Easy Prey

speaking through the blue mask. “You’re hurting,” he said, “but you’re gonna make it. We’re tracking the guy who shot you.”
    Her head rolled away, and her eyelids drooped again.
    “Everybody out,” the nurse said.
     
 
IN THE HALL, Lucas said, “She looked pretty good, huh? She looked pretty good.”
    “Pretty good,” Black said.
    “I was amazed,” Del said. “She took a fuckin’ .44, man. Man, she looked a lot better.” He hitched up his jeans, and they all nodded at each other.
    “She’s not out of the woods,” Weather said. “Keep that in mind. It’s a long trip back.”
    On the way out the door with Del, Lucas stopped, said, “Hang on a minute,” and went back inside. Weather was walking away, back to the interior of the hospital. “Hey, Weather.”
    She stopped, waited. He came up, took a card out of his ID case, scribbled his cell phone number on the back of it, and said, “Keep an eye on her while you’re here, okay? You know the docs better than any of us. If anything changes . . .”
    “I’ll call,” she said. She took the card, and Lucas headed back out.
    On the sidewalk, Del said, “What?”
    “Gave her my number in case anything happens with Marcy,” Lucas lied. She could have gotten to him through the police switchboard, and she had that number. He’d actually gone back because of a little subconscious twitch: He went back to look at her ears. She was wearing inky blue sapphire earrings, one-carat stones. He recognized them, because he’d given them to her.
    He smiled on the way back to the office, and Del said, “Our girl’s gonna be all right.”
    “Maybe,” he said.
     
 
BACK AT THE office, Lucas put in a call to Louis Mallard at the FBI in Washington. Mallard had enough clout to extract anything from any government computer anywhere. He agreed to find and send along everything available on Rodriguez’s Miami company. When he got off the phone with Mallard, Lucas walked down to Rose Marie’s office.
    “Need a meeting,” he said.
    “Marcy’s awake.”
    “I know. She’s gonna make it.”
    Rose Marie put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. Don’t hex her.”
    While they were waiting for the meeting to get together, Lane called. “I got bored and walked by Rodriguez’s office window. He was working on the computer in his office.”
    “How many people saw you? The secretary?”
    “Maybe. But I was disguised as a cool guy, which, for me, takes no effort, and I put a little shine on her, through the window.”
    “Lane, you fucking--”
    “Anyway, Rodriguez was signed on to E-Trade.”
    “E-Trade.”
    “Yeah. I bet he’s scared and dumping stock.”
    “Like I was saying, you’re a fucking genius.” Lucas called Mallard back. “Can you get into E-Trade records?”
    “If I wanted to,” Mallard said.
     
 
DEL CAME TO the meeting, along with Frank Lester; Towson, the county attorney; and Long, the assistant county attorney, just back from the Atheneum bank with a pile of paper. No public relations people.
    “I wanted to make sure everybody knows what we’re doing,” Lucas said. “We’re looking at this guy Rodriguez, and I will tell you this, just based on feel and experience and a few things we know about him: He killed Alie’e and Sandy Lansing.”
    “You’re pretty sure,” Towson said.
    “Pretty sure. Lansing was dealing several kinds of dope to rich people and wannabes, working for Rodriguez. Rodriguez is at the party. They have some kind of conflict, and Rodriguez kills her right there in the hallway. Maybe it’s even an accident—the ME’s saying it looks like her head was smashed against a doorjamb. So Rodriguez tried to stuff her in the closet and is surprised by Alie’e, who was in the bedroom. Maybe Alie’e heard the noise of Lansing’s head hitting the doorjamb—or maybe she just woke up at the wrong time. Anyway, she sees something, and Rodriguez takes her out. At this point, he walks away, maybe down the hall to the next room, and goes out the window. Or maybe he just walks through the crowd and drifts away.”
    “What do we have for sure?” Towson asked.
    “We have the fact that Rodriguez was a punk in Detroit, came here with no money, and got rich fast. We have a guy who’ll tell us that he’s a dope wholesaler, and that Sandy Lansing worked for him, selling dope. I don’t doubt that once we start working on that angle, now that we’ve got his name, we’ll be able to find a few other ties between them.