Easy Prey

awake now. And again, “Jesus Christ.”
    Behind him, Cheryl asked, “What happened?”
    “That was me, all right,” Del said. “I was there until one o’clock. I didn’t see Maison there after midnight or so.”
    “What were you doing?”
    “Runnin’ drugs, man. That goddamn place was an ocean of shit.”
    “Maison’s got fresh tracks on her arm.”
    “Yeah, they were all doing a little something,” Del said. “I was trying to figure out where it was coming from.”
    “Figure it out?”
    “No.”
    “You better get over here. I’m gonna have to talk to Hanson pretty quick.”
    “On my way.”
     
 
WHEN DEL HAD hung up, Lucas clicked on the Find Now button. The computer thought about it for a moment, then kicked out fifteen or twenty messages. He went through them as quickly as he could: Most of them were “Did you see” or “Did you hear about” Alie’e in a magazine spread. Two of them seemed relevant: Three months earlier, according to the date stamp, Hanson’s correspondent, a woman named Martha Carter, had seen Alie’e at a party and she’d been flying on c—cocaine.
    Lucas switched to the Sent folder, scanned it until he found Carter’s name and the right date. Hanson had replied to the cocaine comment, with the observation that friends told her that Alie’e had started using heroin.
    Lucas sent both letters to the printer, then went back to the Inbox, and the Find function, and typed in “Maison.” He got two letters he’d already seen. He tried “Aliee,” without the apostrophe between the e ’s, and found only one new letter, about a dress.
    He quickly typed in “Sandy Lansing” and found only one letter, in which Lansing was mentioned only in passing. He tried “Sandy” alone, and “Lansing” alone, and found only the one letter. He switched back to the Sent folder, and repeated himself. He found nine references to Alie’e and none to Lansing; one letter from Hanson confided to a woman named Ardis—there was no last name—that Alie’e was definitely having an affair with somebody named Jael, and that somebody else, an Amnon, was wildly jealous.
    I think Amnon would kill Jael, if she said just the right thing to him. . . .
    Lucas sent the letter to the printer, and noted the e-mail address on it.
     
 
SALLANCE HANSON WAS sitting on her couch, wrapped in a black dress, a black hat beside her, when Lucas wandered into the room. Swanson, who’d been sitting in an easy chair, facing her, stood up and said, “Miz Hanson, this is Deputy Chief Davenport.”
    Hanson turned on the couch and extended her hand without getting up. She was a pretty blond woman in her forties, with a tight, willful mouth and tough blue eyes. She’d used black eyeliner under her eyes, and just touched her eyelids with a gray tone; the combination gave her a played-out, dying-puppy look. “When do we go downtown?”
    “I beg your pardon?” Lucas asked.
    “To make my statement?”
    “Oh, yeah. Detective Swanson will make the arrangements. Actually, we can probably take it right here. . . . But I want to talk to you about another matter.”
    “Have you found that street person? I identified him,” Hanson said.
    “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
    Her eyebrows rose. “You found him? Nobody notified me. Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
    Swanson said, “Um, you’re more of a . . . witness or bystander . . . than anything else, Miz Hanson. You’re not really part of the investigation.”
    “That’s not the way I see it,” she snapped.
    “That’s the way it is,” Lucas said.
    “I could talk to the mayor, and he might inform you differently,” she said. “The mayor’s a friend of mine.”
    “He’s a friend of mine, too,” Lucas said. “He appointed me to my job. He’d tell you the same thing we’re telling you. You’re not part of the investigation. You’re being investigated.”
    “What?”
    “Two murders were committed in your house, Miz Hanson. You were on the scene when the killings took place. We know nothing about you or your relationship with the dead women.” He smiled at her, softening it up. “No politician, the mayor included, would go on the record defending somebody who might later be charged with murdering Alie’e Maison. I’m sure you can see that.”
    She said, “Oh,” tipped her head from side to side, thinking about it, bounced once on the couch, brightened, and said, “That’s not bad—being a suspect. But I didn’t do it.