Easy Prey

“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.”
    “We need to tie her tighter to Rodriguez.”
    “Gonna have to do it from the other end,” Lester said. “This girl was a little strange. As far as I can tell, she didn’t have any interests except going out. A million dresses, fifty pairs of shoes, a big collection of costume