Easy Prey

spend some time with Allport. If you aren’t doing any good over there, maybe something’ll catch your eye over here.”
     
 
WHEN HE GOT off the phone, Lucas went back to the body, squatting as close as he could get without disturbing the puddle of blood. All he could see was the red stain in the middle of Plain’s back. An exit wound, he thought; but the cloth was too soaked to show a hole. Lucas looked around the room. “You find a bullet hole anywhere?”
    “Yeah. The problem is, the whole place is poured concrete. There’s a big goddamn dent in the wall over there.” He pointed, and Lucas saw the gray pit. “The slug went somewhere else. I wouldn’t be surprised if it more or less evaporated. Hit the wall straight-on.”
    “When are you gonna roll him over?” he asked.
    “ We’re ready.” Allport nodded to an assistant medical examiner, who was sitting on a chair in the kitchen, reading a comic book. “But our photo guy is checking what he got on film—we don’t want any mistakes on this.”
    “So how long?”
    “He’s been out of here for half an hour, so it should be anytime.”
    “Where’s Plain’s assistant?” Lucas asked.
    “Down in the studio.”
    “Mind if I chat with him?”
    “Go ahead. I’ll call you when we roll him.”
     
 
THE STUDIO CONSISTED of five rooms—one big open space with pull-down paper rolls mounted on the walls; a smaller room full of strange-looking tables with curved milky-white plastic tops; a small room with a group of hooded lights and a half-dozen chairs of different kinds, apparently a portrait studio; an office and storage space; and an entry.
    Lucas found James Graf in the office. He was dressed in a black turtleneck and black slacks, and had a thin black beard. He looked, Lucas thought, like a picture of one of the old-time beatniks. Graf was lying on a couch, an arm thrown over his eyes. Lucas dragged a director’s chair across the floor and sat down next to the couch. Graf lifted his head and looked wordlessly at Lucas. He’d been crying, Lucas thought.
    “Did you see or hear anybody outside the studio or the apartment when you left for the grocery store?”
    “I already talked.”
    “I’m from Minneapolis. I’m working on the Alie’e murder,” Lucas said. “I just have a couple of questions. Did you see or hear anybody?”
    “I didn’t see anyone, but we heard people from time to time, when we were working. There’s always somebody around,” Graf said. “People here work all night sometimes. They’re always out wandering around in the hallways.”
    “But you didn’t see anybody.”
    “No, but I did recognize one voice. Joyce, I don’t know her last name, she’s an artist, down the hall. I heard her yelling, and running in the hall. Laughing. This was a few minutes before I went out. I told the St. Paul police.”
    “How about cars in the parking lot?”
    Graf dropped his head back, refocused on the ceiling, thinking, then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t notice anything unusual. We did have a wrong-number phone call about two o’clock, which was pretty unusual, but I told St. Paul and they’re checking.”
    “This artist, Joyce, was wandering around. For what?”
    “I don’t know.” Graf pushed himself up on the couch. “But you know, she was down here. He was killed upstairs, and to get upstairs, you have to go all the way to the middle of the building and take the elevator or the public stairs. Unless you take a fire escape. So if he was waiting up there, she probably wouldn’t have seen him.”
    “You don’t think he came in through here.” Lucas nodded at the studio door.
    “No. Ammy was on his way upstairs when I left, and the bolts on all the doors lock automatically. And those doors, they’re steel. We’ve got maybe a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of photo equipment and computer stuff in here, and the place is full of thieves—stuff gets stolen all the time—so our doors are good. The locks are good. So I think whoever it was, went up and knocked on the door upstairs, and killed Ammy when he answered it.”
    “Would Plain just open the door if somebody knocked?”
    “Well . . . maybe. I mean, everybody in the building knows everybody else, so if somebody knocks . . .” He gestured at the door. “The doors upstairs are just like these: solid, no windows. If somebody knocks, you have to open it to see who it is. And maybe . . .”
    “What?”
    “Maybe he thought it was me, coming