Easy Prey (34 page)

“Ho ho, very funny,” Mallard said. “By the way, you remember Malone?”

“Of course. How is she?”

“She's fox-trotting with somebody else,” Mallard said.

“Uh-oh. Gonna be number five?”

“Could happen. Anyway, we'll grind some more on Rodriguez, but I thought you'd want to know he was collecting cash.”

“That's one more thing,” Towson said when Lucas told them about Mallard's call. “And it's a good one. We've got to slow him down, though.”

“So what do we do?” Rose Marie asked.

“Some lawyer shit,” Del said, looking at Towson.

“The IRS,” Towson said. “Tell them about the dope—maybe they can do something about the money he's got coming.”

Rose Marie said, “So we push on Rodriguez, and we keep baiting Olson. Everybody agree?”

Everybody nodded.

“Best we got,” Lester said.

21

DEL TOOK A call from Narcotics and headed that way. Lucas borrowed a uniformed cop from the patrol division, put him in plainclothes, and sent him to relieve Lane.

On the phone to Lane, he said, “When he gets there, I want you to brief him, then go on over to the county attorney's office, talk to Tim Long, and look at all that loan paperwork on Spooner. Spooner's critical: If he knows anything at all about Rodriguez, then he probably knows about everything. If we crack him, we may have enough.”

“How much paper?” Lane asked.

“About a ton,” Lucas said.

“Goddamnit, Lucas, how come I'm always the one stuck with paper?”

“'Cause you can read; I'm not so sure about the other guys. So get your ass over here. Also, an FBI computer file just came in on Rodriguez and his money. I'll print it out and leave it with Lester. Take it with you, see if there's anything that, you know . . .”

“What?”

“Shit, I don't know. Correlates, or something.”

 
 
WHEN HE WAS done with Lane, he got out the phone book, got the number for Brown's, dialed, and asked for India. She came on the phone a minute later. Lucas identified himself and asked, “Are you gonna be around for a few minutes?”

“Until six.”

“I want to stop by,” he said.

When he got off the phone, Lucas walked down to Homicide with the printed-out FBI file, left it with Lester. “Did you guys print those pictures of Rodriguez?”

“Uh, yeah. . . . I think they're down in ID. They handled it.”

Lucas went down to the Identification division. The photo guy's name was Harold McNeil, a former uniform cop who got tired of cold squad cars and got the photo job by lying. Photography, he said, was a longtime hobby, although he didn't know a small-format camera from a yak. He read a book called
Learn Photography in a Weekend
, fooled around with the department's cameras, and after a week or so, was better than the last guy, and kept the job.

He had two good shots of Rodriguez: a full-frontal head shot, and one side view.

“Got some heads I can use in a spread?” Lucas asked.

“Yup.” McNeil turned around, opened the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, and took out a handful of photos. They found sets, front and back, of a half-dozen guys. Lucas stuck them in his pocket.

“I'll bring them back,” he promised.

“That's what everybody says. Nobody ever does,” McNeil said.

Lucas got his coat and walked across town to Brown's; the cold air felt good; the walking felt good. India was behind the desk and smiled when she saw him coming.

“Did you ever see any of these guys with Sandy Lansing?” Lucas pushed the stack of photos at her. “There are two photos of each guy.”

India took her time looking at them. Another woman came along and asked, “What's going on?”

Lucas said, “Police. We're trying to see if we can find somebody Sandy Lansing might have gone out with.”

“I've seen her with a guy a few times,” the other woman said.

She stood at India's elbow, and they went through the photos together, India slowly shaking her head. “I don't think so,” she said finally. “This guy . . . but I don't think it was him.”

The other woman said, “I don't think so, either. Sorta like that, though. If you put him in a suit.”

“It's not him. This guy looks a little rough,” India said.

“You're right,” the other woman said. She looked at Lucas. “I don't think I've ever seen any of them.”

Lucas looked at the one photo they'd talked about. A honey-haired white guy, round-faced, but without Rodriguez's heft. He and Rodriguez looked nothing alike.

“Thanks,” he said.

Strikeout.

 
 
BACK AT THE office, Lucas had a note to call Tim Long at the county attorney's office. He did. “You can't count on getting anything from the IRS,” Long said. “I talked to a guy over there, and they said if we get anything that looks like hidden income, to send them a copy of what we get. But they've had too much trouble with citizen complaints to go after a guy who they've never had a problem with. He was audited a couple of years ago, in a random audit, and everything worked out to the penny.”

“Which it would, if he's faking his cash flow with drug money.”

“Yeah, well, the IRS guy said, ‘You catch 'em, we fry 'em.' But they ain't gonna hang up his investment money and have a congressman screaming at them. Not when they've got a whole file that says the guy is clean.”

Another strikeout.

 
 
ROSE MARIE SAID, “Olson isn't moving. He's not doing anything.”

“You're talking to him, aren't you? In the family briefing?”

“Yeah.” She looked up at the office clock. “We're gonna do it again in about fifteen minutes.”

“Why don't you tell him, in utter confidence, that we've got a candidate for the guy who actually killed his sister. If he's nuts, and anything is going to get him stirred up, that should do it.”

“Lucas--”

“Don't give him the name,” Lucas said. “Tell him you can't do that, but there's a possibility that we'll know something in a couple of days. The idea is to get him cranked, get him back in the mood, if he's the one doing the killings.”

“I don't know . . .”

“Another benefit is, it'd keep him from pissing on us in the press.”

 
 
AFTER LEAVING ROSE Marie, Lucas walked over to see Marcy. Tom Black was sitting next to her bed, and her head was turned toward him. When Lucas walked in, Black said, “She comes and she goes. She's asleep right now.”

Lucas got another chair and carried it over to Marcy's bed. Two beds down, an old man with a shock of white hair, a desiccated face, and a thin, hawk nose, tried to breathe; worked at it.

“What do you think of this Olson guy?” Black asked.

“He's maybe crazy,” Lucas said.

“You think, uh, he'll be doing a trip down to the state hospital?”

“Hard call. A guy executes his parents, it's pretty easy to say he's nuts.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Black exhaled, and looked down at the tile floor.

“What?” Lucas asked.

“I'd hate to see the fucker get away with what he did to Marcy,” Black said. “No goddamn justice in the world if you can blow her up and get away with it.”

Lucas looked at him for a moment. Black was Marcy's best friend on the force. And he was gay, so they didn't have the sex problem that tended to come up around her—that had come up with Lucas. “Listen, Thomas my friend, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, stop thinking it.”

“You haven't thought about it?”

“No, I haven't. You get some guy you can't stop, a pederast or a serial rapist and you just can't get at him . . . then I might do some thinking, but I sure as hell wouldn't mention it to anyone. To
anyone.
And I wouldn't pop somebody for shooting a cop. You know? Cops get shot; that's part of the job. Marcy knew it could happen—hell, it already happened to her, once. It's not like she's an innocent little lamb.”

“But if he gets away . . .”

“Jesus, Tom, give it some time. We'll get him. I'll tell you what, I think maybe it's fifty percent Olson, maybe fifty percent somebody else. You can't go popping a guy on a fifty-fifty chance.”

“It's got me fucked up, dude,” Black said.

“I know.”

Marcy woke up a couple of minutes later, recognized both of them, croaked, “I could use a beer.”

“I got one, but I already used it once,” Black said. “If we could find a bottle someplace . . .”

She smiled. She looked almost okay, Lucas thought. “How're you feeling?”

“Like I got hit pretty hard.”

“You did, you dumb shit. You ain't the goddamn Secret Service, and Jael ain't the President,” Lucas said.

She closed her eyes for a minute, seemed to drift off, then snapped back. “How's Jael?”

“We've got her covered twenty-four hours a day,” Lucas said. “Franklin taught her how to cook nachos.”

“I feel hollow,” she said. She licked her dry lips. “I don't hurt.”

Black stood up. “You want me to get the nurse?”

“No, no . . . I just feel . . . hollow.”

 
 
DEL SHUFFLED IN, said hello, squatted next to the bed, and looked at Marcy. After a minute, he grunted and said, “You're doing okay. I'm gonna stop coming over here every five minutes. You want some magazines?”

“Not for a few days yet,” she said, her voice going weak. She turned her head back straight, closed her eyes, and took a couple of breaths. Lucas thought she'd gone back to sleep again. Then she turned back and looked for Lucas, her eyes going in and out of focus. “Did you meet . . . that old friend?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“You're careful?”

“We can talk about it next week.”

“You're teasing me. . . .”

“She's going through her midlife,” Lucas said. “I don't know if anybody can help her.”

Marcy said, “Mmmm.”

“Great. Office gossip in intensive care,” Black said.

Marcy asked, “What else is there?” and closed her eyes again. This time she did sleep. After two minutes, Del stood up, looked at Lucas, put a finger to his lips, and tipped his head toward the door.

Lucas whispered, “We're going. . . . You take it easy,” to Black, and followed Del to the door. Outside, Del said, “You remember that Logan guy? The other dealer that Outer gave us, along with Bee?”

“Yeah, we never had time--”

“Dope hit him three hours ago—that's the call I got. They got almost a kilo of coke and a couple of sacks of meth. We're doing a little dance with him. Gave him a stack of photos and told him if he could put two of them together, he might have something to deal with. He chose Rodriguez and Lansing.”

“Did you talk to Tim Long about it?” Lucas asked.

“Not yet.”

“Get with him, figure out a plea, and run it past Logan's attorney. We'll want a statement as quick as we can get it. Today,” Lucas said.

“That's pretty quick, with a lawyer involved.”

“I know. You gotta tell his attorney that there's a short-term expiration date on the offer. Right now, Logan can give us something new. If we find another connection, we don't need his client. If that happens, Logan goes to Stillwater and does the whole enchilada.”

“I'm outa here,” Del said.

 
 
LUCAS LOOKED AT his watch and headed back to the office, stopping again to talk to Rose Marie.

“What happened with Olson? You tell him?”

She nodded. “That we've got a candidate.”

“And I'm going to push Rodriguez, see if we can get him to panic,” Lucas said.

“Why?”

“'Cause the only case we're going to get against him will be circumstantial. The stuff is starting to pile up, but if we can get him to do something irrational, like dump a bunch of money and run for it, if we can bust him with a plane ticket to Venezuela or something . . . that'd look good to a jury.”

“All right. We need some public action for the movie people anyway. Ever since Alie'e's funeral was put off, they've been pissed. What are you gonna do?”

“That depends on Rodriguez. He knows that we're onto him. We'll watch him the rest of today. Tomorrow—I don't know. Maybe I'll go over and talk to him. Maybe bust him for the cameras, haul his ass over here, then turn him loose again. Shake him.”

“Let me know.”

 
 
LUCAS WENT BACK to his office, sat in his chair, put his feet up on a desk drawer and thought about it, and, ten minutes later, walked down to Homicide and found Lester.

“When you guys cleaned out Sandy Lansing's house, did you get any photos? Albums, anything like that?”

“A few dozen photos—nothing real recent. Family stuff,” Lester said. “We didn't find a camera in the place. Well—there was an old Polaroid in the bedroom closet, but it was so old I don't think you could get film for it anymore.”

“How about video?”

“She had a VCR and a few tapes, but the tapes were all movies, and some low-rent commercial porn. No video camera.”

“What'd she do in her life? Everybody's got a camera.”

“She went to parties,” Lester said. “And bars. As close as we can tell, that's it. She went out every night of her life. She worked out at a fitness place three times a week. She had about six CDs and a compact stereo that probably cost her two hundred dollars, a medium-sized Sony TV, and the basic cable package. That was about it.”