Easy Prey

said. Franklin asked about Marcy, and Rose Marie began filling him in.
    Then the Maplewood cop called back and said, “Listen, Chief, my chief wants to talk with you. You got a number he can call?”
    “Hang on,” Lucas said. He handed the phone to Lester and said, “Give him your cell-phone number.”
    Lester read his number off, then handed the phone back to Lucas. Lucas could hear the Maplewood cop repeating the number to somebody else, and a second later, Lester’s phone rang. He handed it to Lucas, who said, “Hello?”
    The Maplewood chief asked, “If we bust this car, are we gonna get sued?”
    “There’s a suspicion of foul play, so we really don’t want to move it, just in case,” Lucas said, rolling his eyes at Lester. “We’ll take responsibility. If the city won’t, I’ll pay for the window myself.”
    “On your head,” the Maplewood chief said, and Lucas could hear him talking in the background. He put his own phone to his ear, and the Maplewood cop at 3M said, “Okay, we’re gonna bust it.”
    Lucas said, “If you gotta pick up the keys, use gloves. Just in case.” In his other ear, the Maplewood chief said, “Take it easy,” and Lucas said, “Yeah, thanks,” and handed the phone back to Lester, while the cop was saying, “We can leave the keys. I can see a trunk latch.”
    From 3M, Lucas heard a crunch, then a door, and the Maplewood cop said, “We’re popping the trunk.” And a moment later, “Ah, shit.”
    Lester, who’d been looking at Lucas’s face, asked, “What?” and Franklin and Rose Marie, hearing the tone, stopped talking and looked at Lucas. Then the Maplewood cop came back and said, “I hope this guy ain’t a friend of yours.”
    “Aw, man.” Lucas stood up. “What does it look like?”
    “Looks like somebody busted him in the head with a shovel. He’s way dead.”
    “Little guy? Maybe sixty? Long haircut for his age?”
    “Yeah. You got him. What’s the deal?”
    Lucas looked at Rose Marie and said, “We got another one. I don’t think it’s about Alie’e. I think it’s about Sandy Lansing.”
    “Is this about Maison?” the cop asked in his ear.
    “So where does Alie’e’s family fit in?” Rose Marie asked.
    “Maybe Tom Olson is on a revenge trip—but the first killings, that started it off, that’s about Lansing.”
    “Who’re you talking to?” the Maplewood cop asked.
    To Rose Marie, Lucas said, “Just a minute,” and into the phone, “I’ll be out there in a few minutes. Exactly where’re you at?” He made a mental note of the address, and hung up.
    “Can we avoid talking about Deal?” Lester asked. “To the media?”
    “I don’t think so. The Maplewood cops know we’re talking about Alie’e, and you know—word’s gonna get out.”
    “We’ve had a cop shot and four killings in one day.” Rose Marie looked at Lester and then Franklin and back to Lucas. “What’re we gonna do?”
    Lucas left them, found Jael huddled next to the nurses’ station, Franklin standing by the outer door. Jael saw him and stood up, and Lucas said, “How are . . .” Jael reached around his neck with both arms and put her head against his chest and hung on.
    “I’m coming apart,” she said after a while. “I can’t do this.”

17
    DERRICK DEAL WAS distinctly deceased; the Maplewood cop hadn’t been lying when he said he looked like he’d been hit with a shovel. The cop played a flashlight over Deal’s face. The left side of his forehead and left eye socket had been crushed, and another indentation followed the line of his eyebrows across the right side of his face. Deal’s right eyebrow looked like a stepped-on millipede, while his left one was gone entirely.
    “Wasn’t a shovel, though,” Lucas said, looking at the body. “Looks like he was hit with a chair.”
    “You think so?”
    “Yeah. I once went to a killing where this guy hit his old lady with a kitchen chair. He said he thought it was gonna break, like they do in the movies. He might as well of hit her with a pipe. Her face looked just like this.” He pointed at the dent leading out the right side of Deal’s face. “I’ll bet you it was an old wooden chair. The other guy swung it by the back, just like in the movies, and hit him in the face with the edge of the seat. One of the legs busted his brow ridge. You might find a mark from the other leg on his neck, or his chest.”
    “I’ll tell the ME,” the cop said. “I never seen a chair