Easy Prey

by John Sandford

  "Any dope around?"

  "All over the goddamn place."

  "You use drugs?" Sloan asked it mildly enough, but there was a snake in the question, which everyone could see. Plain did not hesitate.

  "No. I don't use any chemicals. I did, for two years, when I was a teenager. I used cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, LSD, peyote, marijuana, alcohol, nicotine, and a couple of other things. Hypnotics. Quaaludes. I found out that each and every one of them made me stupider than I already was, and I decided I couldn't afford that. So, eleven years ago, I stopped."

  "Aspirin?" Lucas asked. A little sarcasm.

  "I still use aspirin and ibuprofen. I'm not a moron." His tone of voice showed no reaction to the sarcasm, and somehow left Lucas feeling that the sarcasm had been juvenile. Plain was ahead on points.

  "So what happened next?" Sloan asked.

  At about midnight, Plain said, he left the party at Sallance Hanson's and went back to his studio in St. Paul's Lowertown with a friend, Sandy Smith, where they met an employee, James Graf, to look at scanned negatives from that mornings photo shoot. After half an hour of looking at the negs, Smith left for his home while Plain and Graf continued to work with the negatives.

  "What were the pictures of?" Lucas asked.

  Plain tilted his head. "You don't know?"

  "No."

  "Some investigation," he said to the brown-haired man. Then: "I spent all yesterday morning and the early part of the afternoon doing a fashion shoot with Alie'e."

  "Did you have a personal relationship with Alie'e?" Sloan asked.

  "What do you mean, personal? You mean, was I fucking her?"

  "Or anything else," Lucas said.

  "No. I wasn't fucking her. I wasn't interested in her. She was a dummy. She was like a toy that you plugged your dick into. Or, if you were a woman, that you stuck your tongue into. She was interested in feeling good, and that was about it," he said.

  "Your sister was involved with her?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah. They were gobbling each other, or whatever women do. Sticking heroin in their arms, putting coke up their noses."

  Sloan said, "Hmph," and Lucas asked, "I was talking to some woman who was at the party, and she said you were so jealous of the relationship between Alie'e and your sister that you might kill Jael if you had the chance. Which suggests that Alie'e was more to you than just another model."

  Plain tipped his head, regarding Lucas with some curiosity, and said, "You're lying. Nobody told you that. But that's interesting. You apparently got hold of something, somewhere, and you don't know quite what it is."

  "Get a lawyer," his friend said from the corner.

  Lucas grinned involuntarily. He'd been caught—and that made him curious. "Tell me why you think I'm lying."

  "Because you got it just backwards," Plain said.

  "What?"

  "I wasn't jealous because my sister took Alie'e away from me. I'm a little jealous—I admit it—because Alie'e took Jael away from me."

  In the immediate silence, the brown-haired friend said, "Oh shit," and Lucas and Sloan looked at each other, trying to figure out what Plain had just said. Plain, picking on Sloan because he was the straighter-looking of the two cops, leaned toward him and said, "Yup. I was fucking my sister."

  "Now, that was an interview and a half," Sloan said when they'd finished and Plain and his friend had gone. They had an hour of tape.

  Lucas rubbed his forehead. "I was feeling almost sympathetic there, toward the end. Two arty parents, rich dipshits, get divorced. Each one takes a kid. The kids don't see or speak to each other for fifteen years, then they run into each other, virtual strangers, good-looking, one is a model and the other one is working in photography, both running with the same crowd. If they hadn't been brother and sister, you'd expect them to fall in bed."

  "Yeah, but…"

  Lucas nodded. "Then there's the other thing."

  "What's that?"

  "He says his sister quit modeling and now is a professional potter, big in the art world. I've met a couple of potters."

  "I wouldn't doubt it," Sloan said. He had an exaggerated idea of Lucas's love life.

  "I'll tell you one thing about potters," Lucas continued. "They pick up this clay, and they throw it around, and they beat it and twist it and turn it… a few years of that, and they've got arms and hands like wrestlers."

  "Alie'e was strangled," Sloan said. "Be interesting to talk to the sister."

  Alie'e's boyfriend, a guy who insisted his only name was Jax, came through Homicide's front door a few steps before Jael Corbeau came in with her lawyer. Lucas had to decide which interview to watch, and he went with Corbeau.

  Sloan took the statement, with Lucas and Swanson sitting in; Lucas tried not to stare, but Jael Corbeau was somebody to stare at. Not immediately—not a flash thing—but after a minute or so, he found it hard to stop looking at her. She had the same angular face as her brother, but was blond. And she had tracks on her face, scars; they did something unnatural: made it hard to breathe.

  After the preliminaries—Sloan read her the Miranda warning, and the lawyer said that he might ask his client not to reply to certain questions, and that was not to be taken as an indication of guilt—Sloan said, "Tell us about your relationship with Alie'e Maison."

  Jael looked at her lawyer, who nodded, and she said, "Well, I didn't kill her. Or the other woman."

  "I'm happy to hear that," Sloan said, smiling at her. "Do you have any idea who might have?"

  "No. Really. I've been going over and over it in my head, and I can't figure out who would." Her eyes drifted away from Sloan and stopped at Lucas. "Nobody disliked her enough. I mean, I don't know about the other woman, but Alie'e—some people probably disliked her, but not enough to hurt her."

  "How about in New York? Anybody there?" Sloan asked.

  "No." She was talking to Lucas now. "Of the top ten or fifteen models that you hear about, you know, the supermodels, she's like number seven or eight. She was very close to the top—maybe she would have become number one, she had the look for it—but there are other people who really are bigger. Who would be more like to attract a crazy person, if that's what you're thinking."

  "We don't know quite what to think yet," Sloan said. "So you don't—"

  Jael leaned forward, interrupting: "But you know, she had a big following on the Internet. A lot of the… you know, engineer-type people were interested in her. They put up Internet pages, or whatever you call them, Websites, with her pictures. Some of them grafted porno pictures on her, so you'd see a woman fucking somebody, and the face would be Alie'e's… there are quite a few of those."

  "Hmm. Interesting," Sloan said. He looked at Lucas, then back at Jael, and asked, "Did she ever do any porn?"

  "No. Of course not. Aside from everything else, she couldn't afford to. If she'd done any porn, the big courtiers would have dropped her like a hot rock."

  "Okay… How about Lansing? Was she a friend of yours?" Sloan asked.

  "No. I knew her—she came to parties—but she really wasn't part of the… I don't know what you'd call it. The art scene? That sounds pretentious and stupid at the same time."

  "So she wasn't a friend, but you sort of knew her," Lucas said.

  "Yes. She was some kind of hotel executive."

  Sloan nodded. "Okay. Let me ask you about your personal relationship with Miz Maison. You were… what?"

  He let the question hang there, unfinished. Corbeau hesitated for a moment, then said, "We had both a friendship and a sexual relationship. I originally met her in New York. We were both working as models—this was before she became as famous as she is… was. We were both from Minnesota—that brought us together, and we became friends."

  "The relationship continued even after you moved back here? I understand you live here now."

  "Yes, although I go to New York every few weeks, to talk with dealers. I represent both myself and several other potters to the New York galleries.
I'd usually stay at Alie'e's apartment."

  "Not always?"

  "Not always. We both continued to have other relationships—with men as well as women." She was looking at Lucas again. "Neither one of us thought of ourselves as primarily lesbian; we were just very good friends and our friendship had a physical component to it. If she had a man over, then I would stay someplace else. Usually up on Central Park South, so I could walk to the galleries on Fifty-seventh Street and over on Madison Avenue."

  "Did you have a sexual encounter with Miz Maison last night at the party?" Sloan asked.

  Another quick glance at the lawyer. "Yes."

  "You were alone with her?"

  "No. There were three of us. The other woman is Catherine Kinsley, who I believe is up north at her cabin with her husband. I haven't been able to reach her." She flushed for the first time. "This is not heavy duty masculine-style sexuality. This is more like… cuddling, kissing, talking with each other."

  "But there was a physical component."

  "Yes."

  "What happened… afterwards? How was she when you left?"

  "Sleepy. We were all sleepy, but she'd gotten up very early for her photo shoot, and had to get up the next day, and Silly—Silly Hanson—said she could sleep there, and so we left her. She was okay."

  "And neither you nor Miz Kinsley saw her again."

  "No. Well, I don't know if Catherine saw her, because, like I said, I haven't been able to reach her this morning. I couldn't find her number, and I don't know exactly where the cabin is. Anyway, I don't think she saw her. We walked out to our cars together, said good-bye, and I went home. Your police people woke me up."

  "Miz Maison injected heroin around the time of your encounter. Were you present for that?"

  "No." Quick and definite, Lucas thought. She'd known the question was coming.

  Sloan continued. "You didn't know that she was using heroin?"

  A slight hesitation, another glance at the attorney, and, "I thought she might be tripping when we met in the bedroom. She was… languid. She was the way you get when you're using. But I wasn't there when she injected, and I don't think she had much, because she didn't fall asleep or anything, not while we were there. It was more like a… a… party favor."

  "A party favor," Lucas said.

  "Yeah. That's what people call them. Some people call them short pops—you know, if you want the effect but don't want to get addicted."

  "You get addicted anyway," Sloan said.

  Corbeau flipped her head. "You know that's not true. That's just a political position."

  Sloan looked at Lucas, who raised his eyebrows, and Sloan said, "I'm not here to argue with you, but just for the record, Miz Corbeau: Short pops will addict you as fast as anything. Believe me or don't believe me. But that's the way it is."

  She shook her head, and Sloan said, "I don't want to embarrass you, but I've got to ask this question. The medical examiner tells us that Miz Maison has small light scratches around her vulva, and light bruising, as if she'd been involved in a fairly active .sexual encounter involving manual stimulation and perhaps oral stimulation… Would that have characterized your encounter?"

  She flushed again, looked at them quickly, one at a time, taking them in. Lucas, still feeling the effect she had on his breathing, squirmed; he felt like a pervert. She didn't help; she asked, "Do you guys get off on this sort of thing?"

  Sloan, his face a monk's stolid mask, shook his head. "Sitting in a room like this, full of metal tables and tile floors, this is not very sexual, Miz Corbeau. We need to know, because we need to know if she had another sexual contact after yours, or if yours was most likely the cause of the scratching and bruising. Miz Maison was strangled, which frequently is associated with sexual activity."

  "Okay," she said. "Yes, it's possible that she was scratched. Especially by Catherine. Catherine can be a little rough, and she had long nails. I keep mine very short because of my job."

  "You're a potter."

  "Yes."

  "And you had nothing to do with the death of Alie'e Maison?"

  "No, I did not." She bit her lip as the words came out, and her chin trembled. To Lucas, she seemed shaken.

  "Do you think your brother might have?" Lucas interjected.

  She looked at him, a frown flickering across her face, and then said, "No. If Amnon was going to go after somebody, it'd be me."

  "Why you?"

  "We have a personal problem."

  "He told us about your relationship," Lucas said. "You think that could turn to violence? The breakup?"

  She turned away, looking at the floor, twisting her fingers together. "Amnon has violence in him. He wouldn't have killed Alie'e, because he had no… regard for her. He didn't care about her. You'd have to have some feeling for a person before you killed her, wouldn't you?"

  "No," Lucas said. "Not if you're psychologically disturbed. People who are disturbed may kill to change the way they feel about something. The person killed may be a complete stranger, if the killing somehow… medicates… the disturbed person."

  "God, that's awful."

  "Yes. Your brother?"

  "No. He's not disturbed that way. I know him well enough to say that."

  "How did you get your names?" Swanson asked.

  "Our parents were hippies, they went from one thing to another, and they eventually tried out Judaism. Amnon and I were born during that period. They're Bible names."

  "I'm a Catholic," Lucas said. "We weren't big on Bibles when I was a kid. Do the names mean something?"

  "Jael was maybe a sorceress. Deborah fought Sisera, the Canaanite, and defeated him, and Sisera fled the battlefield and hid in Jael's tent. When he was asleep, she killed him by driving a tent peg through his head."

  "Ouch," Lucas said. A tiny flicker of a smile on her sad face? "How about Amnon?"

  "Amnon was one of Solomon's sons," Corbeau said.

  "What, he was wise?"

  "No, no," she said. "He slept with his sister." She scanned the four men, Lucas, Sloan, Swanson, and her own attorney, showed a flicker of a sad smile again, and said, "Were my parents prophets, or what?"

  When they were done, they milled in the hallway outside the interview room, and Lucas asked Jael, "Why'd you quit modeling?"

  "You think I shouldn't have?"

  "I think you could have… continued," he said. She made him feel like a provincial clown, and he kind of liked it.

  "It's boring," she said. "It's like making movies, except they don't pay you enough."

  "Movies are boring?"

  "Movies are fuckin' nightmares," she said. She laughed, and grasped his arm, just for a second; she was the kind of woman who liked to touch people, Lucas thought. "Shooting a movie is like watching grass grow."

  When Jael and her lawyer left, Lucas and Sloan walked back to homicide. Frank Lester was talking to Rose Marie, and waved Lucas over.

  "How'd you guys do?" he asked.

  Lucas shrugged. "There's a lot of motive floating around, but not that points at Alie'e or Lansing."

  "Who, then?" Rose Marie asked.

  "Everybody," Lucas said. "We've got incest, jealousy, drugs, love triangles. You name it, we got it. But nothing that points at anyone."

  "That's what I was telling Rose Marie," Lester said. "We've got so many suspects that it's turning into a technical problem. We've got fifty-four people for the party now, and there'll be more. How in the hell do you really interview more than fifty people, and do a good job of it? Who do you push, and how hard? The thing is, if the killer was at the party, and he's our forty-fifth interview… there's no feel to it anymore."

  "You're asking everybody to point at somebody else?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah, but they're all lying through their teeth. Nobody knew that everybody was using drugs… Anyway, we've only been able to probably eliminate a half-dozen people who left the party when Alie'e was still circulating. With that open window, we can't eliminate anyone who left after Ali
e'e went back to the bedroom. Somebody might have unlocked the window for the purpose of leaving, and coming back later."

  "If the window was used at all," Sloan said.

  "Yeah. If."

  "How about the husband of the woman who was with Alie'e and Corbeau on the bed, this Catherine Kinsley. Did he know about the relationship?" Lucas asked.

  "They're not in yet," Rose Marie said.

  Lester said, "I did just sit in on an interview with Alie'e's boyfriend—"

  "I saw him," Lucas said.

  "Noxious little penis," Lester said. "His real name used to be Jim Shue. He didn't think he looked like a shoe, so he tried to change it to JX. J for James, X for nothing. The court told him he had to have a vowel, so he winds up Jax. Anyway, he knew all about the relationship with Corbeau. He says it didn't bother him. He called it Alie'e's 'alternate modality.' He said that they were both multisexual. He said pretty soon everybody will be."

  "Too late for me," Rose Marie said.

  "Yeah. I'm barely unisexual," Lester said. "Anyway, he's a dipshit. He said he had nothing to do with her death, but we're putting him on the shortlist."

  "What about the media thing?" Rose Marie asked Lucas. "The human sacrifice?"

  "I'll ask Del," Lucas said. "He's setting it up."

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  Del was waiting outside Lucas's office, leaning patiently against the wall. When he saw Lucas coming, he walked down the hall to meet him and said, "I'm clear with IA."

  "What about finding somebody we can throw to the media?"

  "I can't find a connection. These aren't street people. But the dope guys are set up to raid George Shaw's operation—"

  "Shaw is street. He's not Alie'e's dealer," Lucas said.

  "I know, but it's what we got," Del said. "We got confirmation last night that he's got a lot of cocaine on hand and maybe some heroin. So they're gonna hit him, and I thought we could ride along. We don't say anything, but we get your picture taken."

  "Where?"

  "A place down on Thirty-fifth. Shaw has been sleeping there, usually until three o'clock or so. He's there now. We're gonna hit him a little after noon. If we work it right, the TV people are gonna jump to a conclusion. We can deny our ass off and they won't believe us for a minute."