Easy Prey ld-11

by John Sandford

  Del was still working. Lucas dialed his cellular number and pulled him out of a bar. "Got two names for you, but you've gotta go gentle."

  "Like walking on cotton."

  Lucas gave him the namesDel hadn't heard of either of themand said, "Call me if you get anything."

  "Probably won't nothing happen until tomorrow," Del said. "I'll get on some banks, start doing some financials."

  "We can't really afford a long-term look," Lucas said.

  "I'll do it fast as I can, but I can't just go knock on their doors."

  "Hear any more about Trick?"

  "No, but people are talking about a big game. Maybe tomorrow night, or the next night. I haven't tracked it down yet, but that'd be a possibility."

  "Call me when you get it."

  That night he worked on his game, but there were no calls. A call came in the morning, though.

  "You awake, sleepyhead?" Rose Marie Rouxand the words, on other days, might have brought up a smile; they didn't this morning, because of her tone of voice.

  "What happened?" Lucas asked.

  "Amnon Plain's dead."

  "Dead?" he said stupidly.

  "In St. Paul. Somebody shot him."

  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 ca
tch 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."