Easy Prey

don’t know.”
    “I’ll tell you what you can do,” Lucas said, trying to feel the sincerity. “You can pray for us. After what I saw last night, I believe it will do some good.”
    Olson looked at him for a moment, a speculative examination of several seconds, then said, “I will.”
    Lucas said goodbye, shaking Olson’s hand, then walked through the group of Burnt River people, down the hall, and to his office. Felt the dark finger of hypocrisy stroking his soul. All for justice, he thought. Or for something. Winning , maybe.
     
 
LUCAS WAITED IN his office until he figured Olson would be gone, then walked down to Homicide to talk to Lester. “We need to put a couple of people on William Spooner,” he said. “More to cover him than to watch him.”
    “What’s going on?” Lester asked.
    “I just gave Spooner’s name to Olson. I didn’t tell Rose Marie, so she’ll have a little insulation. But if Olson starts wandering around in his car, and we’re too far back . . . he could walk right up to Spooner’s front door and nail him before we could catch up.”
    “Man, I don’t know about this,” Lester said, shaking his head.
    “We were willing to do it with Jael and Catherine Kinsley—use them as decoys—and they weren’t even guilty of anything.”
    “Yeah, but they sorta volunteered,” Lester said.
    “They had no choice, Frank. Their names got leaked and played in the papers and on television, and somebody in this department leaked them. They wouldn’t have volunteered if their names hadn’t already been out there.”
    “All right, all right. . . . I get a little puckered up sometimes.”
    “Will you put some guys with him?”
    “Yup. I’ll do it now.”
    “One more thing, if you don’t mind,” Lucas said. “I talked to Spooner about coming in today with his attorney—I don’t want to do that now. Tell him that after Rodriguez’s death, we’re reassessing the case and it may not be necessary for him to come in at all.”
    “I can do that.”
    “I’d do it, but I don’t want to talk to him,” Lucas said. “We don’t want to lie to him at this point.”
     
 
AFTER LEAVING HOMICIDE, Lucas walked over to the hospital. Del was just leaving. “Took her back into intensive care,” he said; he looked a little frightened. “Pneumonia’s getting on top of her.”
    “Can she talk?” Lucas asked.
    “She’s asleep. They say it’s controllable, but she looks worse to me than she did yesterday.”
    “Ah, man. Let me see . . .” Del went back inside with him. A nurse led them in, but Marcy was asleep, as Del said. Back outside, Lucas led the way to Weather’s office. Nobody home. “What do you do around here to find out what’s going on?”
    “Black left ten minutes ago, to get something to eat—he said they’re still optimistic.”
    “What does he think?”
    “He’s not a doctor,” Del said.
    “I know, but what does he think?”
    “He thinks she’s getting into trouble,” Del said.
    They went back down to intensive care and stood outside and looked at her. After a while, they walked back to City Hall.
     
 
LUCAS’S DOOR HAD a “See me ASAP” note on it from Loring. Lucas and Del walked down to Homicide and found Loring taking a statement from a pale blond man dressed all in black. In a different age, he might have been an undertaker.
    “What’s going on?” Lucas asked.
    “There you are,” Loring said. “This is John Dukeljin, he was at the party at Sallance Hanson’s. He picked William Spooner out of a photo spread, says he was at the party.”
    “Oooh,” Lucas said. “That’s excellent.”
    “ Almost sure,” Dukeljin said. “He was leaving, we were coming back. I saw him coming down the front walk—Silly has that low-voltage lighting all along there, we could see him quite clearly—and I pointed him out to my friend. But he got to the end of the walk before we did, and he went the other way.”
    “Why did you point him out to your friend? Was there something about him?” Lucas asked.
    “I thought he might be gay,” Dukeljin said.
    “Mr. Dukeljin and his friend are gay,” Loring said.
    “Why . . . ?”
    “He was carrying a bag. Carrying a bag is way over with, for men. But usually, if you see a man carrying one, you know, unself-consciously . . . it’s something to think about.”
    Lucas looked at Loring. “Sometimes you show a tiny flicker of intelligence.”
    “You’re just jealous,” Loring said.
    “What?” Del