Easy Prey

thought it might be crack, but I thought it was weird, too. The guy didn’t look like a crack kid. He was too big, he was . . .” She made a gesture.
    “Porky?” Lucas asked.
    “Well, I don’t know if he was porky. I was gonna say he looked sort of rednecky . . . sort of. Why?”
    “White?”
    “I think so, but I couldn’t really see him. But his clothes looked . . . white.”
    Lucas peered through the windshield at Don, the friend, who was now standing up, looking at them as they idled by the curb. “Can you trust this guy?”
    “Don? He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
    “Do you have anybody you can trust, who would hurt a fly?” Lucas asked.
    “Why? Tell me.”
    “A woman in your brother’s building saw a man last night. She said he was porky. She saw him probably within a few minutes of the time your brother was killed.”
    “You think?”
    “I think we shouldn’t take any chances. The guy who killed your brother is a nut. Stick with Don. I’m gonna have a cop drop by and hang out with you.”
    “How’ll I know it’s really him? The cop.”
    “Not a him, it’s a her. Ask for her ID. Her name’s Marcy Sherrill.” He looked at her. “I think you’ll probably like each other.”

13
    LUCAS WENT TO Rose Marie’s office. The secretary waved him through, and he found her talking to a slender man with a red beard and an expensive black suit. “This is Howard Bennett. He’s a curator over at the Walker Art Center,” Rose Marie said.
    “I’ve been there a few times,” Lucas said.
    “Inside?” Rose Marie asked suspiciously, one eyebrow going up.
    “Not actually inside,” Lucas said. “When I was in uniform, the guards would get us over there to chase people who were trying to, you know . . .”
    “Fuck in the spoon,” Bennett said.
    “The exact words I was looking for,” Lucas said. The Walker Center had a Claes Oldenburg sculpture of a spoon with a cherry. Fucking in the spoon was the Twin Cities equivalent of flying a Cessna 185 through the arch in St. Louis.
    “Yeah, well, Howard is an expert in photography. He says Amnon Plain’s murder is gonna be a bigger deal than Alie’e’s.”
    “I didn’t quite say that,” Bennett said. “But it’ll be bigger with a different crowd.” He smiled a thin, marmotlike smile. “You’ll get press synergy. A whole new, even more weasel-like element of the press will get on your case, demanding action.”
    “That’s good,” Rose Marie said. “We weren’t getting enough attention.” She looked at Lucas: “How bad was it?”
    “Bad. I don’t know what you’re getting from St. Paul, but I think it’s a different killer. Maybe somebody just taking the opportunity, hoping we’ll think that whoever did Alie’e and Lansing also did Plain—but I don’t think it was the same guy.”
    “So it might not be directly related.”
    “Maybe not. On the other hand, it could be. It’s possible that a couple of people have seen the killer. They said he was ‘porky’ and ‘big’ and ‘rednecky.’”
    Rose Marie looked at Lucas for a second, then at Bennett. “Howard, I really appreciate your telling me about Plain. Can I call you . . . ?”
    Bennett knew when he was being shuffled out. He smiled his marmot smile again and said, “Say hello to your friends in the legislature.”
    “You can count on it,” Rose Marie said. She followed him into the outer office, shook hands, then stepped back inside and closed the door. “You think it was Tom Olson?” she asked Lucas.
    “The thought crossed my mind,” Lucas said. “He’s heavyset. We know he’s got a temper. We know he’s distraught. We know that he might be a little bit of a nut.”
    “Or maybe a lot of a nut,” she said.
    “Maybe the photo spread set him off. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.”
    “Not outside a men’s magazine.”
    “Not even in men’s magazines. It was a lot artier than that shit. And decadent. It had this weird end-of-time feel to it, that might have fed straight into his paranoia.”
    “So what’re we going to do?”
    “We’re doing some research on him. And I’m going to put Sherrill with Jael Corbeau—somebody tried to break into her house the night before last, and the guy was sorta porky.”
    “Okay. Sherrill for as long as she can stand it, but when she needs a break, I want somebody else with Corbeau. She doesn’t get killed in Minneapolis. And we better get somebody with Catherine Kinsley, too.”
    “The problem is,