Easy Prey

came back and quit the convent and quit the church and began wandering around the Red River preaching Christ’s gospel. I try to stay in touch with her: She told me that Olson sometimes gets the stigmata.” Her voice hushed with the word “stigmata.”
    “You gotta be sh . . . kidding me.”
    “No. I’m not.”
    As a Catholic, Lucas was severely lapsed, but he nevertheless felt a chill crawl down his spine at the idea of the stigmata. Bleeding from Christ’s wounds in the hands, the feet, the side, even from the crown of thorns. “So he thinks he’s God?”
    “Oh, no. Absolutely not,” Elle said. “He sees himself as a messenger, preparing the way.”
    “John the Baptist, then,” Lucas said.
    “I don’t think he’d put it that way. You’re being cop-sarcastic, and he’s a very serious man.”
    “He was in the office today. He was . . . intense.”
    “Where was he when the murder was committed?” Elle asked.
    “In Fargo. Out there somewhere. That’s his story. But you think he could have done it?”
    “I don’t know. Sainthood is generally a mystery, but it involves very deep emotional streams, and often something very dark. He may have very deep feelings about his sister. And because of his emotional condition, he might be very . . . demonstrative.”
    “He was, with the chief.”
    They talked for a few more minutes, Lucas filling in the details of the crime. Elle would think about them, and call if anything occurred to her. They said goodbye, and Lucas started back to the study. Halfway there, he turned, went back to the phone, and called the nunnery again. The same young depressive nun answered, and he waited the same two minutes for Elle to pick up.
    “Something else?”
    “You know what you said to me when you first came to the phone?”
    “I don’t know. I was teasing you.”
    “You asked something like, ‘What’s going on with the Alie’e Maison murder?’”
    “Yes?” She was puzzled.
    “Nobody ever asks about the other woman. Lansing. She’s like a piece of Kleenex that got used.”
    “Mmm. To be honest, I haven’t thought of her,” Elle confessed.
    “You know, when you were hurt . . . you were hurt because somebody was trying to distract me. And it worked for a while. With everybody saying Alie’e, Alie’e . . . I hope we’re not looking in the wrong direction.”
    “As long as we keep that in mind,” Elle said. After a second of silence, she added, “I’ll think about her. Pray for her.”
     
 
LATE THAT NIGHT, as he sat on the bed taking off his socks, Lucas remembered Trick Bentoin—Trick the gambler, the man who wasn’t dead, who hadn’t been killed by a brand-new lifer out at Stillwater. Lucas had forgotten to call the county attorney, and so, apparently, had Del; they’d talked to each other a dozen times during the day, and neither had mentioned it again.
    Lucas muttered a short obscenity to himself. Folks were gonna be pissed about the delay. Even though it was kinda funny.
    But he wasn’t thinking about Trick when he drifted off to sleep. He was thinking about what he should wear to lunch tomorrow.
    Lunch with Catrin.
    EVEN LATER THAT night, not far from Lucas, but across the Mississippi in Minneapolis, Jael Corbeau heard a scratching ’round her door. Her eyes popped open, and she sat up. She was exhausted, but she hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d taken a pill, but her body fought it. Alie’e: Amnon said she was infatuated, that Alie’e was nothing more than a willing reflection of Jael’s own need for a special kind of pleasure—for a languid, wicked, fashionable lover. A beautiful lover. And Jael feared it was true, that she was shallow, dissolute. Trendy.
    The scratching on the door popped her out of the depressive cycle. She recognized the sound as soon as she heard it. Somebody was trying to get in.
    Jael lived in a small house on the south side of the loop, not far from the Metrodome. Her bedroom was on the second floor; the first was occupied by her workshop—a throwing room, a glazing room, a kiln room with two big electric Skutts, and a wedging room where she stored clay and did the preliminary workups. The workups that’d built her arms and shoulders: The cops had asked her about that. One had taken her hand, told her to squeeze. She had, and he’d pretended to wince. Fucking with her. Trying to intimidate her. It hadn’t worked.
    She wasn’t intimidated by the cops, and she wasn’t intimidated by the scratching at