Easy Prey

about the guy with the headache?”
    “Aw, Jesus,” Lucas said.
    “Guy goes to the doc, and he says, ‘Doc, you gotta help me. I got this terrible headache. It feels like somebody is pounding a nail through my forehead. Like I got a big pair of pliers squeezing behind my ears. It’s tension from my job. I can’t stop working right now, but the headache’s killing me. You gotta help.’ So the doc says, ‘You know, I do have a cure. Exactly the same thing happened to me—I was working too much, and I got exactly the same headache. Then one night I was performing oral sex on my wife, and her legs were squeezing my head really tight, really hard, and the pressure must have done something, because the headache was a lot better. So I did this every night for two weeks, and at the end of two weeks, the headache was gone.’ And the guy says, ‘I’m desperate, Doc, I’ll try anything.’ The doc said, ‘Well, then, I’ll see you in two weeks.’ So the guy goes away, and two weeks later he comes back for his appointment and he’s the most cheerful guy in the world. And he says, ‘Doc, you’re a miracle worker. I did just what you told me, and the headache’s gone. Vanished. I feel great. I think it’s got to be the pressure, and—by the way, you’ve got a beautiful home.’”
    “SAW IT COMING,” Lucas said without cracking a smile.
    “Bullshit, saw it coming. You’re cracking up inside,” Hampstad said.
    “Have I mentioned our sensitivity sessions? We have them--”
    “Fuck a bunch of sensitivity,” Hampstad grumbled. “Nobody has a sense of humor around this place anymore.”
    At the end of the hall, Olson stepped through the chief’s door. Lucas pushed away from the wall. “Gotta go,” he said. He walked down to the front doors, looked at the media wagons for a count of twenty, then started back toward the chief’s office. He heard them as he was coming to the corner, and nearly ran headlong into Olson. They milled for a second, Lucas said, “Sorry, sorry, excuse me,” and then Olson said, “Chief Davenport . . . we just talked to the chief.”
    “Yes, I knew you were coming.”
    “Not very satisfying,” Olson said. “She was much more—I don’t want to say evasive, but she was much less positive than I had expected. About this Rodriguez man.”
    Lucas looked at him for a long beat, then at the rest of the group from Burnt River. “Could I speak to you privately for just a minute?” Lucas said.
    Olson nodded, looked at the Burnt River people, said, “Excuse me for a minute,” and he and Lucas walked down the hall toward the front door.
    “The chief is, uh . . . Did you know I came to see you preach last night?”
    “I thought that might be you in the back. I wasn’t sure,” Olson said.
    “I was impressed. I’m not from the same stream of . . . Christianity . . . as you, I’m a Roman Catholic, but I was . . . affected.” Lucas said, letting himself grope for the words. “What I’m trying to say is, I know you’re a good man, I could see it last night. I hate lying to you. The chief wasn’t lying, but, to tell you the truth, most of us think that Rodriguez was innocent. That he may have been murdered himself.”
    “What?” Olson was stunned, but his voice was hushed. “Then who . . .”
    “A banker named William Spooner. He essentially set Rodriguez up in the drug business, showed him how to launder his money. . . . He was carrying on an affair with Sandy Lansing.”
    “Then why don’t you . . .”
    “We’re investigating him every way we can, but to be honest—please don’t tell anyone I told you this—it’s going to be very difficult to get him on this. The two chief witnesses against him would be Sandy Lansing and Rodriguez himself. They’re both dead. And even if we arrested him, a defense attorney could simply prosecute Rodriguez during Spooner’s trial, and frankly, Rodriguez is a much more inviting suspect. Even if he didn’t do it.”
    “Are you saying that Spooner’ll never be punished?” Olson asked.
    “I don’t know what’s going to happen, I really don’t,” Lucas said.
    “I don’t know what to say,” Olson said. “I should talk to Chief Roux again.”
    “Don’t do that, it’ll just cause problems for her. She’s trying as hard as she can with all this media attention. . . . She wants the media to concentrate on Rodriguez for a few days, since it can’t hurt him anymore, while we go after Spooner.”
    “This is . . . I