[Prey 11] - Easy Prey Page 4

  "Yeah, just now. What were you doing here?"

  After a moment's silence, Del said, "What?" He sounded only semiconscious. Then, "Where's here?"

  "Sallance Hanson's. You were at the party last night, right?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah, but what're you doing there?"

  "The Maison thing," Lucas said.

  "What?"

  Lucas looked at the phone and then said, "You don't know?"

  "Yeah, I called in," Del said. "I called all over, looking for you. I even had your neighbor up north go look in your cabin, but you'd gone."

  "You called in that somebody strangled Alie'e Maison?"

  Longer silence. Then, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

  "Somebody strangled Alie'e Maison and threw her body behind a bed in a guest bedroom," Lucas said. "Another woman was killed and stuffed in a closet. Hanson thinks a street guy did it—said he was wearing an 'I'm with Stupid' shirt."

  After a moment of silence, Del said, "You're not joking.'"

  "I'm not joking."

  "Jesus Christ." Del was awake now. And again, "Jesus Christ."

  Behind him, Cheryl asked, "What happened?"

  "That was me, all right," Del said. "I was there until one o'clock. I didn't see Maison there after midnight or so."

  "What were you doing?"

  "Runnin' drugs, man. That goddamn place was an ocean of shit."

  "Maison's got fresh tracks on her arm."

  "Yeah, they were all doing a little something," Del said. "I was trying to figure out where it was coming from."

  "Figure it out?"

  "No."

  "You better get over here. I'm gonna have to talk to Hanson pretty quick."

  "On my way."

  When Del had hung up, Lucas clicked on the Find Now button. The computer thought about it for a moment, then kicked out fifteen or twenty messages. He went through them as quickly as he could: Most of them were "Did you see" or "Did you hear about" Alie'e in a magazine spread. Two of them seemed relevant: Three months earlier, according to the date stamp, Hansons correspondent, a woman named Martha Carter, had seen Alie'e at a party and she'd been flying on c—cocaine.

  Lucas switched to the Sent folder, scanned it until he found Carter's name and the right date. Hanson had replied to the cocaine comment, with the observation that friends told her that Alie'e had started using heroin.

  Lucas sent both letters to the printer, then went back to the Inbox, and the Find function, and typed in "Maison." He got two letters he'd already seen. He tried "Aliee," without the apostrophe between the e's, and found only one new letter, about a dress.

  He quickly typed in "Sandy Lansing" and found only one letter, in which Lansing was mentioned only in passing. He tried "Sandy" alone, and "Lansing" alone, and found only the one letter. He switched back the Sent folder, and repeated himself. He found nine references to Alie'e and none to Lansing; one letter from Hanson confided to a woman named Ardis—there was no last name—that Alie'e was definitely having an affair with somebody named Jael, and that somebody else, an Amnon, was wildly jealous.

  I think Amnon would kill Jael, if she said just the right thing to him…

  Lucas sent the letter to the printer, and noted the e-mail address on it.

  Sallance Hanson was sitting on her couch, wrapped in a black dress, a black hat beside her, when Lucas wandered into the room. Swanson, who'd been sitting in an easy chair, facing her, stood up and said, "Miz Hanson, this is Deputy Chief Davenport."

  Hanson turned on the couch and extended her hand without getting up. She was a pretty blond woman in her forties, with a tight, willful mouth and tough blue eyes. She'd used black eye liner under her eyes, and just touched her eyelids with a gray tone; the combination gave her a played-out, dying-puppy look. "When do we go downtown?"

  "I beg your pardon?" Lucas asked.

  "To make my statement?"

  "Oh, yeah. Detective Swanson will make the arrangements. Actually, we can probably take it right here… But I want to talk to you about another matter."

  "Have you found that street person? I identified him," Hanson said.

  "That's what I want to talk to you about."

  Her eyebrows rose. "You found him? Nobody notified me. Why didn't anybody tell me?"

  Swanson said, "Um, you're more of a… witness or bystander… than anything else, Miz Hanson. You're not really part of the investigation."

  "That's not the way I see it," she snapped.

  "That's the way it is," Lucas said.

  "I could talk to the mayor, and he might inform you differently," she said. "The mayor's a friend of mine."

  "He's a friend of mine, too," Lucas said. "He appointed me to my job. He'd tell you the same thing we're telling you. You're not part of the investigation. You're being investigated. "

  "What?"

  "Two murders were committed in your house, Miz Hanson. You were on the scene when the killings took place. We know nothing about you or your relationship with the dead women." He smiled at her, softening it up. "No politician, the mayor included, would go on the record defending somebody who might later be charged with murdering Alie'e Maison. I'm sure you can see that."

  She said, "Oh," tipped her head from side to side, thinking about it, bounced once on the couch, brightened, and said, "That's not bad—being a suspect. But I didn't do it. Either one. That street person… is he in jail, or are you bringing him here, or what?"

  Lucas felt awkward looking down at her; he took a step away and settled into a leather easy chair, steepling his fingers in front of his face. "The street person's name is Del Capslock," he said. "He's an undercover police officer. One of our best undercover people."

  "Uh-oh," she said, looking from Lucas to Swanson. "This could cause you problems." Then she frowned. "What was he doing at my party, anyway?"

  "That's the other thing," Lucas said. "Del was… researching drugs. Miz Maison showed signs of heroin use. She had needle marks on her arm."

  "No." Hanson registered shock—something she was good at, Lucas thought. One hand went artfully to her face. "She was using drugs?"

  A cop stepped into the room, said, "TVs here. They all got here in a bunch."

  Lucas nodded, said, "Okay, keep them back." Then, to Hanson: "Miz Hanson, everybody at your party was using drugs."

  "I wasn't," she said. Her face darkened. "I think that's an outrageous thing to say."

  "Miz Hanson, the officer in question is a drug specialist," Lucas said. "He said an ocean of drugs was flowing through your apartment. He knows what he's talking about. The thing is, there's no way that there could be that much junk around without your knowing about it."

  "That's bullshit," she said. Now she was getting angry, and a little fearful. "I don't know anything about it. Maybe my attorney should hear this."

  Lucas didn't want to mention the e-mail until they'd taken the computer with a warrant. He put his hands up, palms out. "So you call your attorney and talk it over. The point is, it won't help our investigation if any of this is alluded to. If you allow yourself to be interviewed by the press or television, and you talk about our man being at your party… we're going to have to explain why he was there."

  "You're blackmailing me," she said.

  She was quick enough, Lucas thought "No, no. You can say anything you want to anybody. Your attorney will tell you that. The First Amendment gives you that right, and all Minneapolis police officers support that right." He flicked his eyes sideways at Swanson. "Don't we?"

  "Absolutely," Swanson said piously. "That's why I served in the Marine Corps."

  Lucas continued. "I'm suggesting that you… understand the consequences before you take a self-destructive position. If you understand what I mean."

  "You want me to shut up," she said.

  "About our man. He's an undercover officer. If his face were made public, he would lose his effectiveness and might even be endangered."

  "What if he did it?" Hanson asked. "Cops do that
sort of thing from time to time. I've read about it. Rogue cops."

  "This guy doesn't," Lucas said. "Besides, we're detailing a special squad out of Internal Affairs to pull him apart, everything he did last night. When we're done, we'll know every step he took."

  "Well… I think I could leave him out of my statement," she said. "To the press."

  "Excellent," Lucas said. "One more question. This will be covered when you make your formal statement, but I'm just curious. Alie'e Maison is pretty famous. Probably the most famous person at your party?"

  Hanson rolled her eyes up and waggled her head from side to side, as if balancing all the equities of fame, or celebrity, and finally decided, "Probably. In that world. We also had some very well-known financial people here, but that's another world."

  "If she was so famous, how could she disappear into a bedroom and nobody was curious about her, what had happened to her?" Lucas asked.

  "Well, I mentioned this to Officer Swanson… she seemed very sleepy, and just wanted to take a nap. So we accommodated her and shooed people away if they asked about her. She was on a very rigorous schedule, early-morning photo shoots and all. She was exhausted."

  "So nobody went back and looked at her."

  "Oh, I don't know. Maybe some of her friends did." Hansons eyes slid away from Lucas; she might not be lying, he thought, but she was skating. "Probably some of her friends did. We were just keeping the sightseers away."

  "Let me tell you something," Lucas said, "I can't read you well enough to know if you're lying to us, but if you are, you're committing a crime."

  He turned to Swanson and asked, "Have you read her her rights?"

  "Not yet."

  "Do it," he said. He turned back to Hanson, "You don't have to talk to us at all, or you can have an attorney, but if you do talk to us, it better be the truth. We can get pretty goddamn cranky about obstruction of justice in a double-murder case."

  From the front hall, a man called, "Hello?"

  Lucas recognized the voice. "Sloan. In here."

  A moment later, Sloan appeared, cleaned up and ready for the day in a fresh brown suit, white shirt, and blue-and-gold-striped necktie. "Lucas…"

  "This is Miz Hanson, owner of the house," Lucas said. "We need an interview with her, and with the lady who found Miz Maison's body."

  "I can take Miz Hanson's statement now," Sloan said. He held up a tape recorder and looked down at Hanson. "If we can find some place quiet and comfortable?"

  She flipped a hand, to say, whatever, and turned back to Lucas. "Before you go, let me get something straight. You're not telling me that I can't speak to the media, you're just saying…"

  "That you should edit what you say. Carefully. I'm perfectly happy to see you on TV, I expect to see you on TV. There's almost no way you could avoid it—but there are aspects of the investigation that we really don't want made public."

  "Like this undercover man."

  "Who?" Sloan asked, looking at Lucas.

  "Del was here last night," Lucas said.

  "Ah. Chasing dope?"

  Hanson looked from Sloan to Lucas and back to Sloan, and shook her head. "There was no dope."

  Swanson and Lucas quickly briefed Sloan on what they knew. While they were talking, Hanson stood up and said, "I'll be back in a sec. I gotta pee."

  "Meet you in the kitchen," Sloan said.

  "Who's got the list of the people at the party?" Lucas asked Swanson.

  Swanson took a notebook out of his pocket. "I've got most of it."

  "You got anyone on there named Amnon? Or Jael?"

  Swanson said, "Yeah, somewhere. I remember the names. They're brother and sister." He flipped through his notebook, found the names. "Amnon Plain and a Jael Corbeau. Why?"

  "There's a rumor that Alie'e jilted Amnon and went off with Jael, and this Amnon guy was pretty pissed about it. So let's get them downtown." He looked at Sloan. "Why don't you fix it? Call me when you get them: I want to sit in."

  "Okay."

  "Those are both Bible names," Swanson said. "Amnon and Jael."

  "Yeah? What'd they do in the Bible?"

  "Fuck if I know," Swanson said. "I just remember them from Sunday school."

  "Let's get them downtown. We can ask them about it," Lucas said.

  Lucas looked in oh Rowena Cooper, the woman who'd found Alie'e's body. Cooper was a thin, morose woman with dark hair and red-rimmed eyes; she was sitting with a chubby baby-sitter cop named Dorothy Shaw. "I just wanted to say hello," Cooper said. "The last time Alie'e came to town, we went to a movie together. I just wanted to see how she was doing."

  "You didn't have a chance to talk to her earlier?" Lucas asked.

  "No, no, I didn't get here until midnight. She'd already gone back to take her nap by then."

  She really knew nothing else: She'd hung around the party for better than two hours, mostly because she wanted to talk to Alie'e, if only for a moment. "We shared some concerns about current fashion, and where it's going…"

  She seemed genuinely upset about the murder, without Hanson's undertone of excitement. Lucas tried to reassure her, without much luck, and left her with Shaw.

  "Del's on the porch," Swanson said when Lucas wandered back into the living room.

  Del had taken the time to dress up; he was wearing clean jeans, sneakers without holes, and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves pulled up over the elbows. He smelled vaguely of musk-scented deodorant, and his long hair was still damp.

  "We're gonna have to talk to Internal Affairs. You're gonna have to meet with them," Lucas said. "Just to keep the record straight."

  Del nodded. "No problem. I picked up on this party yesterday afternoon, and told Lane where I was going. So I'm covered."

  "Good." Lane was the other man in Lucas's two-man Strategic Studies and Planning Group.

  Del said, "But I never told you why I was calling you… why I was looking for you. Did anybody tell you about Trick? Anybody call you from downtown?"

  "What trick?"

  "Trick Bentoin. He was at the party last night. He just got back from Panama," Del said.

  Lucas took a long look at him and finally showed a small smile. "You gotta be bullshitting me."

  "I'm not, man," Del said, his eyes round. "I talked to him. He thought it was funnier than hell. He hardly ever laughs; he goddamn near fell down in the hallway."

  "Ah, fuck." Then Lucas started to laugh, and a minute later Del joined in. A uniformed cop with a solemn murder-scene face poked his head around the corner, saw who it was, and pulled back.

  "That's gonna be a little hard to explain," Lucas said finally.

  Narcotics and Homicide had worked together, with the county attorney's investigators, for more than four months to build a murder case against Rashid Al-Balah. Al-Balah had killed Trick Bentoin, and had thrown his body in a bog at the Carlos Avery Wildlife Area, the traditional murdered-body-disposal area for the Twin Cities, the state claimed. The case had been a jigsaw puzzle of evidence: weed seeds in the backseat of the Cadillac, identified by a University of Minnesota botanist and unique to the bog; traces of blood in the trunk of the car, confirmed as the same blood type as Bentoin's; a history of death threats by Al-Balah against Bentoin; a lack of any alibi…

  Al-Balah had been in prison for a little more than a month, looking at a life sentence for first-degree murder.

  "What about the blood in the car?" Lucas asked.

  "Trick didn't know about any blood," Del said. "He said he had a deal going in Panama, this rich guy who thought he could play gin rummy, so he took off. He never heard anything about the trial. Wasn't that big a deal in Panama."

  Lucas scratched his head. "Well, shit. I'll call the county attorney. He ain't gonna be happy. He got a lot of good ink out of that trial."

  "You know what's worse? That asshole Al-Balah is gonna be back on the street."

  "What'd Trick think about that?"

  "He said, 'Leave him in there. You know he's killed somebody.'"


  "Got that right," Lucas said.

  Down the street, TV lights came up, and Lucas peeked: Silly Hanson was being interviewed, posed in her black dress against her expansive lawn. After a second, the lights went down again, and a couple of different cameramen began scrambling around with portable lights. They'd have a roadside studio set up in a moment. "Goddamnit," Lucas said. "Gonna be a circus," Del said.

  "I know it… Hanson told me she didn't know about any drugs."

  "What'd you expect?" Del said. "But the only guy who wasn't putting something up his nose or into his arm was too drunk to do it."

  "You know any of the people at the party?"

  "Only by sight. None of them knew me, of course."

  Swanson stuck his head out on the porch, looking for Lucas. "Rose Marie called," he said. "You got a meeting at six-thirty, her office."

  "Okay." Lucas turned back to Del.

  "You gotta talk to Internal Affairs right away," he said. "When you get clear, talk to the dope guys and nail down every dealer who might have been selling to Maison or her friends. Find out where she got the shit she put in her arm last night. Did she buy it here, or did she bring it with her?"

  Del nodded. "Okay."

  "The real problem for us is, if the media finds out you were at the party, they're gonna want to break you out," he said. "You get your face on the nightly news, you'll have to find a new job. Giving out tickets for illegal lane changes."

  "No, no, no. I ain't going on TV," Del said. "I gotta stay out of this."

  "I'll do what I can, but if the word leaks, we might need a major plane crash. And you know how the goddamn department leaks."

  "Plane crash wouldn't do it," Del said gloomily, looking at the lights down the street. "Not with Alie'e Maison dead. Beautiful, rich, famous, and strangled. It's a CNN wet dream. They're gonna run down everybody who had anything to do with her. Once my cat gets outa the bag… shit. We got to find this guy." He nodded toward the house, meaning the killer. "We got to find him quick."

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  Rose Marie Roux had lost thirty pounds on a new all-protein diet and now was thinking about a face-lift. "Just a couple of snips, to pull me up around the sides," she told Lucas. Rose Marie was the chief of police. She put her fingertips on her face just below her cheekbones and pushed the skin back until it began pulling on her lips. The mayor stepped into her office, looked at her and said, "What?"