Easy Prey

the window. The clerk nodded, and he headed across the street. A St. Paul cop at the door recognized him, and said, “Nice to see you, chief,” when Lucas said, “Good morning.”
    Another cop pointed him at the elevator: “Up to seven, take a right.”
     
 
A ST. PAUL police lieutenant named Allport was standing over Amnon Plain’s body, making notes on a steno pad with a yellow pencil. Plain, shirtless and shoeless, was facedown in a puddle of drying blood that had spread across a pale hardwood floor. A brown paper grocery bag lay a few feet from his head, its contents spilled out across the floor: bakery, a cereal box, a six-pack of mineral water. Just beyond the grocery bag, a stainless-steel spiral staircase led down to the floor below.
    Lucas took it in for a minute, then the St. Paul cop looked up. “Ah, thank God. The Minneapolis cops. We were just about to call for help.”
    “We heard you had a murder, and thought you probably needed some advice on how to handle it,” Lucas said.
    “We certainly would. What would you advise?”
    “Get your PR guy out of bed and get his ass over here,” Lucas said. “In about one hour, you’re gonna be up to your knees in CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and every goddamn channel that’s got initials.”
    “Yeah.” Allport scratched behind his ear with the pencil point. Then he turned and looked at a cop. “Get the chief on the line.”
    “So what happened?” Lucas asked.
    Allport spread his hands over the body. “They just had this big Alie’e spread in The Star —have you seen it?”
    “Yeah. Sexy.”
    “You see the boner on that guy?”
    “Yeah. So what happened here?”
    “I’ll tell you what, if I had a dick like that, I sure as shit wouldn’t be a welder. . . . Anyway, everybody was screaming for pictures. That’s what Plain’s assistant says. They were sending them out by phone—I don’t know how, exactly.”
    “So . . .”
    “So the assistant was here until four-thirty, and then they decided to break. He said Plain wanted to take a shower, and they needed some food. It was too early for any regular store to be open and they didn’t like any of the all-night restaurants, so the assistant drove over to White Bear Avenue. There’s an all-night supermarket . . .”
    “Where all the cops hang out.”
    “Used to, when they had the all-night restaurant. Anyway, he bought some rolls and fruit and shredded wheat and a carton of milk and some bottled water.” His pencil dipped toward the bag on the floor. “When he came back, he let himself in downstairs, because he thought Plain might still be in the shower, and then he came up the stairs and he found . . . this.”
    “He dropped the bag?”
    “Yup.”
    “Got a cash-register receipt?” Lucas asked.
    “Yup. And the time of the receipt says four-fifty-four. Already worked it out, and it fits.”
    “You believe him?”
    “Yup.”
    “Why?”
    “Because he was freaked out in a way that’s hard to fake. Because we had an off-duty cop working at the supermarket who saw the assistant checking the food through, and she said he was mellow enough to bullshit both the cashier and the cop.”
    “Shit.”
    “I sorta thought the same thing, until it occurred to me that I’ll probably get a lot of airtime outa this.”
    The cop that Allport had sent to make the phone call came back with a cell phone and handed it to him. “Chief,” he said.
    Allport took the phone and said, “I got Lucas Davenport here. He says we’re gonna need some heavy PR bullshit here, and right away. Yeah. Yeah . . . here he is.” He handed the phone to Lucas.
    “You working up a new handload?” Lucas asked, when he took the phone.
    “Well, uh, not at the moment. Why?”
    “All the stray dogs have been disappearing from the neighborhood,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, bullshit, Davenport. Listen, how bad’s this gonna be?”
    “Can’t tell. All depends on how you handle it—the movie people are like flies over in Minneapolis right now, and you can bet your ass they’ll be over here as soon as the word leaks. I’d be surprised if you got more than an hour. If I were you, I’d get the mayor in and get him briefed, so he doesn’t say anything stupid. And I’d talk to Rose Marie. Get her to ship our PR guy here, to brief you on our case. . . . If you sound half bright and on top of all the questions, you’ll be okay. For now.”
    “Until we catch the killer. You guys getting anything over there?”
    “No.”
    “Then