Easy Prey

by John Sandford

  Moore was a gangly man with reddish hair and green watery eyes. He wore wash pants that were an inch too short, and showed a rind of pale skin between the top of his white socks and the cuff of the green pants. "I'm the ground rules problem," he said affably.

  "The problem," Rose Marie said, "is that Mr. Moore is also one of the Olsons' good friends." The Olsons both nodded at once, as did the Bentons and the Packards. "They want him here. But if we give him the confidential family briefing that is not available to all the press…"

  "So will you use what we tell you in confidence?" Lucas asked.

  Moore shook his head. "Of course not. I'm here as a friend, not as a reporter. We have our reporter down here right now, and she'll do our coverage."

  Milton piped up. "Suppose you think your reporter is reading something wrong, because of privileged information you happen to have."

  "We'll go with her story," Moore said. "The people of Burnt River have the right to the information—but not necessarily at this exact minute."

  Rose Marie looked at Lucas, who shrugged. "So, you trust him or not. I'd say, go ahead and trust him now, and stop if something comes out."

  After thinking about it for a second, Rose Marie nodded. "All right. Mr. Moore stays… with the understanding that what is said in this room, stays in this room."

  As Rose Marie briefed the group on what had been done in the past twenty-four hours, and filled them in on the murder of Amnon Plain, Lucas watched Tom Olson. Olson sat squarely and solidly in his chair, his chin down almost to his chest, staring fixedly at Rose Marie as she spoke. He really wasn't porky, Lucas thought, although an observer at a distance might think so—especially since pork was almost the default body shape for men in the upper Midwest. But Olson looked hard; he was barrel-shaped and square-faced, but you could see the bones in his cheeks and at his wrists. He looked like a farm mechanic: somebody used to pushing around machines, and maybe throwing bales.

  The Bentons and Packards, on the other hand, had the pale, round blandness of prosperous Minnesota small-town people. They were not quite blond, but not quite brunette, either. They all spoke softly in rounded Scandinavian vowels, with perfect grammar, and finished each others sentences. They were, Lucas thought, like two pairs of sugar cookies out of the same nonsexist male-female cookie cutter.

  Tom Olson was the one to speak when Rose Marie finished. "So what you just said is, you didn't find out anything. There's no new information."

  "That's not at all what I said," Rose Marie snapped. "There was a lot of negative information—we eliminated a lot of possibilities. I will tell you, Mr. Olson, and Chief Davenport will tell you the same thing, that if you don't find the killer standing over the victim and arrest him on the spot, then the elimination of possibilities is one of the most important things we do. We will find the killer. We know it's going to take time—"

  "Oh, horseshit," Olson said.

  His mother looked at him and said, "Thomas."

  The older Olson cleared his throat and said, "The funeral is the day after tomorrow, if you can release Alie'e to us. The ME said he thought that was likely."

  "It's done, or will be in the next few minutes," Rose Marie said.

  Olson continued, "When the funeral's over, Lil and I are coming back, with Tom, and the Bentons, and the Packards, when Charlie doesn't have to work, and we'd like to stay for a week or two and hope you catch this guy, but we'd like to stay and see what you do."

  "That's no problem at all. We can meet every day to keep you up to date."

  "Is Amnon Plain's murder related directly to Alie'e?" Lester Moore asked.

  "We don't know," Rose Marie said. "We have to treat it as though it is."

  Lucas jumped in. "I was at Plain's apartment. Whoever killed him, planned it. There was nothing impulsive about it. The other murder had an ad hoc quality… they feel different."

  "Two separate killers?" Tom Olson said.

  "Possibly. They may be related—they may even have been done by the same person—but I personally think Plain was killed by another person."

  "When you say 'person,' are you being politically correct or are you not sure whether the killer was a male or female?" Lester Moore asked.

  "I'm being politically correct," Lucas said. "We had a series of very cold, execution-style murders done by a woman, just this past summer. But that's very rare. I think the killer's male. He may even have been seen."

  "Well, I hope you find him," the elder Olson said. He looked at his wife and son and said, "Let's go get Alie'e."

  When the door closed, Lucas, Rose Marie, and Milton sat in silence for a few seconds, then Rose Marie asked, "Did you see them on television?"

  "No."

  "It's like people get media training somewhere," Rose Marie said. "In here, Mrs. Olson sits in her chair like a turtle on a rock, but when you see her on TV, she's the perfect mom. She's as good as most of the professionals you see on the news shows. Every hair in place, except the ones that shouldn't be. She's perfectly distraught. She personifies exactly what a distraught mother should be like. And the kid…"

  "I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley if he was pissed at me," Milton said. "He's supposed to be some kind of holy guy, but he said, 'horseshit.' "

  "Horses shit even around holy people," Lucas said.

  "Besides," added Rose Marie, "he was clinically correct. That was a load of horseshit. Lester Moore picked up on it, too. There were no secrets, because we don't have any." She brooded about that for moment, then said, "I think I've heard his name, Lester Moore. Maybe when I was up on the Hill?"

  Milton shook his head. "It's a famous name."

  "Really?" Rose Marie was curious.

  "A guy named Lester Moore was killed in some place like Tombstone, or Dodge City, and was buried on Boot Hill. His epitapth said something like, 'Here lies Lester Moore, Two Shots From a .44, No Les, No More.' "

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  Rose Marie said to Lucas, "We've had some time, now. Now they're gonna start cooking us, the press is. When the funeral's over with, they're all gonna come back here, and we better have something besides horseshit."

  Lucas had three messages: one from Catrin that said, "Please call before three," one from Del, and a last one from Sherrill. He called Sherrill first. She answered the cell phone, then said, "I'll call you back in fifteen seconds." In fifteen seconds, his phone rang, and Sherrill said, "I think you better come down here and talk with Jael."

  "Why?"

  "Some kind of father-figure thing, I think, and all the scars you guys got," she said, and she sounded serious. "She wants to talk—actually, I think she wants to confess something to you."

  "She…"

  "No, no, she didn't kill anyone," Sherrill said.

  "Then why doesn't she confess it to you? You got scars."

  "Because she's not interested in me. With you, she's thinking it over. Women would much rather confess to a guy they're thinking about sleeping with, because they think that way, they might have some control over him."

  "Ah."

  "So when can you come down?"

  "Pretty goddamn quick, but I've got a couple of calls to make. See you in… twenty minutes."

  Lane stuck his head in as Lucas was hanging up. "I'm heading out to Fargo."

  "Why?" Lucas punched in Del's number.

  "Because I was looking at Tom Olson's alibi for the night Alie'e was killed. It's loose, and I need to talk to a guy out there. And I've got all the genealogical shit you could ever ask for."

  Del's phone started ringing, and Lucas asked, "When will you be back?"

  "Tonight, late, or midmorning tomorrow."

  Del said, "Hello?" and Lucas lifted a hand to Lane. "Take off." Del asked, "What?" and Lucas said, "I was talking to Lane… So what's happening with the deal, and the warrants?"

  "The warrants on Bee and Logan are in the works. Manny Lanscolm is taking Outer's statement right now. We could move in an hour."

>   "Call me," Lucas said. "Make sure that the warrants specify computer files and disks."

  He dialed Catrin's number. The phone rang twice, and Catrin picked it up.

  "I'd like to talk again," she said. Her voice was low, tight, anxious. "I know you're busy with the Alie'e thing… but could we meet in St. Paul, somewhere, tomorrow?"

  "Sure, I guess." He gave her the name of a restaurant near St. Anne's, told her how to find it. "It's got those old-fashioned high plastic booths," he said. "We can talk."

  Jael. He was looking forward to seeing her again.

  Sherrill met him at the door and said, "She's back in her studio. As long as you're here, I'm gonna run out and get a cheeseburger."

  "All right."

  Jael Corbeau was sitting on a wooden stool, wearing a clay-spattered apron over jeans and a loose flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled over her elbows. She was turning a cream-colored juglet in her hands. She looked up when Lucas came in. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her nose red and a little swollen; she was still striking. "This thing is three thousand years old," she said. "Look how nice it is."

  She handed him the juglet; it was the size of a hand grenade, with a soft, porous surface. "Where'd you get it?"

  "My mother gave it to me, because of my name. Amnon got one, too. They come from Israel, the north part of the country, the Galilee."

  "I don't know Israel." He handed the juglet back. "You wanted to talk?"

  "Where's Marcy?"

  "Since I was here, she went to get a bite," Lucas said.

  "Okay. So why don't we walk?" Jael said. "I wouldn't mind getting out for a while. Did you bring your gun?"

  The last question came with a small hint of humor in her eyes, and Lucas nodded. "Not only that, but it's got a hair trigger."

  "Now I feel completely safe," she said. But as they stepped outside, she said, "Do you really think somebody might be trying to hurt me?"

  "I don't know, but there's no point in taking a chance."

  "I'm not sure I'd be missed that much."

  "Maybe not, but if you were killed, the media would trash us. That's what we're trying to avoid."

  She smiled now. "Now I feel safe. You've got a selfish motive for keeping me alive."

  "Damn right."

  They walked along for a while in the cold air, and then Jael asked, "What's the thinking on Sandy Lansing?"

  "Well, she's kind of a mystery," Lucas said. "She wasn't a hotel executive, and she had no family money, but she had great clothes, a nice apartment, drove a Porsche, and apparently snorted a massive amount of cocaine, which is not free of charge. We're trying to figure out where the money came from. We thought maybe it was sex, that she was taking care of rich people at Brown's, but that seems unlikely now."

  Jael stopped and looked up at him, her face sober. "Its weird, you know, all the people at that party."

  "What?"

  "Oh, just the way they all made the same excuses: there was no dope, they didn't see any, they didn't know about any. All so worried about their reputations, just like me. And really, in my world, a little dope is no big deal."

  "Maybe in the back of their minds, they're worried about something a little more stark, like jail," Lucas said. "Rich people don't like jail. They don't function well in that environment."

  "But they didn't tell you about Sandy. And I didn't tell you about Sandy We were all busy thinking about Alie'e, what a tragedy it was, and just keeping your mouth shut about a little dope…"

  "What about Sandy?" But now he knew.

  "She was the dealer," Jael said. "Half the people at the party bought dope from her—anything you wanted, she could get. She was discreet, she had to know you before she would sell to you, you had to have a recommendation… but she could get it."

  "Did you ever buy from her?"

  "A little heroin, once or twice. Just little touches of it," she said.

  "Jesus Christ, Jael, that stuff is poison."

  "But it feels so nice. It smooths you out." Lucas shook his head angrily and stalked off down the sidewalk. She watched him go, then hurried after him. "What?"

  "That's so fuckin' stupid, what you just said. It makes my goddamned head hurt." Then he stopped, and faced her. "Will you come in and amend your statement, and say that Sandy Lansing was a dealer?"

  "Would I go to jail?"

  "No. There's nothing illegal about knowing that somebody deals-Bring your lawyer, so you get all the words right. But it's important that we get it on paper, so we can use the paper to pry information out of other people. I knew something was going on with Lansing, but it was so hard to look in her direction, when everybody was screaming about Alie'e. Did Alie'e get that shit from her?"

  "Yeah. Actually, I wasn't there, but I think Sandy had a kit in her purse, and I think she's the one who popped Alie'e. You didn't find a syringe…"

  "No. Nothing like that. Nothing but the tracks."

  "You didn't find Sandys purse?"

  "No."

  "Well, she had one. Pretty big—a lot bigger than fashionable. She had some stuff in it."

  "Okay," Lucas said.

  "I'll come make another statement, but I won't turn in any of my friends. Or anybody else, for that matter."

  "Goddamnit."

  "I won't."

  "Then you just might be covering for a killer," Lucas said impatiently.

  "It's more important to me to protect my friends than to catch the killer. Catching the guy won't bring Alie'e or Sandy back. If I turn in my friends… well, I won't do that."

  "Listen, how about if I put a name on you, and you tell me… Look, here's what I want to know. We're ninety-nine percent sure that Sallance Hanson knew that there were drugs all over the place."

  "I won't—"

  "We're not on the record here. It's just you and me. But I don't want to go off on Hanson if she's really naive. But she can't be that naive, can she?"

  Jael kept her mouth shut. Lucas said, "So tell me, can she be that naive? You don't have to accuse her of anything, but tell me that: Is Sallance Hanson naive?"

  "You're getting me twisted around."

  "Is she naive?"

  Jael turned and started back toward her house, her arms wrapped around her body, as if the cold air had suddenly gotten to her. Over her shoulder, she threw one word: "No."

  Lucas followed after her, said, "Tell me one more thing—something that won't hurt anyone anymore. Did your brother buy from Sandy Lansing? Did he know her?"

  She slowed, and let him catch up. "I don't know if he knew who she was, or what she did. Maybe. Somebody might have told him. But he didn't like dope. He'd get pissed when I used it."

  "He said he used it when he was young."

  "Yeah. He was precocious. He used everything when he was a kid," Jael said. "Then he went to New York and he met Mapplethorpe just before he died, and knowing Mapplethorpe did something to Plain's brain."

  "Mapplethorpe. You mean the photographer?"

  "Yes, completely decadent. Plain used to go on rants, about how Mapplethorpe had this good talent that never came to anything, because he killed himself."

  "Suicide?"

  "No, he died of AIDS, but he was notorious for putting anything and everything into his body, and into anybody's else's body. Anyway, Plain got to see the end of that whole thing, and he stopped using." She snapped her fingers. "Just like that. He was going to live forever."

  "So… Lansing. He didn't know her," Lucas said.

  "Maybe knew her, didn't buy from her."

  "Okay." That's what Plain had told them.

  "Does any of this help?" Jael asked.

  "Yeah. We couldn't get any traction. We couldn't figure out why anybody would kill either of these women, or your brother, for that matter. Dope was always a possibility, but if Sandy Lansing was dealing, then it becomes a serious possibility."

  As they got back to her house, Lucas asked casually, "Are you still using?"

  "Oh, you know, sometimes. Just a little pop
."

  "It'll kill you, Jael." He liked her name; it rolled smoothly off the tongue. "You gotta stop."

  "I need to get smoothed out sometimes," Jael said.

  "Smoke a little grass. Stay away from the heroin."

  "Not the same," she said. But she was amused again. "I should have been recording this: a cop telling me to smoke a little grass."

  "Grass'll kill you, too," Lucas said. "But not until you're eighty."

  At the house, they sat on the stoop and talked, Lucas trying to tug the conversation back to the party, looking for another name, another hint. "Look, I'm not going to tell you any more names," she said. "If I thought it would really help, I would—but it won't."

  A city car pulled to the curb, and Sherrill got out. "Sherrill likes you a lot," Jael said. He could feel her watching his face.

  "I like her a lot," Lucas said. He half turned. "Sherrill and I have a little history. That's all over. We weren't good for each other."

  "She talks tough," Jael said.

  "She is tough."

  "Tough as you?"

  Sherrill was coming up to them. Lucas said, "Maybe."

  Sherrill said, "How's it going?"

  Her eyes slid from Lucas to Jael, and Jael stood up and said, "Fine. I better go call my lawyer, though."

  "What, did he whack you around or something?"

  "We're not that friendly yet," Jael said.

  She went inside, and when she was out of earshot, Sherrill asked, "What happened?"

  "She says Sandy Lansing was the dealer. She says Lansing could get anything you want—not like she was a housewife with a neighborhood connection."

  "You think somebody killed Lansing for dope?"

  "Mmm… I don't know about that. But III bet it's tied in somehow," Lucas said. "Somebody owed her too much, and was afraid of what was gonna happen. Or blackmail. Maybe she was trying to squeeze one of her clients and he didn't like it. Who knows, maybe she had a competitor in the crowd."