Easy Prey

computer guys who got the package.”
    “You were playing . . . ,” Lucas said, trying to wrench her back on track.
    She rolled her head forward, focused on him, and said, “Yeah. He gives me a two-minute head start, and then if he can catch me in the building in five minutes, he gets to fuck me.”
    “Well, that sounds like--”
    “Sometimes I cheat and let him catch me,” she said. She burped. “Anyway, we run all over the building. I was running down the hall, and I saw this guy in the stairwell. I yelled at him, just, ‘Hello,’ and kept going.”
    “Was he going up or down?”
    “Don’t know. He was just there, in the stairwell,” she said.
    “He didn’t answer?”
    “No.”
    “What time was it?” Lucas asked.
    “I don’t know, but early. Or late. Whatever. I talked to Jimmy for a minute this morning, after they found the body.”
    “This is Jimmy, Plain’s assistant?”
    “Yeah. Anyway, he heard me yelling in the hallway, and the only time I was yelling that they would have heard was about the time I saw the guy. So when I saw him, Plain was still alive.”
    “You didn’t think it was weird that somebody was wandering around the building in the middle of the night?” Lucas asked.
    “This building? I’d think it was weird if people weren’t wandering around in the middle of the night.”
    “The St. Paul police said you might have heard a shot.”
    “Maybe. I heard a loud noise, but it might have been a door banging shut. We’ve got all these metal doors in here, and they echo off the concrete when you let them bang shut,” she said. “I didn’t think about it at the time, except that I heard it.”
    “This guy in the hallway looked like . . . what?”
    “Porky. That’s all I can say. Porky. He was sort of turned around from me. . . .” A puzzled look crossed her face. “You know something that crossed my mind? This is stupid. I thought the guy might be the vending machine guy. We got a vending machine guy who looks like this guy.”
    “Did you tell the other cops that?” Lucas asked.
    “No, I just thought of it,” she said.
    “The vending machine guy wouldn’t be here at that time in the morning.”
    “No.”
    “But you play catch-me-fuck-me at that time.”
    “Sure. The way it works is, I drink myself into a stupor in the morning, which I’m doing now. Then I sleep until about three o’clock or maybe four o’clock. Then I get up, and I feel like shit and I eat something, and then I work. I work until midnight, and then . . . you know, whatever. I eat again, and sometimes Neil comes over and we play. And then, when I start getting sleepy, I start drinking.”
    “Did this Neil guy, your friend, did he see the man in the stairwell?”
    “The other cops went and got him up, and he said he didn’t see anybody,” she said.
    “All right.” Lucas looked around the apartment, which seemed spartan if not absolutely bare. The only thing hung on the walls was a Kliban cat calendar. “What kind of art do you do?” he asked.
    “Conceptual,” she said.
     
 
LUCAS HAD JUST turned the corner at the top of the stairs when he heard the woman scream. The scream came from Plain’s apartment, and the cop at the door turned to look inside. A second later, a woman ran out, directly into the green concrete-block wall on the opposite side of the hall. She ran into it full-face, staggered from the blow, ran another step, and then Lucas caught her as she sagged toward the floor. The woman held on and turned her face sideways, and Lucas first registered the scars.
    Jael Corbeau. She wrapped her arms around him, blindly, using him for support. Lucas half turned, and Allport came through the door, spotted them.
    “Ah, Jesus,” he said. “I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have . . .” He looked at Lucas. “We told her she’d have to wait until we got him to the medical examiner’s to see him. We had the sheet over him and she just stooped down and ripped it off before we could stop her. Jesus, Miz Corbeau, I’m sorry. . . .”
    “I gotta go home,” she said. “I gotta go home.”
    “Where’s your car?” Lucas asked. He let her go, but she held on to his jacket with one hand. She hadn’t looked at his face yet; he was a handy post.
    “I don’t have a car. A friend brought me.”
    “Is he still here?”
    “No, the police wouldn’t let him come up, so I told him I’d catch a cab. I thought, I thought, I thought . . . I thought I’d be here for a long time. But I