[Prey 11] - Easy Prey

by John Sandford

  "Good—keep her out of the way," Lucas said. "What'd you get?"

  The police shrink, Angela Harris, had come in to talk with Lester an hour earlier, after she'd heard about the death of Alie'e's parents. "She doesn't think it's a murder-suicide," Lester said.

  "She knows about the bullet hole in the car door?"

  "Yeah, but she's predicting that we'll find the killings weren't murder-suicide. She thinks that they were killed in revenge for the murder of Alie'e. Along with Plain, and along with the attempt on Corbeau, if that's what it was. She thinks we need to take another very close look at Tom Olson. She's talked to some guys who know him, and he's apparently had some odd psychological episodes in the past that suggest he may have multiple personalities. Harris thinks one of the personalities is a psycho."

  "Aw, man. That's too weird," Lucas said.

  "Yeah, but she says it explains what happened with the parents. Olson gets in psycho mode, and starts eliminating people who he blames for killing Alie'e—people who led her into her lifestyle with dope and lesbians and all that. The tabloid pictures set him off: the rouged nipples and all of that, some kind of psychosexual trip with his sister.

  "So he goes after Plain, then he goes for Corbeau because of this lesbian stuff that's been coming out—he hits Marcy instead, but he was going for Corbeau. Then he kills his parents, the people who are really responsible for putting her in this life… and we know he blames them for that. Then, having killed them, he wanders off in psychological exhaustion to the mall, changes personalities. This personality has no idea what the other personality did… and then in that same personality comes back to the motel, runs into you, then goes up to his parents' room and finds the bodies. He comes running after you, but in the shock, he begins to disassociate."

  "Disassociate?"

  "Fuck me, I don't know," Lester said. "That's what she said."

  "He falls apart," Rose Marie said. "Somewhere, his main personality knows what he did but can't handle it. So his whole jury-rigged persona starts falling to pieces. He has what you saw—some kind of fit."

  Lucas thought about it, then said, "He'd have access to his fathers car. If it's not murder-suicide…"

  "We thought about that. What we're doing right now is waiting for the crime-scene guys and the ME to finish down there. If they say it's a murder-suicide, then we slow down a little; if they say it's not, then we look at Olson. He's not going anyplace; he's asleep, in the hospital. The paramedics said the shock really got on top of him."

  "All right," Lucas said. "Things are looking a little better for Marcy."

  Rose Marie nodded. "She's gonna make it, Lucas."

  They all thought about that for a minute, and Lucas felt a finger of darkness—the first premonition of the day. But he didn't say anything. He said, "There's a science thing that I picked up from the computer jocks I used to work with."

  "Yeah?" Lester asked.

  "Yeah. If you have enough information to make a good prediction, then you're probably getting a grip on the situation. If Harris is predicting that the Olsons aren't a murder-suicide, despite appearances, then maybe she's onto something."

  "You oughta talk to your girlfriend the nun," Rose Marie said.

  "I'll call her," Lucas said.

  He hung around awhile, watching Rose Marie work the telephones. Lester went out and got a Diet Coke and brought one back for Lucas. They were talking about nothing, waiting, when Lucas's cell phone rang.

  "It's Del," Lucas said, fumbling the phone out of his pocket.

  But it wasn't Del. A surprised dispatcher said, "Is this Lucas?"

  "It's me. I mean, it's my phone, anyway."

  "How come you're answering the phone?"

  "I'm running around… What's going on?"

  "I'm relaying a message from the Maplewood cops. They found that car you were looking for."

  "Car?"

  "Yeah, that, uh, I wrote the name… Derrick Deal?"

  "Oh, yeah." From about ten years ago. He looked at his watch: six hours, two more dead bodies, one shot cop. "Where was it?"

  "In some executive's reserved spot out in a 3M parking lot."

  "At 3M?" And he thought, Uh-oh.

  "Yes. That's what they say. They want to know what you want to do with it."

  "Can you patch me through? To the cop?"

  "Uh, just a minute…" A few seconds later, she came back. "I talked to them, and the executive whose space it is has a cell phone in his pocket, so you can call them directly. He's standing right there with them."

  The executive's name was Marx; he sounded interested. "The car's been here since yesterday. I finally called the cops, the police, to get it towed, because I was getting angry about it. They say it's on some kind of hit list."

  "Yeah… lemme talk to the cop."

  The cop came up, and when Lucas identified himself, said, "Hey, Chief, what's happening with the car?"

  Lucas gave him a quick story and asked, "Is there anything unusual about it?"

  "Yeah, one thing—you can see the keys on the floor of the drivers side. A key ring. They might've fallen out when he got out, and he locked it behind him."

  "Nothing else?"

  "Nope. The car's clean. Nothing else inside that we can see, except some maps and a Wall Street Journal on the floor of the backseat."

  "Listen, this has to do with the Maison case… and that car could be pretty important. I wonder if I could get you to open the door and use the keys to pop the trunk."

  "Jeez, I don't know. We don't carry the door openers anymore," the cop said.

  "How about if you break the window? It's pretty important."

  "Aw, man… I'd have to call in. Can I get back to you?"

  "Can I hold?"

  "Sure, just take a second."

  While the cop was calling in, Lucas said to Lester, "I'm gonna start using this phone, and then people are gonna start calling me on it, and pretty soon I'll be as crazy as the rest of you fuckers."

  "It feels kind of good after a while," Lester said. "People call you up, you feel important. Pretty soon, you start thinking about a beeper."

  "Yeah, in a pig's eye," Lucas said.

  "You just haven't experienced it yet," Lester said. "The connectivity rush."

  Franklin leaned into the doorway, and Lucas and Lester both looked up at him. Lucas said, "I thought you were with Jael Corbeau."

  "She's right there," Franklin said, pointing to his left. "Talking to a nurse. I can shoot the nurse, if you want."

  "That's okay," Rose Marie said. Franklin asked about Marcy, and Rose Marie began filling him in.

  Then the Maplewood cop called back and said, "Listen, Chief, my chief wants to talk with you. You got a number he can call?"

  "Hang on," Lucas said. He handed the phone to Lester and said, "Give him your cell-phone number."

  Lester read his number off, then handed the phone back to Lucas.

  Lucas could hear the Maplewood cop repeating the number to somebody else, and a second later, Lester's phone rang. He handed it to Lucas, who said, "Hello?"

  The Maplewood chief asked, "If we bust this car, are we gonna get sued?"

  "There's a suspicion of foul play, so we really don't want to move it, just in case," Lucas said, rolling his eyes at Lester. "We'll take responsibility. If the city won't, I'll pay for the window myself."

  "On your head," the Maplewood chief said, and Lucas could hear him talking in the background. He put his own phone to his ear, and the Maplewood cop at 3M said, "Okay, we're gonna bust it."

  Lucas said, "If you gotta pick up the keys, use gloves. Just in case." In his other ear, the Maplewood chief said, "Take it easy," and Lucas said, "Yeah, thanks," and handed the phone back to Lester, while the cop was saying, "We can leave the keys. I can see a trunk latch."

  From 3M, Lucas heard a crunch, then a door, and the Maplewood cop said, "We're popping the trunk." And a moment later, "Ah, shit."

  Lester, who'd been looking at Lucas's face, a
sked, "What?" and Franklin and Rose Marie, hearing the tone, stopped talking and looked at Lucas. Then the Maplewood cop came back and said, "I hope this guy ain't a friend of yours."

  "Aw, man." Lucas stood up. "What does it look like?"

  "Looks like somebody busted him in the head with a shovel. He's way dead."

  "Little guy? Maybe sixty? Long haircut for his age?"

  "Yeah. You got him. What's the deal?"

  Lucas looked at Rose Marie and said, "We got another one. I don't think it's about Alie'e. I think it's about Sandy Lansing."

  "Is this about Maison?" the cop asked in his ear.

  "So where does Alie'e's family fit in?" Rose Marie asked.

  "Maybe Tom Olson is on a revenge trip—but the first killings, that started it off, that's about Lansing."

  "Who're you talking to?" the Maplewood cop asked.

  To Rose Marie, Lucas said, "Just a minute," and into the phone, "I'll be out there in a few minutes. Exactly where're you at?" He made a mental note of the address, and hung up.

  "Can we avoid talking about Deal?" Lester asked. "To the media?"

  "I don't think so. The Maplewood cops know we're talking about Alie'e, and you know—word's gonna get out."

  "We've had a cop shot and four killings in one day." Rose Marie looked at Lester and then Franklin and back to Lucas. "What're we gonna do?"

  Lucas left them, found Jael huddled next to the nurses' station, Franklin standing by the outer door. Jael saw him and stood up, and Lucas said, "How are…" Jael reached around his neck with both arms and put her head against his chest and hung on.

  "I'm coming apart," she said after a while. "I can't do this."

  Chapter 17

  « ^ »

  Derrick Deal was distinctly deceased; the Maplewood cop hadn't been lying when he said he looked like he'd been hit with a shovel. The cop played a flashlight over Deal's face. The left side of his forehead and left eye socket had been crushed, and another indentation followed the line of his eyebrows across the right side of his face. Deal's right eyebrow looked like a stepped-on millipede, while his left one was gone entirely.

  "Wasn't a shovel, though," Lucas said, looking at the body. "Looks like he was hit with a chair."

  "You think so?"

  "Yeah. I once went to a killing where this guy hit his old lady with a kitchen chair. He said he thought it was gonna break, like they do in the movies. He might as well of hit her with a pipe. Her face looked just like this." He pointed at the dent leading out the right side of Deal's face. "I'll bet you it was an old wooden chair. The other guy swung it by the back, just like in the movies, and hit him in the face with the edge of the seat. One of the legs busted his brow ridge. You might find a mark from the other leg on his neck, or his chest."

  "I'll tell the ME," the cop said. "I never seen a chair job."

  Lucas stood around the melancholy scene until the ME got there, and convinced a crime-scene guy to check Deal's pockets. They found a wallet with eight dollars, two dollars and eleven cents in change, a withdrawal slip for twenty-five dollars from an ATM, and a small black-leather card case. The case had a dozen cards from Brown's Hotel.

  "No address book?" Lucas asked.

  "I don't find one," the crime-scene cop said.

  Lucas took a last, pensive look at the dead man's crushed face, got in his car, and started toward Deal's town house.

  Deal had known something. Lucas had seen it in his face when he went to talk with him, but hadn't known what Deal was lying about. After Lucas left him in the hotel, Deal probably had gone out looking for a little schmear. A few bucks to meet the rent, or whatever needed meeting. But it wasn't nice to blackmail a killer, who had nothing to lose… But now they had a connection. Deal had known the killer, or had known how to make a connection to get to him. They weren't three steps away anymore. One step, and they'd have him.

  The Maplewood cops had already opened Deal's town house. The place was a melancholy collection of small cubicles, an efficient, uninflected space for sleeping, eating, and watching television. He had no computer; nor could they find an address book or Rolodex. There had to be one, unless the killer had taken it.

  Lucas lingered at the house until he was sure there was no more to find, then headed for Browns Hotel. On the way, he called the hospital. They'd finished with Marcy, Rose Marie told him, but she wasn't out of the operating room yet. They were rigging her up for intensive care.

  "The doc thinks she's gonna make it," Rose Marie said. "They're gonna keep her under for a while, though. They don't want her popping anything loose."

  A knot in Lucas's neck loosened a notch. "Good. As long as there's no heart involvement."

  "It was lower than that, lower than what we heard. The slug went in below her breast at an outward angle, so it came out almost on her side. She must've been turning sideways when it hit her."

  "What about the slug in the railing? Have they ID'd it yet?"

  "They got it, but it's wrecked. We won't be able to ID the gun. They can say it's a .44 Magnum jacketed hollowpoint."

  "Then it's a different gun than the Bloomington gun," Lucas said. "And if it was a murder-suicide, why'd they bother to hide the big one?"

  At Brown's, the good-looking black woman was working behind the reception desk. When she saw Lucas come in, she said a word to the woman working with her and slipped out. Lucas glanced at her name tag and remembered: India. She said, "We heard about Derrick. Is it because you talked with him?"

  "I don't know," Lucas said. "But I need to look at his desk. I can get a search warrant, or we can just go look."

  "Can I ask the manager this time?"

  "If you have to. But I want to go down and stand by Derrick's cubicle while you ask," Lucas said.

  "I'll go ask," she said. And "I'm sorry, but my job…"

  "Sure."

  Lucas went down to Deal's office space. Another man was sitting in a cubicle, three down from Deal's, working with an old mechanical adding machine. He glanced at Lucas and said, "Can I help you?"

  "Waiting for the manager."

  "You the police?"

  "Yup."

  The man leaned back from his chair. He was Deal's age, and like

  Deal, a little heavy, balding, with wiry black hair on his arms. He locked his hands behind his head and said, "I don't know exactly what he was up to, but he seemed a little shady. He always had get-rich-quick deals."

  "You know anybody who bit?" Lucas asked.

  "No, not around here. He did not exactly inspire confidence."

  "He was not that bad a guy, though."

  "Hey, some of the best guys I know sell used cars. They've all got big deals cooking somewhere. I like them, but I'd never put my money with them."

  The outer door opened, and a tall man in a dark blue suit came through, trailed by India. The man had a beaked nose, close-set water-green eyes, and a black—too black—widows peak. He resembled Prince Philip just a little, and must've known it, because he had a red silk handkerchief peeking from his breast pocket. He looked Lucas up and down, and before the manager had a chance to open his mouth, Lucas didn't like him.

  "You're the police?" As if he doubted it. "Do you have identification?" He had a perfect, round, baritone English voice.

  "Yeah, but you usually don't want to flash the old buzzer in a high-class joint like this," Lucas said, looking around the room, as if the ceiling tiles might turn hostile. India's eyes cut sideways at him, and the corners of her mouth twitched. Lucas flipped open his ID, held it in front of the manager's eyes, and said, "We can lay some paper on you if you want. Otherwise, I'll just take a quick gander at Derrick's desk."

  "Well, I don't think you need a search warrant. We're all anxious to help find out what happened with Derrick," the manager said. He tilted his head back, the better to peer down his nose. "He'd reformed, you know. He was doing so well."

  Lucas shrugged. "So maybe it was an accident."

  The manager lifted an eyebrow, just
one. "We heard he was found locked in a car trunk, with his face smashed in."

  Lucas nodded judiciously. "Maybe you're right. Probably wasn't an accident. I never thought so, myself." He was getting tired of it. "So I can look around?"

  "I'd like to leave a staff member with you." Prince Philip tipped his head at India.

  "Sure… no problem."

  When he was gone, India giggled and asked, "Where'd you get that accent?"

  "Where'd he get his?" Lucas asked as they walked down to Deal's desk.

  "Same place as Cary Grant."

  "Really? Cary Grant?"

  "They were both born in Bristol. England."

  "Yeah?" He'd spotted an old-fashioned plastic Rolodex on Deal's desk. "And this"—he touched the Rolodex—"is what I've been looking for."

  He found a name, two-thirds of the way through the Rolodex. He checked it twice: Terrance Bloom, He checked the printed party list to confirm it, then called Lester at Homicide.

  "I'm looking at Derrick Deal's Rolodex and I find the name Terrance Bloom, and Bloom is on the party list."

  "Give me the address and phone number," Lester said.

  Lucas read them off the Rolodex, and Lester, rattling on some computer keys, said, "Hang on a sec. I'm just bringing the screen up…" Then: "Yup, that's him."

  "We gotta get on him," Lucas said. "This could be something."

  "Hang on, hang on…" Lucas hung on for another moment, listening to the computer keys at the other end of the line, then Lester again: "He's not on Lansing's phone list."

  "Shit."

  "Well—that could be deliberate, if he's her guy. She probably wouldn't need it, and he wouldn't want her carrying it."

  "Yeah, but… listen, put somebody good on it. This is the first hint we've had."

  "Absolutely. Did you hear about Marcy? I mean, going into intensive care?"

  "Yeah, that's the last I heard."

  "Same with me… She's gonna make it."

  "If there's any goddamn justice in the world. Talk to you later."

  Lucas spent fifteen minutes with India, going through Deal's computer, but Deal apparently didn't use e-mail, and Lucas couldn't find any data files. There had to be some, but they could be on a removable disk. He closed the computer down, stuck a handwritten note that said, "Don't use—Minneapolis police" on the monitor screen, and said, "I'm sending a computer guy over here to take a look at this thing. Don't let anybody touch it, okay?"