Easy Prey

killer. I’d say maybe eighty-five percent.”
    Rose Marie looked from Lucas to Del and back to Lucas and asked, “Who?”
    “A guy named Rodriguez.” They laid it out for her. At the end, she said, “So we know who it is, but we can’t convict him.”
    “That’s pretty much it,” Lucas admitted. “When you make the leaps, you can convince yourself that he’s the guy . . . but a jury, I don’t think so. One thing, he doesn’t look like a dope dealer. He looks like a washing-machine salesman.”
    “What if he isn’t the guy?”
    “We put together a case. If we can put together a solid enough case to convince ourselves . . . maybe we’ll have a chance. Or maybe we’ll stumble over something,” Lucas said. “I mean, we convicted Rashid Al-Balah and he didn’t even do it.”
    “So . . . we brace the loan officer from the bank.”
    “As soon as we do it, he’s gonna go out the back door, make a phone call, and Rodriguez will know we’re on his ass,” Del said.
    “Good thought. We ought to have Rodriguez tapped,” Lucas said. “If we can get him talking about it . . .”
    “Do we have enough for a tap?” Rose Marie asked.
    “Probably,” Lucas said. “We can get that going this afternoon. The best thing that could happen to the county attorney’s office is to have something to distract from the Al-Balah story, when it breaks. If we can hang Rodriguez for Alie’e, Al-Balah moves to page nine.”
    “Al-Balah has already broken,” Rose Marie said. “The county attorney’s guys decided it’d be better to get out there first with the news, put some of their own spin on it.”
    “Still . . .”
    Rose Marie nodded. “I’ll get them started on a tap.”
    Then Rose Marie laid out the situation with Tom Olson. He was out of the hospital, but was being tailed by relays of Homicide and Intelligence cops, who would stay with him twenty-four hours a day. Alie’e’s funeral had been delayed until the elder Olsons’ bodies were released, so they could all be buried together—and that might be a while yet, because the situation in the Bloomington motel room was so complicated.
    “If Olson’s the guy—the one who’s going after everybody else , in revenge for his sister—we think he might go after Jael Corbeau again, or the other woman, Catherine Kinsley.”
    “Or that Jax guy.”
    “Jax checked out,” Rose Marie said. “He’s gone to New York, but says he’ll be back for the funeral. He’s probably shopping for the right outfit to wear when he throws himself in her grave.”
    “So we’re just watching?” Lucas asked.
    “No. We’ve had these family briefings every day, and we’re going to continue them. In fact, Olson’s coming here in”—she looked at her watch—“about twenty-five minutes. We’re going to try to point him at Kinsley. We’ll talk a little about Alie’e’s relationship with her. Kinsley and her husband are going up north to their cabin, which is way the hell out in the woods. You can’t even find them with a map. We’ll have a team at her house, waiting, if Olson goes that way.”
    “How about Jael?” Lucas asked.
    “We think he’s less likely to try her, because he tried once, and she ran him off,” Rose Marie said. “But we’ll have a team there, too. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop by and talk to her. She’s scared, and she’d like to have you around.”
    “All right,” Lucas said. “And listen, I know Angela Harris is a smart shrink, but I saw Olson’s face when he came running across the grass to tell us about his folks. And man, I don’t know about this multiple-personality stuff, but that was . . . real. That was so strong that if his personalities were gonna dissolve, or whatever they do, that would have happened right then. I mean . . . I’ve never seen anything like it. Ever.”
    “We’re keeping that in mind, of course,” Rose Marie said. “But it’s what we’ve got, right now.”
    “So we’re set?” Del asked, stepping toward the door.
    “If everything went exactly right—exactly right—we could have both these guys in twenty-four hours,” Rose Marie said. “If the bank guy calls Rodriguez, if Olson goes for Kinsley . . .”
    “There’s gotta be at least one time in life when everything works,” Del said. “One time.”
    “Bullshit,” Lucas said. Out in the hall, when they were away from Rose Marie, he added, “She says they’re keeping in mind that it might be somebody else, but they’re not.