Easy Prey

desk was empty, but Rose Marie, dressed in slacks and a sweater with fuzzy white sheep on it, was in her office with two visitors. Dick Milton, the department’s media specialist, was a former newspaper reporter who’d once written an eight-part investigative series—Sunday through Sunday—on oak wilt. Angela Harris, a departmental contract shrink, was perched on the windowsill.
    “What do you think?” Lucas asked as he stuck his head in the door.
    “Media-wise?” Roux looked up. “Just about what we expected.”
    “Been a little rough on George Shaw,” Milton said.
    “That’s not rough,” Lucas said. He’d never liked Milton, even when he was reporting. “Rough is sitting in the county jail, waiting to go to Stillwater for ten years, which is what George is gonna do.”
    “It’s not gonna hold, the connection between Shaw and Alie’e,” Milton said. He looked at Roux. “This whole lesbian business . . . they stayed pretty delicate about it last night, on the news shows, but I was on the Net and I saw a scan of the first copies of The Star , and they got a big sexy picture of this Jael Corbeau. She’s hotter than Alie’e, so it ain’t gonna stay delicate very long.”
    “When’s The Star gonna get here?” Lucas asked.
    “This afternoon, I guess. They got stories on the Net about how the Star editors tore the ass off a whole issue as it was going out the door, and turned it around to do an Alie’e issue. The Journal says all them other rags are suckin’ wind.”
    “So it’s gonna pump everything up,” Lucas said. He looked at Roux. “You’re still working the press pretty hard?”
    “We’re doing another press conference at ten o’clock, and then the Olson family and friends are supposed to be back around noon. They want the body as soon as they can get it. The funeral’s gonna be later in the week, up in Burnt River. Then we’ll probably have another press briefing around three o’clock, and if we need another, around seven.”
    “Nothing came up overnight?”
    “Nothing. Except this morning, Randall Towson called about Trick Bentoin.”
    “I forgot to tell you about it,” Lucas said. “The murder washed it away. Del says Trick’s in a Days Inn down on 694, so we’ll pick him up tomorrow and get a statement. Towson is gonna call Rashid Al-Balah’s attorney, I guess, as soon as we get a statement from Trick.”
    “Maybe nobody will notice?”
    “We should announce it the day of the funeral,” Milton said. “If we can hold off until then.”
    “I dunno,” Lucas said. “We really ought to get Al-Balah out of Stillwater as soon as we can.”
    “Al-Balah?” Roux said. “Fuck him. But why don’t you get Bentoin today? Just in case.”
    “Okay.” Lucas looked at the shrink. “What do you think about Alie’e? We got a crazy?”
    She shook her head. “Too soon to tell. It looks more efficient than crazy, though. Of course, the man is disturbed in some sense.”
    “He’d be more disturbed if I could get my goddamned hands on him,” Rose Marie said.
    “Twelve of the people at the party have arrest records, and I’m looking at them for any sign of psychiatric involvement, but I don’t see any so far,” the shrink continued.
    “Twelve?” Lucas asked, looking at Rose Marie.
    “Talk to Lester—but it’s all small stuff. Shoplifting, petty theft, two misdemeanor domestic assaults, one street fight, a couple of ticket scofflaw cases . . . like that.”
    Nothing.
    A POST-IT NOTE was stuck to Lucas’s door: Come get me. It was signed, Marcy. He walked down to Homicide, and found the place full of cops—more homicide cops than he’d ever seen in one spot, at one time, on a Sunday. Lester was perched on a desk at the end of the room, talking to a cop with a notebook. He spotted Lucas and shook his head. Nothing happening.
    Lucas stepped back to Marcy Sherrill’s desk. She saw him coming, said something into the phone she was holding, and hung up. “I’m really coming over?” She was a pretty woman in her early thirties; she liked to fight. She and Lucas had had a brief, intense affair, which everyone in the office had considered inevitable and overdue. After a couple of months, they’d called the thing off by mutual consent, to their mutual relief.
    “Yeah, at least for a while,” Lucas said.
    “Good. I’m trying to track down more people from the party—I bet we’re missing forty people—but I’m not getting anywhere. I’m ready to bag