Silent Prey

"Cornell Reed. United to Atlanta out of La Guardia, transfer to Southeast to Charleston. No return. Paid for by the City of New York."

"No shit… Charleston?"

"Charleston."

"I owe you some bucks, Harmon," Lucas said. "I'll get back to you."

"No problem…"

Lucas hung up, turning it over in his head.

"What's Charleston?" Fell asked from the bathroom doorway.

"It's both a dance and a city… Sorry, that was a personal call. I was trying to get through to my kid's mother. She's gone to Charleston with the Probe Team."

"Oh." Fell tossed the towel back into the bathroom. "You're still pretty tight with her?"

"No. We're done. Completely. But Sarah's my kid. I call her."

Fell shrugged and gri

"Yeah."

They ate a quick breakfast in the hotel coffee shop, then Lucas put Fell in a cab back to her apartment. He called Ke

"If we don't get him tomorrow, at the speech, I'm heading back to the Twin Cities, see what I can find," Lucas said.

"Good. I think we've got all the routine stuff pi

"Where's here?" Lucas asked.

"Her place."

"So come and get me," Lucas said.

After talking to Ke

The information service got him the phone number for the Charleston police headquarters, and two minutes later, he had the weekend duty officer on the line.

"My name is Lucas Davenport. I'm a cop working out of Midtown South in Manhattan. I'm looking for a guy down your way, and I was wondering about the prospects of finding him."

"What's the problem?" A dry southern drawl, closer to Texan than the mush-mouth of South Carolina.

"He saw a guy get shot. He didn't do it, just saw it. I need to talk to him."

"What's his name?"

"Cornell Reed, nickname Red. About twenty-two, twenty-three…"

"Black guy." It was barely a question.

"Yeah."

"And you're from Midtown South."

"Yeah."

"Hang on…"

Lucas was put on hold, waited for a minute, then two. Always like this with cops. Always. Then a couple of clicks, and the line was live again. "I got Darius Pike on the line, he's one of our detectives… Darius, go ahead…"

"Yeah?" Pike's voice was deep, cool. Children were laughing in the background. Lucas identified himself again.

"Am I getting you at home? I'm sorry about that…"

" 'S okay. You're looking for Red Reed?"

"Yeah. He supposedly witnessed a killing up here, and I'm pretty hot to talk to him."

"He came back to town a month ago, the sorry-ass fool. You need to bust him?"

"No, just talk."

"Want to come down, or on the phone?"

"Face-to-face, if I can."

"Give me a call a day ahead. I can put my hands on him about any time." • • • Now he had to make a decision: Mi

Lucas made one more call, to Northwest Airlines, and got a seat to Mi

When Lily called from the front desk, he'd changed to jeans and blue T-shirt. He went down, found her waiting, eyes tired but relaxed. She was wearing jeans and a horizontally-striped French fisherman's shirt that might have cost two hundred dollars on Fifth Avenue, and an aqua-colored billed hat.

"You look like a model," he said.

"Maybe I oughta call Cruising World. "

"Yeah, you look kinda gay," he said.

"That's a sailboat magazine, you dope," she said, taking a mock swipe at him.

Ke

"Nice truck," Lucas said to Lily as he crawled in back.

"Ke

"Not like this: this is sort of a Manhattan four-wheel drive," he said, tongue in cheek. To Ke

"Got it before the last attack," Ke

"Yeah, yeah…"

They left Manhattan through the Lincoln Tu

"Look at this guy, putting up his 'chute," Ke

"You ever sailed?" Ke

"A couple times, on Superior," Lucas said, shading his eyes. "You feel like you're on a runaway locomotive. It's hard to believe they're barely going as fast as a man can jog."

"A man doesn't weigh twenty thousand pounds like that thing," Ke

They unloaded a cooler from the back of the truck and Lucas carried it across the parking lot, past a sunta

Lily led the way through a narrow gate in the chain-link fence, Lucas right behind her, Ke

"There she blows, so to speak," Ke

"Nice," Lucas said, uncertainly. He knew open fishing boats, but almost nothing about sailboats.

"Island Packet 28-it is a nice boat," Ke

"Not too late for kids," Lucas said. "I just had one myself."

"Wait, wait, wait." Lily laughed. "I should have a say in this."