Easy Prey

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,