Easy Prey

tough hillbilly, and his voice . . .”
    “You gonna make a vest?” Lucas asked.
    “There’s something in what he says,” Jael said. “Especially if you don’t have to sign up for the great Christian march to the Pearly Gates. The way he was talking, anyone could be Plain. There’s a lot of that Plain feeling with potters.”
    “Except that it’s too late,” Lucas said. “At this point, being Plain is purely a luxury that most of us can’t afford. Like big expensive artist pots.”
     
 
IN THE CAR, she asked, “Do you think that the blood was faked? That he cut himself?”
    “Not unless he’s the biggest hypocritical phony on the face of the earth, and he sure doesn’t give off that vibration.”
    “But if he was the biggest hypocritical phony, he wouldn’t give off that vibration.”
    “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what: I saw him go down—faint, or have some kind of a fit—after his parents were killed, and he wasn’t faking that. This thing tonight was over in that direction: It looked real to me.”
    “So he’s nuts?”
    “Depends on your definition of nuts,” Lucas said. “There are some genuine ecstatics running around out there, and he apparently is one of them. Maybe they’re nuts, I don’t know.”
    “You don’t think he did it. You don’t think he killed Plain,” Jael said.
    “There’s some evidence that he did.”
    “I wasn’t asking you a question,” Jael said. “I know there’s some evidence, but I can tell: You don’t think he did it.”
    “You’re wrong. I think it’s possible that he did it. But the . . . being . . . who did it is not the one we see. Tonight we saw a saint; maybe there’s a devil in there, too. We just haven’t seen it yet.”
    They were halfway back when Lucas’s phone buzzed. “You turned your phone on?” Jael asked. “I thought the joke was you never turned it on.”
    “Things are coming together,” Lucas said as he fumbled it out. “If somebody makes a move, I want to know it.” He thumbed the answer button. “Yeah.”
    “This is Frank, Lucas. Where’re you at?”
    “Down on 494 by France. Somebody moving?”
    “Your boy Rodriguez is dead,” Lester said.
    “What?”
    “He might’ve killed himself,” Lester said. “That’s what they’re saying.”
    “C’mon, man, how’d he--”
    “Jumped. Down that open space thing inside a building, what do you call it—an atrium. He jumped down the atrium in his building. He’s pretty busted up.”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Couple of our guys, and now St. Paul’s coming in. I’m heading over. I’ve got to call Rose Marie, and then I’m going.”
    “See you there.”

24
    JAEL BITCHED AND moaned, but Lucas dropped her at her studio before he went on to St. Paul. The St. Paul scene was a business-district replay of the murder scene at Silly Hanson’s, with cop cars piled up along the curb and four big TV vans parked illegally down the street, reporters and cameramen milling around them.
    A woman from one of the stations pointed at him, at the Porsche, and lights came up, putting a nearly opaque glare on the windshield. As he threaded his way past them, he could hear a woman shouting, “Lucas, Lucas . . . ” and somebody slapped the car.
    He pulled in beside a Jeep that he recognized as Lester’s, got out, showed his badge to a St. Paul cop, and asked, “Where?”
    The cop pointed at the building’s main doors, and Lucas walked in, down a hallway toward a cluster of cops, then out into the open atrium space. Rodriguez was still on the floor, uncovered. His face had been crushed like a milk carton. Lester nodded as Lucas walked up.
    “Ah, for Christ sakes,” Lucas said in disgust. “Who was on him?”
    “Pat Stone and Nancy Winter,” he said. “Over there.”
    Stone and Winter were both patrol cops, borrowed for the loose net they’d had on Rodriguez. Lucas walked over and asked, “What happened?”
    Winter said, “He left here, went out to his apartment, went inside. We saw the light come on in his living room, and we were just getting snug when he walked back out and got in his car. So then he drove over to a CompUSA and went inside and bought some stuff, we didn’t get close enough to really see what he was getting, and then he came back out and drove back down here.”
    “You couldn’t see what he bought?”
    “No, I’d already gone back outside, but I could see him through the window at the cash register. Nothing big, whatever it was.