"Sweet bleedin' Jesus," he said aloud, his face suddenly ashen.
His partner, who was on his knees, looking at the side of Hart's head, looked up when he heard the tone of his voice. "What?"
"This is Larry Hart, the guy working with the special squad on the Indian killings."
His partner stood up and said, "Gimme the license." His voice was tight, choked. He took the license and carefully pinched a lock of Hart's hair and tugged on it, rolling the dead man's face just slightly. He compared it to the photo on the license.
"Aw, fuck," he said. "It's him."
Lily picked up the bedside phone and said hello. It was Danieclass="underline" "Lily, is Lucas there?"
"Lucas?" she said.
"Lily, don't dog me around, okay? We got big fuckin' trouble."
"Just a minute."
Lucas was in the shower. She pulled him out, and wet as a duck dog, he took the phone. "Daniel," Lily told him quietly.
"Yeah?" Lucas said.
"Larry Hart's been hit," Daniel said, his voice shaky. "He's dead. Throat cut."
"Sonofabitch," Lucas groaned.
"What?" Lily stood up. She was wearing a slip and nylons, and she watched Lucas while she groped for her dress.
"When did it happen?" he asked. As an aside to Lily he said, "Hart's been killed."
"We don't know shit," Daniel said. "A couple of kids found him on the hill above the river by the Franklin Avenue bridge, about an hour ago. He'd been dead for a while. The last time anybody talked to him was about noon. Sloan saw him down on Lake. Sloan's down there now, trying to backtrack him."
"All right, I'll get down there," Lucas said.
"Lucas, this isn't what I thought was coming. This is something else. I still think we're going to get hit big. Hart's personal and it makes me feel like shit, but something else is coming." Daniel had started quietly, but by the time he finished, his voice was rising and the words were tumbling out in anger.
"I hear you," Lucas said.
"Find it, God damn it. Stop it," Daniel roared.
In the car on the way down, Lily said, "Why did they call my room, looking for you?"
Lucas accelerated through a red light, then turned and looked at her in the dark. "Daniel knows. He probably knew five minutes after we got in bed. I told you he was smart; but he'll keep his mouth shut."
Sloan was standing at the edge of the hill, his hands in his coat pockets. A half-block away, three television trucks sat at the side of the street, their engines running, their microwave dishes pointed at the sky. A reporter and photographer from the StarTribune were sitting on the hood of their car, talking to a TV cameraman.
"Ain't this the shits?" Sloan asked when Lucas and Lily came up.
"Yeah." Lucas nodded at the reporters. "Have we put anything out yet? To the newsies?"
"Nothing, yet," Sloan said. "Daniel's calling a press conference. He's decided to release the names, by the way-the Crows and Shadow Love. He's going to ask for help and come down hard on the idea that the Crows are killing other Indians."
"People liked Hart," Lucas said.
"That's what they say," Sloan agreed.
Down the hill, under portable lights, the assistant medical examiners were lifting Hart's body onto a stretcher. "Did anybody see anything at all?" Lucas asked.
"Yeah. A woman back up the hill," Sloan said. "She's on her way downtown now, to look at Shadow Love's pictures. She saw a couple of guys walk over the hill, and then later she saw one of them getting in a car. Younger guy, skinny, wearing a fatigue jacket."
"Shadow Love," said Lucas.
"Could be. A woman was driving the car. She was real short. She could barely see over the steering wheel. She had dark hair pulled back in a bun."
"What about the car?"
"Older. No make or model. The witness never looked at the license number. She said one of the back corner windows-you know, one of those little triangle things?-had been knocked out and there was a piece of box cardboard in it. That's about it. It was green. Pale green."
"You saw Larry earlier, right?"
"Yeah. Just before noon. He said he was heading back down Lake. He was planning to hit the bars up at the top of the street. I backtracked him as far as the Nub Inn. The bartender who was on duty earlier in the day had already gone home, but I talked to him on the phone and he said Hart got a call there. He said he seemed surprised, like he couldn't figure out how anybody would know he was there. Anyway, he took the call and a couple of minutes later went running out of the place."
"Setup," said Lily.
"That's what I figure," Sloan said. "We've got a guy over, talking to the bartender, but I don't think he'll have much more to say."
"Christ, what a mess," Lucas said, running his fingers through his hair.
"My wife is going to be excreting bricks when she finds out one of our people got hit," Sloan said.
"I never heard of it before, not around here," Lucas said, shaking his head. He glanced at Lily. "You get this kind of stuff?"
"Every once in a while. Some dealers hit a cop a couple years ago, just to show they could do it."
"What happened?"
"The guys that did it… they're not with us anymore."
"Ah." Lucas nodded.
The bespectacled Homicide cop made his way up the hill, pushing his knees down with his hands as he climbed the last few feet. He was breathing heavily when he got to the top.
"How's it going, Jim?" Lucas asked.
"Not so good. Not a goddamned thing down there."
"No shell?"
"Nope. Not so far. We've worked it over pretty good. I think it was all the knife. Hell of a way to go."
"Tracks?"
"Can't find any," the Homicide cop said. "Too grassy. That long stuff is like walking on sponges. They must have come off the street, right onto it… You know, Hart had his back to the guy, the cutter. No struggle. Nothing. I wonder if it was somebody he trusted?"
"Probably held him at gunpoint, like Hood did with An-dretti," Lily said.
"Yeah, there's that," the cop said. He looked down the steep embankment. "But you'd think that he'd have tried to run or jump. One big jump down that hill, he'd be ten or fifteen feet from the shooter… but there was no sign of a jump. No place where his feet dug in. No grass stains on his pants. Nothing."
"He gave up," Lily said, looking at Lucas.
A crowd had gathered behind the reporters. Several of the onlookers were Indian, and Lily decided to mingle, hoping that someone else had seen something. While she worked the crowd, Lucas went down the block to a pay phone and called TV3. A receptionist hunted down Jennifer. "A tip," Lucas said when she came on the line.
"Is there a price?"
"Yeah. We'll get to that later."
"So what's the tip?"
"You've got some guys out by the river, working a homicide?"
"Yes. Jensen and…"
"It's Larry Hart. The Indian expert from Welfare that we brought in to help track these assassins."
"Holy shit," she said. Her voice was hushed. "Who else knows?"
"Nobody, at the moment. Daniel's calling a press conference, probably in a half-hour or so…"
"He already did, we've got people on the way."
"If you go on the air ahead of time, you've got to cover me. Don't give it to that fuckin' Kennedy, because everybody knows you guys lay off stories on each other."
"Okay, okay," she said, a touch of intensity in her voice. "What else? Cut?"
"Yeah. Just like the others. Throat cut, bled to death."
"When?"
"We don't know. This afternoon. Early afternoon, probably. He was found by a couple of kids who were playing along the hill."
"Okay. What else? Was he breaking the case? Was he close?"