Chosen Prey

for months,” Lucas said.
    “I need the money. I’m thinking of getting a divorce.”
    “I’ll send it tomorrow. I’d hate to see your wife starve,” Lucas said. “Listen, I’m over at the hospital and we’ve got a situation.”
    “What’s the situation?”
    “You got this officious little prick over here talking to Randy Whitcomb, and if Randy gives us the help we need, it’ll get him out of a lot of the trouble he’s in.”
    “Uh, Whitcomb is the guy the cops shot. . . .”
    “Yeah. And we found blood all over his apartment, which he was trying to clean up with paper towels when we broke in. Then the St. Paul cops found the body of his girlfriend in a dumpster behind an Indian restaurant, and her blood matches the blood in his apartment. So he is in a shitload of trouble, but we might be able to get him off the murder charge if he gives us a little help.”
    “How?” Page sounded as if he was eating a sandwich between words.
    “The killing looks a lot like the killings by this gravedigger guy, and we know that Randy has been in touch with him. Randy sold some jewelry that came off one of the victims. If we can get an ID from Randy, we think the murder charge’ll go away. There’s a good chance, anyway. But your officious little prick won’t even let us in the door.”
    “Which officious little prick did we send over there?” Page asked.
    “Real young. Black suit looks like it was run over by a tractor. He’s got a plastic briefcase bigger’n your dick.”
    “It’s a wonder he could lift it,” Page said. “The little prick’s name is Robert call-me-Rob Lansing, like in Michigan. You say you’re in the hallway?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Stand right there. He’ll come talk to you.”
    Lucas hung up, and ten seconds later, they heard a cell phone ring inside the room. A minute after that, Lansing popped out into the hallway.
    “Which one of you assholes called Page?” he asked.
    “I did, you officious little prick,” Lucas said. “You want to talk about the welfare of your client, or you want to play status games?”
     
    T HE LEGAL MATTERS took five minutes to straighten out. Lansing told the cops that they could not ask any questions directly about the killing of the woman or the shooting at the apartment when the cops broke in. They were allowed to ask about the gravedigger and show Randy the artist’s drawing.
    When they went into the room, Randy seemed to have gone back to sleep. But when Lansing said “Mr. Whitcomb,” his eyelids lifted slowly and his eyes drifted over the four of them as they stood at the end of the bed. Then they drifted back and stopped at Lucas.
    “You fuckin’ asshole,” he said, his voice as arid as the hum of a paper wasp.
    “Yeah, yeah, blow me,” Lucas said. “Randy, you are in a shitload of trouble, but God help me, I’m here to try to get you out of some of it. Do you know the man who killed your girlfriend? Killed Suzanne?”
    “Not me,” he whispered.
    “Who did?”
    “Some fuckin’ asshole.”
    “You got a name?”
    Randy shook his head. “Can’t remember. Head’s all fucked up.”
    “Look at this picture,” Lucas said. He showed him the artist’s sketch of the actor from Day of the Jackal. “Is this the dude?”
    Randy looked at the picture, his eyes drooped and his head turned away, and a moment later he seemed to pull himself together and he whispered, “No, man. I don’t know the dude.”
    “You don’t know him,” Lucas repeated.
    “He doesn’t know him,” Lansing snapped.
    Del said, “You want him to know the guy. You got the concept here?”
    “Hey, listen, you—”
    “Shut up,” Marshall said to Lansing. And to Randy: “A first name, a last name, somebody else who knows him, anything?”
    “I gots to think,” Randy said. “I’m all fucked up.”
    They came at the question nine different ways in the next ten minutes, but Randy shook his head as hard as he could and finally seemed to doze off.
    “That’s all,” Lansing said.
    Lucas looked at Marshall and Del. “It’s a problem.”
    “Maybe tomorrow,” Del said. “He’s still got a lot of shit in him.”
    Randy came back, looked at Lucas. “Can’t feel my legs, dude.”
    “They’re working on you, Randy. You got good doctors,” Del said.
    “Yeah . . .” And he was gone again.
    Out in the hall, Lucas said to Lansing, “I got a few words of advice for you. When cops want to talk to you or your client off the record, ninety percent of