[Prey 11] - Easy Prey

by John Sandford

  Marcy's eyelids were at half-mast. When Lucas, Del, and Black loomed beside her, her eyes opened fractionally, and after a moment, the corners of her lips twitched.

  "Sleeping on the job," Black said.

  "I ain't signing off on the overtime—you're still on the Homicide payroll," Lucas said.

  "If you die, can I have your gun?" Del asked.

  She tried to say something, but Lucas couldn't hear and he leaned forward. Her lips looked parched, almost burnt. "What?"

  "Fuck all of you," she whispered, and she turned her head another fraction of an inch.

  "She's better," Lucas said, delighted. "She says go fuck ourselves."

  Weather said, "I can't believe cops. I never could. The bullshit gets so deep." She was smiling when she said it.

  Lucas squatted next to the bed, speaking through the blue mask. "You're hurting," he said, "but you're gonna make it. We're tracking the guy who shot you."

  Her head rolled away, and her eyelids drooped again. "Everybody out," the nurse said.

  In the hall, Lucas said, "She looked pretty good, huh? She looked pretty good."

  "Pretty good," Black said.

  "I was amazed," Del said. "She took a fuckin' .44, man. Man, she looked a lot better." He hitched up his jeans, and they all nodded at each other.

  "She's not out of the woods," Weather said. "Keep that in mind. It's along trip back."

  On the way out the door with Del, Lucas stopped, said, "Hang on a minute," and went back inside. Weather was walking away, back to the interior of the hospital. "Hey, Weather."

  She stopped, waited. He came up, took a card out of his ID case, scribbled his cell phone number on the back of it, and said, "Keep an eye on her while you're here, okay? You know the docs better than any of us. If anything changes…"

  "I'll call," she said. She took the card, and Lucas headed back out.

  On the sidewalk, Del said, "What?"

  "Gave her my number in case anything happens with Marcy," Lucas lied. She could have gotten to him through the police switchboard, and she had that number. He'd actually gone back because of a little subconscious twitch: He went back to look at her ears. She was wearing inky blue sapphire earrings, one-carat stones. He recognized them, because he'd given them to her.

  He smiled on the way back to the office, and Del said, "Our girl's gonna be all right."

  "Maybe," he said.

  Back at the office, Lucas put in a call to Louis Mallard at the FBI in Washington. Mallard had enough clout to extract anything from any government computer anywhere. He agreed to find and send along everything available on Rodriguez's Miami company. When he got off the phone with Mallard, Lucas walked down to Hose Marie's office.

  "Need a meeting," he said.

  "Marcy's awake."

  "I know. She's gonna make it."

  Rose Marie put a finger to her lips. "Shhh. Don't hex her."

  While they were waiting for the meeting to get together, Lane called. "I got bored and walked by Rodriguez's office window. He was working on the computer in his office."

  "How many people saw you? The secretary?"

  "Maybe. But I was disguised as a cool guy, which, for me, takes no effort, and I put a little shine on her, through the window."

  "Lane, you fucking—"

  "Anyway, Rodriguez was signed on to E-Trade."

  "E-Trade."

  "Yeah. I bet he's scared and dumping stock."

  "Like I was saying, you're a fucking genius." Lucas called Mallard back. "Can you get into E-Trade records?"

  "If I wanted to," Mallard said.

  Del came to the meeting, along with Frank Lester; Towson, the county attorney; and Long, the assistant county attorney, just back from the Atheneum bank with a pile of paper. No public relations people.

  "I wanted to make sure everybody knows what we're doing," Lucas said. "We're looking at this guy Rodriguez, and I will tell you this, just based on feel and experience and a few things we know about him: He killed Alie'e and Sandy Lansing."

  "You're pretty sure," Towson said.

  "Pretty sure. Lansing was dealing several kinds of dope to rich people and wanna-bes, working for Rodriguez. Rodriguez is at the party. They have some kind of conflict, and Rodriguez kills her right there in the hallway. Maybe it's even an accident—the ME's saying it looks like her head was smashed against a doorjamb. So Rodriguez tried to stuff her in the closet and is surprised by Alie'e, who was in the bedroom. Maybe Alie'e heard the noise of Lansing's head hitting the doorjamb—or maybe she just woke up at the wrong time. Anyway, she sees something, and Rodriguez takes her out. At this point, he walks away, maybe down the hall to the next room, and goes out the window. Or maybe he just walks through the crowd and drifts away."

  "What do we have for sure?" Towson asked.

  "We have the fact that Rodriguez was a punk in Detroit, came here with no money, and got rich fast. We have a guy who'll tell us that he's a dope wholesaler, and that Sandy Lansing worked for him, sending dope. I don't doubt that once we start working on that angle, now that we've got his name, we'll be able to find a few other ties between them. We've got Rodriguez at the party. We've got a guy—Derrick Deal—who knew Lansing pretty well, and thought she might be selling a little dope; and he was a guy who would do a little blackmail if it looked profitable. He almost certainly knew who her boss was, because a day after I talked to him, he was murdered in a way that was at least reminiscent of the way Alie'e and Lansing were killed: no passion, just brutal efficiency."

  "I don't see how you tie Deal to Rodriguez," Rose Marie said.

  "I don't, directly. What I'm saying is, Deal didn't know Alie'e. So if he was going to blackmail somebody for murder, it had to be somebody tied to Lansing. The only person at that party tied to Lansing, as far as we know, was Rodriguez."

  Long looked at Towson. "We'd need some kind of color chart, or maybe a PowerPoint presentation, to sell that to a jury."

  Towson shook his head. "We're not at a jury yet. We need more."

  "We're just starting on the guy," Del said.

  Long leaned into the discussion. "I got all the paper from Atheneum. Spooner's boss was looking over my shoulder, and you know what? If we push the guy, he'll tell us the loans shouldn't have been made. The goddamn things are dirty. Rodriguez was paying him off."

  "Can we crack him?" Towson asked.

  "I don't know. He's sort of a nebbish, but he's scared, and if he keeps his mouth shut… I mean, he's got a lawyer, and if he claims that the loans were on the up-and-up and keeps going back to this minority business, and if Rodriguez doesn't talk, there's not much we can get him on."

  "We'll get some paper going on him," Lucas said. "If he's been paid off by Rodriguez, he might have an income-tax problem."

  Towson said to Long, "Talk to the IRS."

  Lester summarized the case against Tom Olson. "He had motive, he had opportunity, he had access to a car that we now know for sure was used in the Marcy Sherrill shooting—"

  "How do you know that?" Long asked.

  "We took the slug out of the car door. It didn't penetrate the passenger compartment, it wound up inside a plastic handle inside the door. It came from Marcy's revolver."

  Long nodded. "Okay."

  "But you haven't found the .44 that was used on Marcy," Lucas said.

  "No."

  "That's a problem," Del said.

  "Yup. Especially since he's been here, and not back in Fargo, ever since the shooting. We went through his motel room, and his car, after his parents were killed. No gun. The gun that was used to kill his parents belonged to his father: It was his father's car gun."

  "Where'd you get that?" Lucas asked.

  "Olson told us. His father kept it under the front-seat cushion. We ran the serial numbers, traced it to a gun store up in Burnt River. Lynn Olson bought it six years ago."

  "You think he did his parents?" Towson asked.

  "We've got this whole theory…" Lester explained the multiple-pe
rsonality concept, and explained the trap they'd set for Olson.

  "The trap better work," Towson said, "Because the multiple-personality theory sounds like bullshit."

  A secretary stuck her head in and said, "Lucas, you've got a call from the White House."

  The group all looked at him, and Lucas said, "What?"

  "The guy said he's with the White House. He didn't sound like he was joking."

  "You better take it," Rose Marie said.

  Lucas took it on the secretary's desk. Mallard said, "I bet that impressed everybody. The switchboard lady told me you were in a meeting in the chief's office."

  "It certainly impressed the shit out me," Lucas said. "What's happening?"

  "Your boy Rodriguez started selling out his accounts Monday morning. It'll be a couple of days before he gets the checks, but he's got a quarter million in the mail."

  "Goddamn," Lucas said.

  "I've only got one thing from Miami. Rodriguez set up the Miami company nine years ago. The attorney's name is Haynes, and as far as the guys in the Miami office know, he's straight—small time, private office, business-oriented guy. Does real estate, that kind of stuff."

  "Mallard, you're a good egg," Lucas said.

  "Ho ho, very funny," Mallard said. "By the way, you remember Malone?"

  "Of course. How is she?"

  "She's fox-trotting with somebody else," Mallard said.

  "Uh-oh. Gonna be number five?"

  "Could happen. Anyway, we'll grind some more on Rodriguez, but I thought you'd want to know he was collecting cash."

  "That's one more thing," Towson said when Lucas told them about Mallards call. "And it's a good one. We've got to slow him down, though."

  "So what do we do?" Rose Marie asked.

  "Some lawyer shit," Del said, looking at Towson.

  "The IRS," Towson said. "Tell them about the dope—maybe they can do something about the money he's got coming."

  Rose Marie said, "So we push on Rodriguez, and we keep baiting Olson. Everybody agree?"

  Everybody nodded.

  "Best we got," Lester said.

  Chapter 21

  « ^ »

  Del took a call from Narcotics and headed that way. Lucas borrowed a uniformed cop from the patrol division, put him in plainclothes, and sent him to relieve Lane.

  On the phone to Lane, he said, "When he gets there, I want you to brief him, then go on over to the county attorney's office, talk to Tim Long, and look at all that loan paperwork on Spooner. Spooner's critical: If he knows anything at all about Rodriguez, then he probably knows about everything. If we crack him, we may have enough."

  "How much paper?" Lane asked.

  "About a ton," Lucas said.

  "Goddamnit, Lucas, how come I'm always the one stuck with paper?"

  " 'Cause you can read; I'm not so sure about the other guys. So get your ass over here. Also, an FBI computer file just came in on Rodriguez and his money. I'll print it out and leave it with Lester. Take it with you, see if there's anything that, you know…"

  "What?"

  "Shit, I don't know. Correlates, or something."

  When he was done with Lane, he got out the phone book, got the number for Browns, dialed, and asked for India. She came on the phone a minute later. Lucas identified himself and asked, "Are you gonna be around for a few minutes?"

  "Until six."

  "I want to stop by," he said.

  When he got off the phone, Lucas walked down to Homicide with the printed-out FBI file, left it with Lester. "Did you guys print those pictures of Rodriguez?"

  "Uh, yeah… I think they're down in ID. They handled it."

  Lucas went down to the Identification division. The photo guy's name was Harold McNeil, a former uniform cop who got tired of cold squad cars and got the photo job by lying. Photography he said, was a longtime hobby, although he didn't know a small-format camera from a yak. He read a book called Learn Photography in a Weekend, fooled around with the department's cameras, and after a week or so, was better than the last guy, and kept the job.

  He had two good shots of Rodriguez: a full-frontal head shot, and one side view.

  "Got some heads I can use in a spread?" Lucas asked.

  "Yup." McNeil turned around, opened the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, and took out a handful of photos. They found sets, front and back, of a half-dozen guys. Lucas stuck them in his pocket.

  "I'll bring them back," he promised.

  "That's what everybody says. Nobody ever does," McNeil said.

  Lucas got his coat and walked across town to Brown's; the cold air felt good; the walking felt good. India was behind the desk and smiled when she saw him coming.

  "Did you ever see any of these guys with Sandy Lansing?" Lucas pushed the stack of photos at her. "There are two photos of each guy."

  India took her time looking at them. Another woman came along and asked, "What's going on?"

  Lucas said, "Police. We're trying to see if we can find somebody Sandy Lansing might have gone out with."

  "I've seen her with a guy a few times," the other woman said.

  She stood at India's elbow, and they went through the photos together, India slowly shaking her head. "I don't think so," she said finally. "This guy… but I don't think it was him."

  The other woman said, "I don't think so, either. Sorta like that, though. If you put him in a suit."

  "It's not him. This guy looks a little rough," India said.

  "You're right," the other woman said. She looked at Lucas. "I don't think I've ever seen any of them."

  Lucas looked at the one photo they'd talked about. A honey-haired white guy, round-faced, but without Rodriguez's heft. He and Rodriguez looked nothing alike.

  "Thanks," he said.

  Strikeout.

  Back at the office, Lucas had a note to call Tim Long at the county attorneys office. He did. "You can't count on getting anything from the IRS," Long said. "I talked to a guy over there, and they said if we get anything that looks like hidden income, to send them a copy of what we get. But they've had too much trouble with citizen complaints to go after a guy who they've never had a problem with. He was audited a couple of years ago, in a random audit, and everything worked out to the penny."

  "Which it would, if he's faking his cash flow with drug money."

  "Yeah, well, the IRS guy said, 'You catch 'em, we fry 'em.' But they ain't gonna hang up his investment money and have a congressman screaming at them. Not when they've got a whole file that says the guy is clean."

  Another strikeout.

  Rose Marie said, "Olson isn't moving. He's not doing anything."

  "You're talking to him, aren't you? In the family briefing?"

  "Yeah." She looked up at the office clock. "We're gonna do it again in about fifteen minutes."

  "Why don't you tell him, in utter confidence, that we've got a candidate for the guy who actually killed his sister. If he's nuts, and anything is going to get him stirred up, that should do it."

  "Lucas—"

  "Don't give him the name," Lucas said. "Tell him you can't do that, but there's a possibility that we'll know something in a couple of days. The idea is to get him cranked, get him back in the mood, if he's the one doing the killings."

  "I don't know…"

  "Another benefit is, it'd keep him from pissing on us in the press."

  After leaving Rose Marie, Lucas walked over to see Marcy. Tom Black was sitting next to her bed, and her head was turned toward him. When Lucas walked in, Black said, "She comes and she goes. She's asleep right now."

  Lucas got another chair and carried it over to Marcy's bed. Two beds down, an old man with a shock of white hair, a desiccated face, and a thin, hawk nose, tried to breathe; worked at it.

  "What do you think of this Olson guy?" Black asked.

  "He's maybe crazy," Lucas said.

  "You think, uh, he'll be doing a trip down to the state hospital?"

  "Hard call. A guy executes his paren
ts, it's pretty easy to say he's nuts."

  "Yeah, well…" Black exhaled, and looked down at the tile floor.

  "What?" Lucas asked.

  "I'd hate to see the fucker get away with what he did to Marcy," Black said. "No goddamn justice in the world if you can blow her up and get away with it."

  Lucas looked at him for a moment. Black was Marcy's best friend on the force. And he was gay, so they didn't have the sex problem that tended to come up around her—that had come up with Lucas. "Listen, Thomas my friend, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, stop thinking it."

  "You haven't thought about it?"

  "No, I haven't. You get some guy you can't stop, a pederast or a serial rapist and you just can't get at him… then I might do some thinking, but I sure as hell wouldn't mention it to anyone. To anyone. And I wouldn't pop somebody for shooting a cop. You know? Cops get shot; that's part of the job. Marcy knew it could happen—hell, it already happened to her, once. It's not like she's an innocent little lamb."

  "But if he gets away…"

  "Jesus, Torn, give it some time. We'll get him. I'll tell you what, I think maybe it's fifty percent Olson, maybe fifty percent somebody else. You can't go popping a guy on fifty-fifty chance."

  "It's got me fucked up, dude," Black said.

  "I know."

  Marcy woke up a couple of minutes later, recognized both of them, croaked, "I could use a beer."

  "I got one, but I already used it once," Black said. "If we could find a bottle someplace…"

  She smiled. She looked almost okay, Lucas thought. "How're you feeling?"

  "Like I got hit pretty hard."

  "You did, you dumb shit. You ain't the goddamn Secret Service, and Jael ain't the President," Lucas said.

  She closed her eyes for a minute, seemed to drift off, then snapped back. "How's Jael?"

  "We've got her covered twenty-four hours a day," Lucas said. "Franklin taught her how to cook nachos."

  "I feel hollow," she said. She licked her dry lips. "I don't hurt."

  Black stood up. "You want me to get the nurse?"