Easy Prey

home. And a good thing it was that he had the bed, because if he hadn’t, Catrin would have broken his back. She liked sex. A lot. She was not promiscuous, just enthusiastic. The two of them had learned a lot together, trying out their chops. There was one cold winter day, but sunny, they’d been in bed late in the morning, the sun coming through the dirty window, splashing across the bed, and Catrin . . .
    Flashing back on it, he felt himself . . . stir.
     
 
AT THE BOTTOM of the stairs he stopped and looked around. What was he doing?
    Ah. Sloan.
     
 
SLOAN WAS JUST coming out of the interview room. He carried a piece of paper, and walked a half-step behind a middle-aged man who seemed broken. The man had a hump at the back of his neck, his head pressed forward, his thinning gray hair combed over the top of his balding head. His face was dry, but tear tracks showed down his cheeks.
    “Lucas . . . this is Mr. Arthur Lansing. Sandy Lansing was his daughter.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Lansing,” Lucas said.
    “I can’t believe she’s gone,” he said. “She was so happy. Her career . . .” He trailed off, then said it again: “Her career . . .” He looked at Lucas. “When she was a little girl, her mama and I used to drive over to Como Park and push her through the zoo in a walker. She loved the bears. And the monkeys, she loved the monkeys.”
    “I’m sure--” Lucas was about to unreel a cliché, but Lansing broke in.
    “Do you think you’ll catch them?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll betcha it was niggers,” he said.
    “There weren’t any black people at the party last night.”
    Lansing shook a trembling finger at Lucas. “Maybe. But you watch. I betcha it was niggers. You go upstairs, in the courthouse? I go up there all the time. To watch. All you see in them courtrooms is niggers. I mean, some white trash goes through there, but ninety-nine percent of them is niggers. And most of the white trash got nigger blood.”
    Sloan, standing behind Lansing, rolled his eyes. Lucas said, “Whoever did it, we’ll catch him, Mr. Lansing. I’m really sorry about your daughter.”
    Lansing turned away and spoke to no one. “My daughter. She was an executive.” And he wandered away, talking to the air.
    “He loved his daughter,” Sloan said after him.
    “Yeah. That’s what all that segregation shit used to be about. All the white people loved their daughters.”
    “Hate to lose a daughter, though,” Sloan said. He had a daughter in college. “Worst thing I could think of. It’s not right, dying out of order.”
    Lucas sighed. “You get anything from anybody?”
    “No, but we’re working the right people. Whoever killed them was at the party. There was too much going on that sparks off trouble—drugs, former boyfriends and girlfriends, the celebrity thing and the macho shit that goes with it, and just the general craziness of the crowd.”
    “I just said the same thing to Lester,” Lucas said. “So how many people were at the party?”
    “We’ve got sixty-odd, so far, outa maybe a hundred.” Sloan held up the piece of paper. “This is the list. Most people don’t remember seeing Alie’e after about midnight. I talked to one guy and his girlfriend, who can pin down their arrival at about twelve-fifteen, who say they never saw her. And they heard she was there, so they were looking. Jael and Catherine Kinsley left her in the bedroom sometime before one o’clock. She was alive and drowsy when they left.”
    “You talked to Kinsley?”
    “On the phone. She’s on her way back, with her husband. Their cabin is all the way up in Ely—five hours. She didn’t hear about it until noon, on public radio.”
    “And you believe them, that Alie’e was alive?”
    “Yes. There’s just too much . . . Other people saw Lansing still alive after Jael and Kinsley had left; at least, that’s what we’re getting now.”
    “So how many people are eligible to do the killing?”
    “Hanson says the party peaked between one and two, which means maybe most of the people were around when Alie’e got it. We’ve got a few who’d left earlier, that we’ve been able to confirm. And quite a few more that said they left earlier, but we haven’t been able to confirm or are lying,” Sloan said.
    “What if the killer unlocked that window, left the house, so people could see him leaving—made a deal out of it, kissed a few people, shook a couple of hands, giving himself an alibi—then came back