Easy Prey

through the window, killed her, and went back out the window?”
    “Sounds like too much coming and going,” Sloan said.
    “But it explains the open window,” Lucas said. “And it might even explain why Sandy Lansing was killed. Suppose he came back in the window, does Alie’e, and boom, Lansing is right there in the hall. He’s gotta kill her. She knows that he left, and made a big deal out of it, and then came back.”
    Sloan looked at the paper in his hand. “So we put everybody back on the list.”

9
    LANE GOT BACK. “I got a chart on Alie’e—her folks, her brother.”
    “I saw her brother,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, the preacher. He goes around and ministers to farm people out in the Red River Valley. He fixes farm equipment, sometimes he works part-time at a grain elevator. Won’t take any contributions. Gives away everything he earns except what he needs to eat and buy clothes.”
    “Tell you this: He doesn’t spend any money on clothes,” Lucas said.
    “So the people out there think he’s either crazy or a saint, or both. That’s what they said in the Fargo newspaper. There was an article.”
    “On the brother, not Alie’e.”
    Lane nodded. “Mostly on the brother. The angle was, you know, ‘crazy saint related to Alie’e Maison.’”
    “Where was he last night?”
    Lane had asked that question. “In Fargo. He runs a free kitchen there. He was around the kitchen until eight o’clock or so. He was back in the morning. He could have made a round trip in between.”
    “And he’s got a temper,” Lucas said. “What else you got?”
    “I got all the shit on Alie’e. That was just a matter of going out on the Net—I got a file of printouts two inches thick. And you know what? There’s a cult of Alie’e worshipers out there. And Alie’e haters. They fight on the Net.”
    “I heard.”
    “Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those guys did her.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. You know, some computer nerd rapist killer nutso builds a fantasy around her, crashes a party where she’s supposed to be, she laughs him off, says she’d rather be fuckin’ her girlfriends than a pimply little freak--”
    Lucas grinned at the runaway description. “Nerd rapist killer nutso?”
    “It coulda happened that way,” Lane said seriously.
    “What else you got?”
    “I got something else,” Lane said, “and it’s interesting, but nothing like my previous conjecture about the nerd rapist killer. Nutso.”
    “And?”
    “It’s this other chick, Sandy Lansing. I talked to the manager at Brown’s Hotel, and it turns out Lansing wasn’t exactly a big deal. She was more like a female bellhop. She’d take rich people up to their rooms and show them around.”
    “Not an executive?” Lucas said.
    “No. She was making maybe twenty-five thousand a year. Enough to starve on. But, man, I talked to the guys from Homicide who were down at her apartment. She’s got the cool clothes, she’s got a decent car—Porsche Boxter?—and she hung out with all these rich people. And held her end up financially. She’s gotta have money coming in from somewhere, but I can’t find it.”
    “It ain’t coming from her old man,” Lucas said. “I just saw him. He looked like he doesn’t have two dimes to rub together.”
    “That’s the impression I got,” Lane said. “So I was thinking. . . . She works at this hotel, greeting people. Maybe she’s on the corner?”
    “Any busts?”
    “Not a thing. But at that level, it’s more by introduction,” Lane said. “Some big sports guy comes through town, or big TV guy, and you go hang out. Then you go back to his hotel room and later you get a gift. Maybe the hotel knows, maybe not.”
    “So let’s get her friends, and push a little. Find out where the money came from.”
    “I thought maybe you could do the hotel end,” Lane said.
    “Me? I’m a deputy chief of police.”
    “Yeah, but the hotel’s assistant manager in charge of keeping things right is an old pal of yours.”
    “Who’s that?” Lucas asked.
    “Derrick Deal.”
    “You gotta be shitting me.”
    “I shit you not, Deputy Chief of Police.”
     
 
ON THE WAY out of the building, Lucas passed Rose Marie Roux puffing down the hall. “ ‘Muff -Divers’ Ball?’” she asked, hooking his arm.
    “That’s what the headline said,” he answered, mildly flustered.
    “How many euphemisms do men have for the female sexual organ?” she asked.
    “That’s not a place you wanna