Easy Prey

by John Sandford

  Then Rose Marie laid out the situation with Tom Olson. He was out of the hospital, but was being tailed by relays of Homicide and Intelligence cops, who would stay with him twenty-four hours a day. Alie'e's funeral had been delayed until the elder Olsons' bodies were released, so they could all be buried together—and that might be a while yet, because the situation in the Bloomington motel room was so complicated.

  "If Olson's the guy—the one who's going after everybody else, in revenge for his sister—we think he might go after Jael Corbeau again, or the other woman, Catherine Kinsley."

  "Or that Jax guy."

  "Jax checked out," Rose Marie said. "He's gone to New York, but says he'll be back for the funeral. He's probably shopping for the right outfit to wear when he throws himself in her grave."

  "So we're just watching?" Lucas asked.

  "No. We've had these family briefings every day, and we're going to continue them. In fact, Olson's coming here in"—she looked at her watch—"about twenty-five minutes. We're going to try to point him at Kinsley. We'll talk a little about Alie'e's relationship with her. Kinsley and her husband are going up north to their cabin, which is way the hell out in the woods. You can't even find them with a map. We'll have a team at her house, waiting, if Olson goes that way."

  "How about Jael?" Lucas asked.

  "We think he's less likely to try her, because he tried once, and she ran him off," Rose Marie said. "But we'll have a team there, too. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop by and talk to her. She's scared, and she'd like to have you around."

  "All right," Lucas said. "And listen, I know Angela Harris is a smart shrink, but I saw Olson's face when he came running across the grass to tell us about his folks. And man, I don't know about this multiple-personality stuff, but that was… real. That was so strong that if his personalities were gonna dissolve, or whatever they do, that would have happened right then. I mean… I've never seen anything like it. Ever."

  "We're keeping that in mind, of course," Rose Marie said. "But its what we've got, right now."

  "So we're set?" Del asked, stepping toward the door.

  "If everything went exactly right—exactly right—we could have both these guys in twenty-four hours," Rose Marie said. "If the bank guy calls Rodriguez, if Olson goes for Kinsley…"

  "There's gotta be at least one time in life when everything works," Del said. "One time."

  "Bullshit," Lucas said. Out in the hall, when they were away from Rose Marie, he added, "She says they're keeping in mind that it might be somebody else, but they're not. They just put all their chips on Olson."

  "And we put all of ours on Rodriguez," Del said.

  "Yeah, but there's a major difference," Lucas said.

  "What's that?"

  "We're right. They might not be."

  Chapter 19

  « ^ »

  Del went off to coordinate with the county attorney's office on the wiretaps and the subpoena for Rodriguez's bank records. Lucas went down to the Homicide office and spent an hour looking over the typescript of the Rodriguez interview, and talked to Frank Lester and Sloan about the multiple-personality idea.

  "Everything I know about it I learned from TV," Sloan said. "But you gotta admit, the guy looks good. He's got motive, he had access to the shooting car, he could get close enough to take his parents out…"

  "When he came running after us, after he found the bodies… he looked like his head was trying to explode," Lucas said. "He was trying to pull the hair out of the sides of his head; I've never seen anything like it. Then he dropped in his tracks."

  "Could be psychological pressure from the other personality," Lester said. "Or maybe he's just goofy."

  "What we saw was real. He wasn't faking anything. If his other personality killed his parents, the personality we saw didn't know it," Lucas said.

  Lucas left the City Hall as the streetlights were coming on. Fifteen minutes later, he slid to the curb at Jael Corbeau's house and headed up the walk. Every room inside the house was lit; everything outside was dark, including the front porch. When Lucas reached for the doorbell, a voice from the corner of the porch said, "Go on in, Chief."

  "Who is that?" he asked. He didn't turn his head.

  "Jimmy Smith. From dope."

  "You cold?" Lucas asked, still speaking at the door panel.

  "Nah. I'm wearing my deer-hunting camies."

  "Excellent." Lucas pushed through the door into the living room, where he met another dope cop, Alex Hutton, who stood to one side with a hammerless .357 in his right hand. He slipped it away when he saw Lucas's face, and said, "Franklin and Jael are upstairs. Cooking."

  "Franklin cooks?" It seemed unlikely.

  "He's teaching her how to make one-minute meals, you know, for during football commercials."

  "The guy has talent," Lucas said.

  Hutton took a step closer, dropped his voice, and said, "I don't know where this chick has been for the first part of my life, but she is hot."

  "I thought you were married with about nine lads," Lucas said, dropping his voice. He added, "Besides, she sorta likes other girls."

  "I only got three kids… and I think Jael likes a little of everything," Hutton said, glancing at the door that led into the back of the house and the kitchen. "If she wanted to bring another chick along, I could handle that—conceptually, anyway."

  "Except that your wife would stab you to death."

  "Fuck my wife. She's history. I'm abandoning her. I figure if I abandon a wife and three kids, the papers will pass on the story. You only get in trouble for five or more."

  "I forgot all about stakeouts," Lucas said. "The sexual fantasies, and all that, when you've got nothing to do."

  As he walked up the stairs, Lucas could hear Franklin's gravelly voice. He was saying, "All right, hands clear of the counter. Hands clear…"

  Jael: "I'm arranging the cheese sacks."

  "Nope. No good. Gotta be like you just threw them in the 'fridge…"

  Lucas leaned in the kitchen door, and a second later, Hutton came to stand behind him. Franklin and Jael had their backs to them, and Jael was closing the refrigerator door. Franklin looked at his watch and asked, "Ready?"

  "Ready."

  "Five seconds… four, three, two, one, GO!"

  Jael jerked the refrigerator open, pulled out two sacks of grated cheese, threw them at the kitchen counter, snatched a plate out of the cupboard, opened a bag of blue-corn nacho chips, and spilled them on the plate.

  "Too many chips, too many chips," Franklin warned. She grabbed a handful of them off the plate, threw them back in the bag, quickly arranged the others on the plate, and Franklin said, "Fifteen seconds." Jael opened the two bags of cheese, working frantically, spread a small handful from one bag over the plate of chips, opened the other, spread another small handful, and asked, "Is that good?"

  "You're looking good, but you're a few seconds behind," Franklin said. "Gotta keep rolling."

  She picked up the plate and pushed it into the microwave, said, "One minute," pressed a series of buttons, and the microwave started to hum. Then she went back to the refrigerator, grabbed ajar of salsa, popped the top, got a spoon and dumped three large spoonfuls into a small glass dessert bowl, glanced at the microwave timer, put the top back on the salsa jar, stuck it in the refrigerator, and wrapped up the top of one of the cheese bags, while watching the timer. Then she reached out…

  "Not too soon, not too soon," Franklin said. Jael jabbed a button, popped open the microwave door, thrust the salsa bowl inside, slammed the door, and pushed the Resume button.

  "Might be too much time," Franklin said.

  "No, I think we're okay," Jael said. Working quickly, she wrapped up the top of the second cheese bag, put both cheese bags back into the refrigerator, took out two beers, stepped back to the microwave, said, "Three seconds."

  There was a popping sound, then another. Franklin said, "Shit. I told you. There goes the salsa."

  The microwave beeped
and Jael opened the door and looked inside. The interior was spattered with little gobbets of salsa. "I'll get it later," she said.

  "Classic line," Franklin said with approval.

  She pulled out the dish full of chips and the bowl of salsa, turned to the cooking island, saw Lucas for the first time, put the chips on the butcher-block top, and said, "Time."

  Franklin looked at his watch. "One minute, twenty-nine seconds. If you add ten seconds going and coming, you could've missed a pass play."

  "I don't think I can cut much time," she said.

  "You just don't have the moves worked out yet," Franklin said. "You lost time with the chips, arranging them, you lost time getting the salsa out. And now you gotta go back and clean the microwave."

  Jael looked at Lucas and asked, "Did you know that if you heat up salsa too fast, the onions pop like popcorn?"

  "Everybody knows that," he said as Franklin turned around. Franklin seemed mildly embarrassed.

  "I've been cooking seriously for half of my life, and I didn't know that," she said. "Even the idea of heating it up seemed pretty brutal."

  "Gotta have it about medium-warm, a little better than room temperature."

  Hutton chipped in. "You want boiling-hot cheese on the chips, medium-warm salsa, very cold beer. You want that range."

  "Do all men know this?" she asked.

  All three of them nodded, and said at once, "Of course."

  The house originally had four bedrooms and a full bathroom upstairs. Jael had wiped out the bottom floor as a studio; had rebuilt a kitchen upstairs, in what had been the master bedroom; the other three she'd turned into a snug little living room/dining room, a small library/office, and her own bedroom. The space was carefully assembled and connected, and Lucas felt comfortable.

  They'd chatted with Franklin and Hutton for a few minutes, eating the nachos with melted cheese—"I can feel my heart clogging up. This stuff is absolute shit," Jael said—and then Jael said to Lucas, "Let's go talk."

  As she stepped past him, she caught his wrist in her hand and led him out of the room; Hutton raised an eyebrow. In the living room, Lucas sprawled on a couch while Jael settled back in an oversized chair. Lucas said, "Great chair," and Jael said, "All guys don't really know about that nacho-cheese thing."

  "You're right. There's probably some raggedy-ass cowboy out on a ranch in North Dakota somewhere who doesn't have either a TV or a microwave."

  She said, "It really… wasn't bad."

  "If you eat that stuff three days in a row, you'll be as big as Franklin." Franklin completely filled an average doorway. "In fact, Franklin used to be about your size."

  She nodded, getting rid of the topic. "I went to see Marcy a couple of hours ago. I just missed you."

  "She's hanging on," Lucas said, his face going grim. "But she's harder than goddamn nails. If anybody can make it back, she's the one."

  "I feel… you know. Guilt, I guess."

  "Don't," he said. "This has nothing to do with you, really. It has something to do with a nut, and some asshole who killed Alie'e and Sandy Lansing."

  "I can't get Plain's body," she said. "But I finally found Dad. He's on St. Paul Island, which is about as far from here as you can get and still be on Earth. It'll take him a few days to get here."

  "How is he?" Lucas asked.

  "Devastated. I'd like to get the thing… done with."

  "I'll see about it," Lucas promised. "This thing with Plain… when did that end?"

  "A year ago."

  "A year? I thought it might be more recent… the way he acted."

  "Time was not a big deal with Plain. Everything was right now. He could read a history book about Rome and get angry about the Roman empire."

  "Tell me about Alie'e," Lucas said. "Was there anybody that she talked about? Anybody who might be a little over the edge?"

  "Are you questioning me?" But she smiled, and when she did, her torn-paper face was beautiful, tough and vulnerable at once.

  "No, no. Of course not. And if you want to talk about something else, that's fine. But I start brooding about this kind of stuff. You know, why? Most people are freaked out by the idea of shoplifting. If you get somebody killing several people, he's either completely psychotic, delusional, nuts, living in a different world, listening to God… or he thinks he's got a reason. This guy we're looking for, he thinks he's got a reason. So there should be some connection to Alie'e. Somewhere, a connection."

  "Her dad… was weird. He came on to me a couple of times. I often thought he was a little… wrong. Not a killer, but he, I think… I don't know." She lifted her hands to her temples. "His relationship to Alie'e and the other girls, he tried to act paternal, but he was always looking at them… If you know what I mean."

  "Yeah. He was turned on."

  "Yeah. And Alie'e's mom wasn't much of a prize, either. My mom didn't care what I did for a living; she thought the earth owed me one, and let it go at that. But Lil was living through Alie'e… and I think she knew about Lynn's interest in sex."

  "You think Lynn might have abused Alie'e?"

  "No. Nope. I think Alie'e would have told me, and I think I would have seen it in her, the way she acted around her father. No, maybe it was just my expectations. Somebody's a dad—you don't think of his standing around trying to get a shot at the asses of his daughter's friends."

  "Happens all the time," Lucas said. "I'll do it. For sure."

  "But he was creepy about it."

  "So… no ideas."

  "I told you before, I really think you've got to look at the people on the Internet. Those people…"

  "We've got somebody checking that, a computer guy named Anderson. If you can think of anything specific along those lines, call him. But the thing is, when he ran Alie'e's name through Alta Vista, he got 122,000 matches. We're trying to narrow them down."

  "What's Alta Vista?"

  "A search engine on the Net. You can look for names and so on."

  "Okay. Well, I'll think about it. You know all about her brother, Tom."

  "We're looking into him," Lucas said.

  "He's an amazing guy. From what she said."

  "Is he nuts?"

  "She didn't think so. She thought he was holy," Jael said.

  "How bright was she?" Lucas asked.

  "Mmm, you've got to be smarter than average to make it as a model, but not a lot smarter. She wasn't intensely bright."

  "So why were you hanging out with her?"

  She smiled. "I thought everybody knew that."

  "They know you were sleeping with her, but I thought there had to be a better reason."

  "There wasn't," Jael said. "She was deep into herself, into feeling good. Into… feeling. That's what she did best, and she spread it around. She could make you discard everything else. And feel good. The sex was wonderful. Very intimate and very playful and very sexual. I mean, I can't really explain it to you, because you don't know what I'm talking about and you're not in a position to find out."

  "Did her appearance have anything to do with it? And her being famous?"

  "Probably. There was a whole package. When you were with her, you felt sexy and important and wicked and fun. And she'd make you forget everything else and just feel. That's why she did those short pops: It was another aspect of feeling for her."

  "So what about her boyfriend, Jax? What'd he think about all this? Sleeping with other women."

  She shrugged. "Jax carried her bags. And slept with her every once in a while. He's basically a remora. He's probably back in New York right now, looking for somebody else."

  "He is. You didn't like him?"

  "It's not that. I just didn't care about him. Didn't even think about him when he was standing in front of me. He made himself into what he is. Not my fault. He wants to carry bags and hang out with pretty women, and that's what he does."

  "Sounds bad," Lucas said.

  "He doesn't think so." They sat in silence for a moment, then Jael said, "You and Marcy ha
d a relationship."

  "For six weeks or so. It was a little too intense."

  She cocked her head. "Why would you walk away from intensity? Other people go their whole lives without intensity. They dream about it."

  "like I said, this was a little too much. We were headed for a disaster."

  "You mean, like, you'd strangle her or something?"

  "No. But something was going to happen, and we'd wind up hating each other," Lucas said. "We didn't want to do that. Risk it."

  "She's still sort of hung up on you," Jael said. "You know what would've been fun? For the three of us to go away. You and me and Marcy."

  She said it so conversationally that Lucas was neither embarrassed nor surprised. He said, "I'm a little too Catholic for that. Marcy would be, too, if she was a Catholic."

  "Oh, I don't think so," Jael said. "Not Marcy, anyway. I think she might be interested in the idea."

  "Really?" She'd said it with some certainty, and now he was surprised. He looked a question at her.

  "No, no, we weren't playing. We hardly had a chance to talk," Jael said. "But you can sort of pick out people who like to feel. Marcy's one of us."

  "You mean, a little gay?" Lucas asked.

  "No. That's not what I mean. You're one of us. I could tell from talking to you, and the way you look at women."

  "I gotta stop talking about this," Lucas said. "Sure," she said. "It really makes me nervous."

  "That's the Catholic part," she said. "You've probably been fighting it all of your life."

  "Maybe," he said.

  "You know," she said later, "I'm a little scared."

  "I know. You should be."

  "The way Plain was killed. He probably never had a chance even to say anything."

  "The guy is nuts. But he's not some great force. We just haven't been able to find him. We will."

  "Soon, I hope. I don't like being cooped up. I'm thinking of heading out to New York, as soon as I can get Plain taken care of."

  "You could leave that to your father."

  She shook her head. "Dad… couldn't handle it."

  "So New York's an idea," Lucas said. "But you wouldn't have any protection."