Silent Prey

Cities-97. Little Feat was playing hard hot boogie, “Shake Me Up,” the perfect sound to accompany a gross violation of the speed limit.
    The interstate overpass flicked past and the traffic got thicker. A hundred and eighteen. Hundred and nineteen. A stoplight he’d forgotten about, looming suddenly, with a blue sedan edging into a right-on-red turn. Lucas went left, right, left, heel-and-toe, blowing past the sedan; and past a station wagon, for a split second catching at the periphery of his vision the surprised and frightened face of a blond matron with a car full of blond kids.
    The image fixed in his mind. Scared. He sighed and eased off the gas pedal, coasting. Dropped through a hundred, ninety, eighty. Across the northern suburbs ofSt. Paul, onto the exit to Highway 280. When he’d been a cop, he’d always been sneaking off to the lake. Now that he wasn’t, now that he had time sitting on him like an endless pile of computer printout, he found the solace of the lake less compelling . . . .
    The day was warm, sunshine dappling the roadway, playing games with cloud-shadows on the glass towers of Minneapolis to the west. And then the cop car.
    He caught it in the rearview mirror, nosing out of Broadway. No siren. His eyes dropped to the speedometer again. Sixty. The limit was fifty-five, so sixty should be fine. Still, cops picked on Porsches. He eased off a bit more. The cop car closed until it was on his bumper, and in the rearview mirror he could see the cop talking into his microphone: running the Porsche’s tags. Then the light bar came up and the cop tapped his siren.
    Lucas groaned and rolled to the side, the cop fifteen feet off his bumper. He recognized him, a St. Paul cop, once worked with the Southwest Team. He used to come into the deli near Lucas’ house. What was his name? Lucas dug through his memory. Kelly . . . Larsen? Larsen was out of the car, heavy face, sunglasses, empty-handed. No ticket, then. And he was jogging . . . .
    Lucas shifted into neutral, pulled the brake, popped the door and swiveled in the seat, letting his feet fall on the shoulder of the road.
    “Davenport, God damn it, I thought this was your piece of shit,” Larsen said, thumping the Porsche’s roof. “Everybody’s looking for your ass . . . .”
    “What . . . ?”
    “Fuckin’ Bekker blew out of the government center. He’s knocked down two people so far.”
    “What?” Lucas Davenport: deep summer tan, jagged white scar crossing his eyebrow, khaki short-sleevedshirt, jeans, gym shoes. A surge of adrenaline almost took his breath away.
    “Two of your buddies are laying up at your place. They think he might be coming for you,” Larsen said. He was a large man who kept hitching up his belt, and peering around, as though he might spot Bekker sneaking through a roadside ditch.
    Lucas: “I better get my ass down there . . . .”
    “Go.” Larsen thumped the top of the car again.
    Back on the highway, Lucas picked up the car phone and poked in the direct-dial number for the Minneapolis cops. He was vaguely pleased with himself: he didn’t need the phone, rarely used it. He’d installed it the week after he’d bought the gold-and-steel Rolex that circled his wrist—two useless symbols of his freedom from the Minneapolis Police Department. Symbols that he was doing what every cop supposedly wanted to do, to go out on his own, to make it. And now the business was snaking off in new directions, away from games, into computer simulations of police tactical problems. Davenport Games & Simulations. With the growing sales, he might have to rent an office.
    The switchboard operator said, “Minneapolis.”
    “Gimme Harmon Anderson,” Lucas said.
    “Is that you, Lucas?” the operator asked. Melissa Yellow Bear.
    “Yeah.” He grinned. Somebody remembered.
    “Harmon’s been waiting. Are you at home?”
    “No, I’m in my car.”
    “You heard what happened?” Yellow Bear was breathless.
    “Yes.”
    “You take care, honey. I’ll switch you over . . . .”
    A moment later, Anderson came on, and said withoutpreamble, “Del and Sloan are at your place. Sloan got the key from your neighbor, but they’re wasting their time. He won’t be coming after this long. It’s been three hours.”
    “How about Del’s place? He and Bekker are relatives of some kind.”
    “We’ve got a couple of guys there, too, but he’s hiding somewhere. He won’t be out, not now.”
    “How did