Free Shadow Prey by John Sandford Page B

sudden,” he said. He bobbed his head in apology.
    Lucas backed up a few steps, wary of the sudden change, uneasy about the eyes. Witch eyes. The tattooed man moved over to Yellow Hand’s mattress and sat down on a corner. Lucas watched him for a second, then stepped closer to Yellow Hand, until he was looming over him. He spoke at the top of the teenager’s head.
    “What do you hear, Yellow Hand? I need everything about Ray Cuervo getting his throat cut. Anything about this guy Benton. Anybody who was friends with Bluebird.”
    “I don’t know about that shit,” Yellow Hand said. “I knew Bluebird from out on the res.”
    “At Fort Thompson?”
    “Yeah, man. His sister and my mom used to walk down below the dam and go fishing.”
    “What do you hear about him lately?” Lucas reached down and grabbed Yellow Hand’s hair, just above his ear, and pulled his head back. “Gimme something, Yellow Hand. Talk to me.”
    “I don’t know shit, man, I’m telling the truth,” Yellow Hand said sullenly, jerking his hair free. Lucas squatted so he could look Yellow Hand straight in the face. Thetattooed man watched Lucas’ face over Yellow Hand’s shoulder.
    “Look. When Benton got killed, you got picked up as a witness,” Lucas said, putting a friendly note in his voice. “That’s on the record. There are some cops putting together a list. Your name is on it. That means some hardasses from Robbery-Homicide will be checking you out. They aren’t going to be friendly, like me. They aren’t gonna be no fuckin’ pussycats. They aren’t going to take care of you, Yellow Hand. If you give me something, I can deal them off. But I got to have something. If I don’t get something, they’ll figure I didn’t squeeze hard enough.”
    “I could go back to the res,” Yellow Hand said.
    Lucas shook his head. “What are you going to smoke on the res? Sagebrush? What are you gonna do, sneak down to the tribal store and shoplift boomboxes? Gimme a break, Yellow Hand. You got all these nice K Marts you can work in the Cities. You got the candy man coming around every night. Shit, you got guys peddling crack at Fort Thompson?”
    A tear trickled down Yellow Hand’s face and he sniffed. Lucas looked at him. “What have you got, man?” Lucas asked again.
    “I heard one thing,” Yellow Hand admitted. He glanced at the tattooed man, then quickly looked away. “That’s all. It probably don’t mean shit.”
    “Let me hear it. I’ll decide.”
    “You know that hassle last summer? Like two, three months ago, between the bikers and the Indian people out in the Black Hills?”
    “Yeah, I saw something about it in the papers.”
    “What it was, was these bikers come in from all over. They have this big rally up in Sturgis and they have like a truce. There’s Angels and Outlaws and Banditos and Satan’s Slaves and every fuckin’ thing. A whole bunch of them stay in this campground out at a place called Bear Butte. They call it the Bare Butt campground, which already makes some Indian people angry.”
    “What’s this got to do with Bluebird?”
    “Let me finish, man,” Yellow Hand said angrily.
    “Okay.”
    “Some of these bikers, they get drunk at night and they like to run up the side of the butte on their bikes. The butte’s a holy place and there were some medicine people up there, with some guys looking for visions. They came down and they had guns. That’s what started the trouble.”
    “And Bluebird was there?” asked Lucas.
    “That’s what I heard. He was with this group, searching for visions. And they came down with guns. Yesterday, when this guy in New York gets killed, I was in Dork’s Pool Hall down on Lyndale?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Some guy had a picture cut out of the StarTribune from the biker thing. He was showing it around. There was a bunch of cops and a bunch of bikers and the Indian medicine people. One of the guys with a rifle was Bluebird.”
    “Okay, that’s something,” Lucas said,