Easy Prey

Chapter 12

Monday. The third day of the hunt.

There had been no premonition. Lucas was given to premonitionsmostly wrong, and usually involving a variety of plane crash scenarios, beginning as soon as he made a reservation for an airline flight. He also had premonitions involving criminal cases. Some were right. He'd been told by a shrink that his unconscious was probably pushing him to a logical connection that his conscious mind hadn't yet made. He didn't necessarily buy the mumbo-jumbo, but he didn't yet deny it, either. So he paid attention to premonitions, but in this instance, he hadn't had one. And even after he heard about Plain, he felt no foreboding about the rest of the day

Plain had been murdered in his apartment/studio at the Matrix Building in St. Paul's Lowertown, an out-of-the-loop business district of old converted warehouses occupied by artists and start-up businesses. The Matrix was one of the oldest and least updated: All the elevators were designed for freight, and stank of decades of crushed fruit and rotten onions, paint, beer, and card-board boxes. The hallways were littered with trash cans, most of them stuffed to overflowing. The Matrix had sold everything at one time or another: produce, hardware, dope, even wholesale leisure suits, sewn in St. Paul's only double-knit sweatshop.

Lately, the big product was art, mostly painting, with some light sculpture. And Plains photography studio.

A half-dozen St. Paul cop cars were gathered in the street when Lucas rolled up. He dumped the Porsche in a furniture-store parking lot, flashed his badge at a clerk who stood in the window. The clerk nodded, and he headed across the street. A St. Paul cop at the door recognized him, and said, "Nice to see you, chief," when Lucas said "Good morning."

Another cop pointed him at the elevator: "Up to seven, take a right."

A St. Paul police lieutenant named Allport was standing over Amnon Plain's body, making notes on a steno pad with a yellow pencil. Plain, shirtless and shoeless, was facedown in a puddle of drying blood that had spread across a pale hardwood floor. A brown paper grocery bag lay a few feet from his head, its contents spilled out across the floor: bakery, a cereal box, a six-pack of mineral water. Just beyond the grocery bag, a stainless-steel spiral staircase led down to the floor below.

Lucas took it in for a minute, then the St. Paul cop looked up. "Ah, thank God. The Minneapolis cops. We were just about to call for help."

"We heard you had a murder, and thought you probably needed some advice on how to handle it," Lucas said.

"We certainly would. What would you advise?"

"Get your PR guy out of bed and get his ass over here," Lucas said. "In about one hour, you're gonna be up to your knees in CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and every goddamn channel that's got initials."

"Yeah." Allport scratched behind his ear with the pencil point Then he turned and looked at a cop. "Get the chief on the line."

"So what happened?" Lucas asked.

Allport spread his hands over the body. "They just had this big Alie'e spread inThe Star have you seen it?"

"Yeah. Sexy."

"You see the boner on that guy?"

"Yeah. So what happened here?"

"I'll tell you what, if I had a dick like that, I sure as shit wouldn't be a welder Anyway, everybodywas screaming for pictures. That's what Plain's assistant says. They were sending them out by phoneI don't know how, exactly."

"So"

"So the assistant was here until four-thirty, and then they decided to break. He said Plain wanted to take a shower, and they needed some food. It was too early for any regular store to be open and they didn't like any of the all-night restaurants, so the assistant drove over to White Bear Avenue. There's an all-night supermarket"

"Where all the cops hang out."

"Used to, when they had the all-night restaurant. Anyway, he bought some rolls and fruit and shredded wheat and a carton of milk and some bottled water." His pencil dipped toward the bag on the floor. "When he came back, he let himself in downstairs, because he thought Plain might still be in the shower, and then he came up the stairs and he found this."

"He dropped the bag?"

"Yup."

"Got a cash-register receipt?" Lucas asked.

"Yup. And the time of the receipt says four-fifty-four. Already worked it out, and it fits."

"You believe him?"

"Yup."

"Why?"

"Because he was freaked out in a way that's hard to fake. Because we had an off-duty cop working at the supermarket who saw the assistant checking the food through, and she said he was mellow enough to bullshit both the cashierand the cop."

"Shit."

"I sorta thought the same thing, until it occurred to me that I'll probably get a lot of airtime outa this."

The cop that Allport had sent to the make the phone call came back with a cell phone and handed it to him. "Chief," he said.

Allport took the phone and said, "I got Lucas Davenport here. He says we're gonna need some heavy PR bullshit here, and right away. Yeah. Yeah here he is." He handed the phone to Lucas.

"You working up a new handload?" Lucas asked, when he took the phone.

"Well, uh, not at the moment. Why?"

"All the stray dogs have been disappearing from the neighborhood," Lucas said.

"Yeah, bullshit, Davenport. Listen, how bad's this gonna be?"

"Can't tell. All depends on how you handle itthe movie people are like flies over in Minneapolis right now, and you can bet your ass they'll be over here as soon as the word leaks. I'd be surprised if you got more than an hour. If I were you, I'd get the mayor in and get him briefed, so he doesn't say anything stupid. And I'd talk to Rose Marie. Get her to ship our PR guy here, to brief you on our case If you sound half bright and on top of all the questions, you'll be okay. For now."

"Until we catch the killer. You guys getting anything over there?"

"No."

"Then spend some time with Allport. If you aren't doing any good over there, maybe something'll catch your eye over here."

When he got off the phone, Lucas went back to the body, squatting as close as he could get without disturbing the puddle of blood. All he could see was the red stain in the middle of Plain's back. An exit wound, he thought; but the cloth was too soaked to show a hole. Lucas looked around the room. "You find a bullet hole anywhere?"

"Yeah. The problem is, the whole place is poured concrete. There's a big goddamn dent in the wall over there." He pointed, and Lucas saw the gray pit. "The slug went somewhere else. I wouldn't be surprised if it more or less evaporated. Hit the wall straight-on."

"When are you gonna roll him over?" he asked.

"We'reready." Allport nodded to an assistant medical examiner, who was sitting on a chair in the kitchen, reading a comic book. "But our photo guy is checking what he got on filmwe don't want any mistakes on this."

"So how lone?"

"He's been out of here for half an hour, so it should be anytime."

"Where's Plain's assistant?" Lucas asked.

"Down in the studio."

"Mind if I chat with him?"

"Go ahead. I'll call you when we roll him."

The studio consisted of five roomsone big open space with pull-down paper rolls mounted on the walls; a smaller room full of strange-looking tables with curved milky-white plastic tops; a small room with a group of hooded lights and a half-dozen chairs of different kinds, apparently a portrait studio; an office and storage space; and an entry.

Lucas found James Graf in the office. He was dressed in a black turtleneck and black slacks, and had a thin black beard. He looked, Lucas thought, like a picture of one of the old-time beatniks. Graf was lying on a couch, an arm thrown over his eyes. Lucas dragged a director's chair across the floor and sat down next to the couch. Graf lifted his head and looked wordlessly at Lucas. He'd been crying, Lucas thought.

"Did you see or hear anybody outside the studio or the apartment when you left for the grocery store?"

"I already talked."

"I'm from Minneapolis. I'm working on the Alie'e murder," Lucas said. "I just have a couple of questions. Did you see or hear anybody?"

"I didn't see anyone, but we heard people from time to time, when we were working. There'salways somebody around," Graf said. "People here work all night sometimes. They're always out wandering around in the hallways."

"But you didn'tsee anybody."

"No, but I did recognize one voice. Joyce, I don't know her last name, she's an artist, down the hall. I heard her yelling, and running in the hall. Laughing. This was a few minutes before I went out. I told the St. Paul police."

"How about cars in the parking lot?"

Graf dropped his head back, refocused on the ceiling, thinking, then shook his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't notice anything unusual. We did have a wrong-number phone call about two o'clock, which was pretty unusual, but I told St. Paul and they're checking."

"This artist, Joyce, was wandering around. For what?"

"I don't know." Graf pushed himself up on the couch. "But you know, she was downhere. He was killed upstairs, and to get upstairs, you have to go all the way to the middle of the building and take the elevator or the public stairs. Unless you take a fire escape. So if he was waiting up there, she probably wouldn't have seen him."

"You don't think he came in through here." Lucas nodded at the studio door.

"No. Ammy was on his way upstairs when I left, and the bolts on all the doors lock automatically. And those doors, they're steel. We've got maybe a hundred thousand dollars' worth of photo equipment and computer stuff in here, and the place is full of thievesstuff gets stolen all the timeso our doors aregood. The locks are good. So I think whoever it was, went up and knocked on the door upstairs, and killed Ammy when he answered it."

"Would Plain just open the door if somebody knocked?"

"Well maybe. I mean, everybody in the building knows everybody else, so if somebody knocks" He gestured at the door. "The doors upstairs are just like these: solid, no windows. If somebody knocks, you have to open it to see who it is. And maybe"

"What?"

"Maybe he thought it was me, coming back for something," Graf said.

"How often did he send you out?"

"Most nights when we're working. I'd go get some food somewhere and we'd eat it upstairs, in the kitchen. We don't like to have food in here, 'cause you get grease around, and crumbs, and then you get bugs and mice. There's just too much stuff in here."

"So he might have thought it was you, coming back."

"Yes."

"Did he have his shirt on when you last saw him?"

"Yes. And his shoes. He was going to take a shower."

"So whoever attacked him, it probably had to happen within a few minutes of your leaving."

"Probably. I don't think he'd taken his shower yet. His hair didn't look wet He always washed his hair, because if we were working a long time, it'd get greasy. That's what he always said."

"Do you think"

Allport shouted down from the apartment level. "We're gonna roll him."

Lucas went back upstairs. The medical examiner was pulling on yellow rubber gloves; a cop and an ME's assistant were already wearing them. A photographer squatted in the corner, sorting equipment out of a camera bag. An eight-foot-long sheet of plastic had been spread across the floor, just outside the blood puddle.

"Gonna turn him," Allport said.

"Gotta pick him up, straight up, keep him in the air, don't let him dip back into the puddle. Then we're gonna roll onto the plastic," the ME told the other two guys with gloves.

"Did you talk to somebody named Joyce?" Lucas asked Allport.

"Joyce Woo," Allport said, nodding.

The ME interrupted. "You're gonna have to move, we're gonna swing him right past you," he said. Lucas and Allport stepped back. The ME said, "Bill, you gotta hang on to the shoulder at the same time you pick up the hand or we'll lose him. With the blood on there, he could be slippery.

"She's an Oriental chick," Allport said to Lucas. "She was out in the hallway. She might've seen somebody, she might even have heard the shot, but she was so drunk at the time that she's not sure. I mean, she's sure, but we're not sure. Go talk to her."

"The phone call? The wrong number?"

"Still looking for it."

"Ready?" The medical examiner asked. "Lift"

When they moved the body, Lucas turned away. But he heard it. As it broke free of the partially coagulated blood, it sounded like a boot coming out of a mudhole.

They picked Plain straight up, carried him facedown to the plastic sheet, and then flipped him in midair and dropped him to the plastic. His eyes were open; Lucas winced and turned away for a moment.

"Nothing here," Allport said. "Boom, he falls down."

Lucas squatted, looked Plain in the face. "So strange," he said.

"What?"

"The killings at the party were improvised," Lucas said. "Who'd be crazy enough to go to a big party, planning to kill somebody in a hallway, and then strangle a famous model in a bedroom, with a hundred people around? Had to be improvised. It seemed almost accidental."

"This ain't," Allport said. "Maybe this Plain guy knew something and the killer had to shut him up."

Lucas stood up. "That's pretty complicated."

When Joyce Woo answered her door, she was holding a beer mug half full of white wine, and her apartment reeked of the stuff. She was short, stocky, moon-faced, and wore thick-lensed glasses. She invited him in, and slumped on a couch with paisley cushions. Lucas pulled up a kitchen chair.

"I told the other cops I saw somebody," she said, nipping at the wine, looking at Lucas over the rim of the glass. "Down the hall. But I didn't see him very well, 'cause I was playing catch-me-fuck-me with a friend."

"You were, uh"

"A guy I know from across the street, a computer-art guy. Not what you'd call real good-looking, but, what the hell, I'm not exactly the Queen of the May. And he's big where it counts, if you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, well" Big-where-it-counts was getting a workout, between the computer guy and Clark the welder. But she wasn't finished with the idea.

"It's like that with all the computer guys, you know?" She rolled her head back, staring at the ceiling, as if she were trying to unlock a conundrum. "I don't know why. You'd think the jocks would be the guys with big wieners, but it's never like that. It's always these thin skinny computer guys who got the package."

"You were playing" Lucas said, trying to wrench her back on track.

She rolled her head forward, focused on him, and said, "Yeah. He gives me a two-minute head start, and then if he can catch me in the building in five minutes, he gets to fuck me."

"Well, that sounds like"

"Sometimes I cheat and let him catch me," she said. She burped. "Anyway, we run all over the building. I was running down the hall, and I saw this guy in the stairwell. I yelled at him, just, 'Hello,' and kept going."

"Was he going up or down?"

"Don't know. He was just there, in the stairwell," she said.

"He didn't answer?"

"No."

"What time was it?" Lucas asked.

"I don't know, but early. Or late. Whatever. I talked to Jimmy for a minute this morning, after they found the body."

"This is Jimmy, Plains assistant?"

"Yeah. Anyway, he heard me yelling in the hallway, and the only time I was yelling that they would have heard was about the time I saw the guy. So when I saw him, Plain was still alive."

"You didn't think it was weird that somebody was wandering around the building in the middle of the night?" Lucas asked.

"This building? I'd think it was weird if people weren't wandering around in the middle of the night."

"The St. Paul police said you might have heard a shot."

"Maybe. I heard a loud noise, but it might have been a door banging shut. We've got all these metal doors in here, and they echo off the concrete when you let them bang shut," she said. "I didn't think about it at the time, except that I heard it."

"This guy in the hallway looked like what?"

"Porky. That's all I can say. Porky. He was sort of turned around from me" A puzzled look crossed her face. "You know something that crossed my mind? This is stupid. I thought the guy might be the vending machine guy. We got a vending machine guy who looks like thisguy."

"Did you tell the other cops that?" Lucas asked.

"No, I just thought of it," she said.

"The vending machine guy wouldn't be here at that time in the morning."

"No."

"But you play catch-me-fuck-me at that time."

"Sure. The way it works is, I drink myself into a stupor in the morning, which I'm doing now. Then I sleep until about three o'clock or maybe four o'clock. Then I get up, and I feel like shit and I eat something, and then I work. I work until midnight, and then you know, whatever. I eat again, and sometimes Neil comes over and we play. And then, when I start getting sleepy, I start drinking."

"Did this Neil guy, your friend, did he see the man in the stairwell?"

"The other cops went and got him up, and he said he didn't see anybody," she said.

"All right." Lucas looked around the apartment, which seemed spartan if not absolutely bare. The only thing hung on the walls was a Kliban cat calendar. "What kind of art do you do?" he asked.

"Conceptual," she said.

Lucas had just turned the corner at the top of the stairs when he heard the woman scream. The scream came from Plain's apartment, and the cop at the door turned to look inside. A second later, a woman ran out, directly into the green concrete-block wall on the opposite side of the hall. She ran into it full-face, staggered from the blow, ran another step, and then Lucas caught her as she sagged toward the floor. The woman held on and turned her face sideways, and Lucas first registered the scars.

Jael Corbeau. She wrapped her arms around him, blindly, using him for support. Lucas half turned, and Allport came through the door, spotted them.

"Ah, Jesus," he said. "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have" He looked at Lucas. "We told her she'd have to wait until we got him to the medical examiners to see him. We had the sheet over him and she just stooped down and ripped it off before we could stop her. Jesus, Miz Corbeau, I'm sorry"

"I gotta go home," she said. "I gotta go home."

"Where's your car?" Lucas asked. He let her go, but she held on to his jacket with one hand. She hadn't looked at his face yet; he was a handy post.

"I don't have a car. A friend brought me."

"Is he still here?"

"No, the police wouldn't let him come up, so I told him I'd catch a cab. I thought, I thought, I thought I thought I'd be here for a long time. But I gotta go home. If I can't have him" She looked back at Plain's door.

"Where do you live?" Lucas asked.

Now she looked up at him. "South Minneapolis."

"I'll give you a lift," Lucas said. He looked at Allport. "Do you need to talk to her?"

Allport shrugged. "Sooner or later, but it doesn't have to be this minute. We can talk to her this afternoon or tomorrow unless you think you might have some information we need, Miz Corbeau."

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know"

"You better go on home. We'll have somebody call you this afternoon Get some rest."

Lucas said, "The Woo woman. She said that the guy she saw in the hall looked like the vending machine guy."

Allport's forehead wrinkled. "She didn't say anything about that to us."

"She's a little drunk," Lucas said.

"The vending machine guy?"

Lucas said, "This way," and took Jael toward the door Halfway down, she stopped suddenly and said, "I have to make the arrangements."

"Not now," Lucas said. "There's nothing you can do here."

"A funeral."

"Call somebody from your house. If you don't have a funeral director, I can get you the name of a guy who'll take care of you," Lucas said.

"Oh, God." They started down the hall again.

"Did you call your folks?" Lucas asked.

"My mother's dead. My father I'll have to find him. He's in Australia or someplace right now."

At the first floor, there was a short wide flight of steps down to the door and they could see a cop standing with his back to the glass. Lucas pushed through and the cop half turned, and Lucas heard somebody say, "That's her and that's Davenport."

Jael stopped, and a knot of people in dark coats hurried toward them; down the street were two TV trucks. A still photographer started ratcheting shots with an F5, and a TV cameraman was already shooting, while another ran down the street, towing a reporter on the end of a microphone cord. Lucas recognized the towed reporter as an old friend who'd done a turn as a studio talking-head, and now was back on the street.

Jael squared off against the cameras, looked up at Davenport, waited for the second camera to come up, smiled, and said, "I just want to say, go fuck yourselves." To Lucas: "Where's your car?"

"Across the street." He took her arm and they went left, and the late-arriving reporter followed.

"Lucas, is he dead?"

Lucas turned his head and said, "This is St. Paul. Ask St. Paul."

"Yeah, but"

They hurried across the street into the furniture store parking lot, the reporter trailing behind, the camera on the end of her tether. Lucas stuffed Jael in the driver's side and the reporter, an old friend, followed him around the back of the car and said, in a low tone, "Answer one question."

He leaned toward her and said, "Stick your microphone under your coat." She did, and he whispered, "Plains dead. He was shot to death. A very bad scene. You didn't get it from me."

In the car, Jael sat silently, hunched, staring straight ahead, as they crossed the interstate, hit a couple of red lights, and then dropped down a ramp onto the roadway heading west toward Minneapolis. After a while, she said, "Honest to God."

"What'd you say? I'm sorry"

"Nothing. Honest to God, I can't believe he's dead." She looked at him. "You were one of the men who interviewed me. I remember you."

"Yeah."

"You look mean. I kept thinking you were going to say something mean," she said.

"Thanks, I appreciate that. I'll write it in my book of memories."

She said, "I'm sorry if I offended you."

"No"

"Its the scars," she said. She reached out and touched his neck, a white scar that had resolved itself into a question mark. "How'd that happen?"

"Oh you know."

"No. You'll have to tell me."

"A little girl shot me," Lucas said. "A surgeon had to do a tracheotomy so I could breathe."

"Not a very good surgeon, from the looks of the scar."

"She did it with a jackknife," Lucas said. "She's a pretty good surgeon."

"Why did a little girl shoot you? Like, really a little girl?" Jael asked.

"Yeah. Really. Because she was in love with the guy who was abusing her, and I was chasing him. She was trying to buy him time to get away."

"Did he get away?"

"No."

"What about the girl?"

"Another cop shot her. She was killed."

"Really." She looked at him for another minute, and then asked, "What about the one on your face? The scar?"

"A fishing leader. Snapped it out of a log and it buried itself in my face."

"Bet that hurt."

"No, not really. It stung a little. The real problem was, I didn't do anything about it. Washed it with a can of Coke, pressed it with a shirtsleeve, and kept fishing. It didn't look that bad when I went to bed, but when I woke up the next morning, it was infected."

"I made a lot of money with my scars," Jael said. Her voice had a distant quality, as though she might be sliding into shock. Lucas glanced at her, took in the scars again: three distinct white lines that slashed across her face from the hairline on the left temple. Two of them crossed her nose and ended on her right cheek. The other ran at a steeper angle, missed the left wing of her nose, crossed her lips, and ended on the right side of her chin. They gave her face an odd look of discontinuity, as though she were a piece of paper that had been torn, then Scotch-taped together a little less than perfectly.

"That's because, uh"

"I look terrific. Lots of little boys go home and jerk off when they think about them."

"Yeah? You got them in a car accident?" Lucas asked.

Looking at him again. "How'd you know?"

"I spent a few years in uniform, I've done my share of car accidents. Looks like you hit the glass"

"Yeah."

"Was that when your mother?"

"No, no. She took pills. She thought she had Alzheimer's, and sleeping pills were a way out."

"She didn't?" Lucas asked.

"No. She just saw a program about it on TV and did a self-diagnosis. When she told people what she was going to do, nobody believed her. Then she did it. The joke was on them."

Lucas said, "Jesus."

A little later: "How can a cop afford a car like this? Are you on the take?"

"No, no, I'm rich."

"Really? So am I, I guess. That's what they tell me. The bank. I'll be even richer when I inherit from Amny."

"You'll inherit?"

"Yup. Unless he changed his will when he got pissed at me. About Alie'e. I don't think he did."

"A lot?"

"A few million."

"Jeez. If you don't mind me asking where'd you get it?"

"From my mom and dad. When my dad was in college, a long time ago, he invented a new kind of ball for roll-on deodorant." Lucas thought she was joking, but she was solemn as ever. "No, really. The ball has to have some kind of surface thing that I don't know about, to pick up an even coat of deodorant. I mean, they had roll-ons, but they weren't very good. Everybody was looking for a better ball. The problem defeated the best minds of a generation, until Dad came along. Then he got rich, and gave everybody trust funds, and started smoking a lot of dope. When Mom died, Amny and I got her part of the divorce settlement, on top of our trusts."

And later: "How'd you get rich?"

"Computers," Lucas said.

"Ah," she said. "Like everybody."

She was not in a condition to talk much about her brother. Halfway back, she put her head down, the heels of her hands in her eye sockets, and began to sob. Lucas let her go, and drove; she stopped after a while, and wiped her eyes. "God. I can't believe it."

Lucas dropped her at her house. A man was sitting on the steps, fiddling with the wheel on a bicycle. "Don," she said. "A friend. He keeps hoping I'm going to sleep with him, but I'm not going to."

"It's a country song," Lucas said.

She looked at him quickly, and almost smiled. "You'll call me if anything happens. If they catch anybody."

"Yeah."

"Do you think this person I mean, if it's about Alie'e, do you think" Her voice trailed away, then her hand went to her mouth and she said, "Oh." She looked up and down the street.

"What?"

"There used to be a lot of crack around here," she said. "That's why all the houses have bars on the windows, and big doors."

"It's going away now," Lucas said. "Burned itself out."

"I know. But when there was a lot of crack, the crack kids would try to break in all the time. I'd hear them, and I'd go yell at them from a window, and they'd run away. But somebody tried to break in the night before last. I thought it might be crack, but I thought it was weird, too. The guy didn't look like a crack kid. He was too big, he was" She made a gesture.

"Porky?" Lucas asked.

"Well, I don't know if he was porky. I was gonna say he looked sort of rednecky sort of. Why?"

"White?"

"I think so, but I couldn't really see him. But his clothes looked white."

Lucas peered through the windshield at Don, the friend, who was now standing up, looking at them as they idled by the curb. "Can you trust this guy?"

"Don? He wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Do you have anybody you can trust, who would hurt a fly?" Lucas asked.

"Why? Tell me."

"A woman in your brothers building saw a man last night. She said he was porky. She saw him probably within a few minutes of the time your brother was killed."

"You think?"

"I think we shouldn't take any chances. The guy who killed your brother is a nut. Stick with Don. I'm gonna have a cop drop by and hang out with you."

"How'll I know it's really him? The cop."

"Not a him, it's a her. Ask for her ID. Her name's Marcy Sherrill." He looked at her. "I think you'll probably like each other."