Easy Prey

some calls tonight and get the interview set up.”
    Del said, “I’ll be there, too. I’ll come out to Stillwater with you.”
    “Marcy’s gonna be okay,” Loring said.
    “Yeah. I just don’t want any early calls tomorrow,” Lucas said. “No goddamn early calls.”

18
    TUESDAY. FOURTH DAY of the case.
    As beaten up as he was, he hadn’t been able to sleep. Hadn’t been able to drive Marcy out of his head, or Weather. Or Catrin. And Jael Corbeau was there in a corner, watching. He even thought about standing in the barnyard with Mrs. Clay, the night he delivered the fishing boat, and what might’ve happened with their lives in other circumstances.
    And he thought about the Olsons, dead together in the hotel, and their son, running toward the highway, pulling his hair out to the sides of his head, as though trying to pull a devil out of his skull.
    He hadn’t been able to sleep, but somehow must have, for a while. He might have been asleep, he thought, when the alarm went off, and shook him out of bed—it was one of those nights when he couldn’t tell whether he was awake or only dreaming that he was awake, the dreams punctuated by the liquid green light from the clock as he touched it at two, three, four, and five o’clock. He didn’t remember touching it at six, and now at seven the alarm went. . . .
    Marcy. He called the hospital and identified himself. She was still listed as critical, in intensive care. Still alive, still asleep. He stood in the shower for ten minutes, slowly waking up. Drove out to a SuperAmerica store for a shot of coffee. Rolled into the parking ramp a few minutes after eight.
    Loring was waiting in Homicide with Trick Bentoin. “Del called. He’s on the way,” Loring said. “He says to turn on your cell phone.”
    “Yeah, yeah.”
    Del looked as beat up as Lucas felt, grinned when he arrived, said, “Well, you look like shit,” and Lucas said, “So that’s two of us.” Del asked, “Have you been to the hospital?”
    “No. I called. She’s still asleep.”
    “Let’s go over for a minute,” Del said. “You can get more face-to-face.”
    They walked over in the cold morning, breathing steam into the air. The streets were crowded with cheerful going-to-work people. Not long, Lucas thought, before Thanksgiving and then Christmas.
    “Christmas coming,” Del said, picking up the thought.
    At the hospital, they got almost nothing from the nurses, because the nurses knew almost nothing.
    “Let’s go see if Weather’s in,” Lucas suggested.
    “Yeah?” Del looked at him curiously. Weather couldn’t look at Lucas; not last year, anyway. Had something changed?
    “Yeah. Come on.”
    Weather was in the women’s locker room. A nurse went in and got her, and she came out in her scrubs and booties. She said,“’Lo, Del. You’re looking like . . . you look a little tired.”
    “Thanks,” Del said dryly.
    Lucas asked, “You talk to any of your pals about Marcy? We can’t get anything downstairs.”
    “Her blood pressure’s a little funky,” Weather said. “It could be shock, but Hirschfeld’s afraid she might’ve sprung a leak. They’re watching her.”
    Lucas panicked. “Sprung a leak? What does that mean? Sprung a leak?”
    Weather touched his hand. “Lucas, it can happen. As messed up as she was, it’d be a miracle if they did everything perfectly. If it’s a leak, it’s not huge. She’s just a little funky.”
    “Jesus Christ, Weather. . . .”
    Weather said to Del, “You’re gonna have to watch our boy, here. There’s nothing he can do about this, but he’s going into full Lucas mode.”
    Lucas was still shaken when they left, and Del was more curious than ever. “You’ve been talking to Weather?”
    “Bumped into her last night. First time we’d talked . . . forever.”
    “She seems different,” Del ventured. The unfinished part of the thought was like she didn’t hate you anymore.
    “Time passes,” Lucas said.
     
 
ON THE WAY out to the prison, they talked tactics with Trick.
    “According to your brilliant plan,” Trick said, “I sit on my ass until you tell me to walk. Then I come in.”
    “Yeah, but when you come in, you come in shining like the fuckin’ sun ,” Del said.
    “Shining like the fuckin’ sun for Al-Balah,” Trick said in disgust. “If that cocksucker died this afternoon, we’d have to go over to the cathedral and light candles in thanksgiving.”
    “You a Catholic?” Lucas asked.
    “Fuck no,”