thing. If we get an ID on the New York killer, I want you to track down everybody who knew him. You'll be pretty much independent, but you report to Anderson every day, every move. Everything you get goes into the database."

"Sure," Sloan nodded.

"Lucas, you're on your own, just like with the Maddog," Daniel said. "Our contacts with the Indian community are fuckin' terrible. You're the only guy who has any."

"Not many," said Lucas.

"They're all we got," said Daniel.

"What about bringing in Larry Hart? We've used him before…"

"Good." Daniel snapped his fingers and pointed at Lester. "Call Welfare tomorrow and ask them if we can detach Hart as a resource guy. We'll pick up his salary."

"What is he?" asked Sloan. "Chippewa?"

"Sioux," said Lucas.

"He's strange, is what he is," said Anderson. "He's got some genealogical stuff stored away in the city computers. The systems guys would shit if they knew about it.": Lucas shrugged. "He's an okay guy."; "So let's get him," said Daniel. He stood up and paced slowly away from his desk, his hands in his pants pockets. "What else?"

Bluebird's funeral would be monitored. Intelligence f would attempt to identify everyone who attended and run histories on them. Sloan would build a list of friends and relatives who might have known about Bluebird's activities. They would be interviewed by selected Narcotics and Intelligence detectives. Anderson would press the Jersey cops for any available details on the killer's appearance and his car and run them against known Indian felons from Minnesota,! Wisconsin, Nebraska and the Dakotas.

"It'll be a fuckin' circus, starting bright and early tomorrow morning," said Daniel. "And I'll tell you what: When this New York guy gets here, I want us on top of this thing. I want us to look good, not like a bunch of rube assholes."

Anderson cleared his throat. "I don't think it's a guy, chief. I think it's a woman," he said.

Sloan and Lucas glanced at each other. "What are you talking about?" asked Sloan.

"We told you, didn't we? No? The goddamn Andretti family is putting the screws on the New York cops. They i want to send somebody out here to observe our investigation," said Daniel. He turned to Anderson. "You say it's a woman?"

"Yeah. That's what I understood. Unless they got male cops named Lillian. She's a lieutenant."

"Huh," said Daniel. He stroked his chin, as though grooming a goatee. "Whoever it is, I can guarantee she's heavy-duty."

"Where'll we put her?" asked Lester.

"Let her work with Sloan," Daniel said. "That'll give her some time on the street. Give her the feeling she's doing something."

He looked around the room. "Anything else? No? Let's do it."

The barbershop had one chair, a turn-of-the-century model with a cracked black leather seat. A mirror was mounted on the wall behind the chair. Below the mirror, on a shelf, stood a line of bottles with luminescent yellow lotions and ruby-red toilet waters. Sunlight played through them like a visual pipe organ.

When Lucas walked in, William Dooley was pushing a flat broom around the floor, herding snips of black hair into a pile on the flaking brown linoleum.

"Officer Davenport," Dooley said gravely. Dooley was old and very thin. His temples looked papery, like eggshells.

"Mr. Dooley." Lucas nodded, matching the old man's gravity. He climbed into the chair. Dooley moved behind him, tucked a slippery nylon bib into his collar and stood back.

"Just a little around the ears?" he asked. Lucas didn't need a haircut.

"Around the ears and the back of the neck, Mr. Dooley," Lucas said. The slanting October sunlight dappled the linoleum below his feet. A sugar wasp bounced against the dusty window.

"Bad business about that Bluebird," Lucas said after a bit.

Dooley's snipping scissors had been going chip-chip-chip. They paused just above Lucas' ear, then resumed. "Bad business," he agreed.

He snipped for another few seconds before Lucas asked, "Did you know him?"

"Nope," Dooley said promptly. After another few snips, he added, "Knew his daddy, though. Back in the war. We was in the Pacific together. Not the same unit, but I seen him from time to time."

"Did Bluebird have any people besides his wife and kids?"

"Huh." Dooley stopped to think. He was halfbreed Sioux, with an Indian father and a Swedish mother. "He might have an aunt or an uncle or two out at Rosebud. That's where they'd be, if there are any left. His ma died in the early fifties and his old man went four or five years back, must have been."

Dooley stared sightlessly through the sunny window. "No, by God," he said in a creaking voice after a minute. "His old man died in the summer of 'seventy-eight, right between those two bad winters. Twelve years ago. Time passes, don't it?"

"It does," Lucas said.

"You want to know something about being an Indian, Officer Davenport?" Dooley asked. He'd stopped cutting Lucas' hair.

"Everything helps."

"Well, when Bluebird died-the old man-I went off to his funeral, out to the res. He was a Catholic, you know? They buried him in a Catholic cemetery. So I went up to the cemetery with the crowd from the funeral and they put him in the ground, and everybody was standing around. Now most of the graves were all together, but I noticed that there was another bunch off in a corner by themselves. I asked a fellow there, I said, 'What's them graves over there?' You know what they were?"