"I'm sure" Lucas was about to unreel a cliche, but Lansing broke in.
"Do you think you'll catch them?" he asked.
"Yes."
"I'll betcha it was niggers," he said.
"There weren't any black people at the party last night."
Lansing shook a trembling finger at Lucas. "Maybe. But you watch. I betcha it was niggers. You go upstairs, in the courthouse? I go up there all the time. To watch. All you see in them courtrooms is niggers. I mean, some white trash goes through there, but ninety-nine percent of them is niggers. And most of the white trash got nigger blood."
Sloan, standing behind Lansing, rolled his eyes. Lucas said, "Whoever did it, we'll catch him, Mr. Lansing. I'm really sorry about your daughter."
Lansing turned away and spoke to no one. "My daughter. She was an executive." And he wandered away, talking to the air.
"He loved his daughter," Sloan said after him.
"Yeah. That's what all that segregation shit used to be about. All the white people loved their daughters."
"Hate to lose a daughter, though," Sloan said. He had a daughter in college. "Worst thing I could think of. It's not right, dying out of order."
Lucas sighed. "You get anything from anybody?"
"No, but we're working the right people. Whoever killed them was at the party. There was too much going on that sparks off troubledrugs, former boyfriends and girlfriends, the celebrity thing and the macho shit that goes with it, and just the general craziness of the crowd."
"I just said the same thing to Lester," Lucas said. "So how many people were at the party?"
"We've got sixty-odd, so far, outa maybe a hundred." Sloan held up the piece of paper. "This is the list. Most people don't remember seeing Alie'e after about midnight. I talked to one guy and his girlfriend, who can pin down their arrival at about twelve-fifteen, who say they never saw her. And they heard she was there, so they were looking. Jael and Catherine Kinsley left her in the bedroom sometime before one o'clock. She was alive and drowsy when they left."
"You talked to Kinsley?"
"On the phone. She's on her way back, with her husband. Their cabin is all the way up in Elyfive hours. She didn't hear about it until noon, on public radio."
"And you believe them, that Alie'e was alive?"
"Yes. There's just too much Other peoplesaw Lansing still alive after Jael and Kinsley had left; at least, that's what we're getting now."
"So how many people are eligible to do the killing?"
"Hanson says the party peaked between one and two, which means maybe most of the people were around when Alie'e got it. We've got a few who'd left earlier, that we've been able to confirm. And quite a few more that said they left earlier, but we haven't been able to confirm or are lying," Sloan said.
"What if the killer unlocked that window, left the house, so people could see him leavingmade a deal out of it, kissed a few people, shook a couple of hands, giving himself an alibithen came back through the window, killed her, and went back out the window?"
"Sounds like too much coming and going," Sloan said.
"But it explains the open window," Lucas said. "And it might even explain why Sandy Lansing was killed. Suppose he came back in the window, does Alie'e, and boom, Lansing is right there in the hall. He's gotta kill her. She knows that he left, and made a big deal out of it, and then came back."
Sloan looked at the paper in his hand. "So we put everybody back on the list."
Chapter 9
Lane got back. "I got a chart on Alie'eher folks, her brother."
"I saw her brother," Lucas said.
"Yeah, the preacher. He goes around and ministers to farm people out in the Red River Valley. He fixes farm equipment, sometimes he works part-time at a grain elevator. Won't take any contributions. Gives away everything he earns except what he needs to eat and buy clothes."
"Tell you this: He doesn't spend any money on clothes," Lucas said.
"So the people out there think he's either crazy or a saint, or both. That's what they said in the Fargo newspaper. There was an article."
"On the brother, not Alie'e."
Lane nodded. "Mostly on the brother. The angle was, you know, 'crazy saint related to Alie'e Maison.' "
"Where was he last night?"
Lane had asked that question. "In Fargo. He runs a free kitchen there. He was around the kitchen until eight o'clock or so. He was hack in the morning. He could have made a round trip in between."
"And he's got a temper," Lucas said. "What else you got?"
"I got all the shit on Alie'e. That was just a matter of going out on the Net-I got a file of printouts two inches thick. And you know what? There's a cult of Alie'e worshipers out there. And Alie'e haters. They fight on the Net."
"I heard."
"Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if one of those guys did her."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You know, some computer nerd rapist killer nutso builds a fantasy around her, crashes a party where she's supposed to be, she laughs him off, says she'd rather be fuckin' her girlfriends than a pimply little freak"
Lucas grinned at the runaway description. "Nerd rapist killer nutso?"
"It coulda happened that way," Lane said seriously.
"What else you got?"
"Igot something else," Lane said, "and it's interesting, but nothing like my previous conjecture about the nerd rapist killer. Nutso."
"And?"
"It's this other chick, Sandy Lansing. I talked to the manager at Browns Hotel, and it turns out Lansing wasn't exactly a big deal. She was more like a female bellhop. She'd take rich people up to theirrooms and show them around."
"Not an executive?" Lucas said.
"No. She was making maybe twenty-five thousand a year. Enough to starve on. But, man, I talked to the guys from Homicide who were down at her apartment. She's got the cool clothes, she's got a decent carPorsche Boxter? and she hung out with all these rich people. And held her end up financially. She's gotta have money coming in from somewhere, butI can't findit."
"It ain't coming from her old man," Lucas said. "I just saw him. He looked like he doesn't have two dimes to rub together."
"That's the impression I got," Lane said. "So I was thinking She works at this hotel, greeting people. Maybe she's on the corner?"
"Any busts?"
"Not a thing. But at that level, it's more by introduction," Lane said. "Some big sports guy comes through town, or big TV guy, and you go hang out. Then you go back to his hotel room and later you geta gift. Maybe the hotel knows, maybe not."
"So let's get her friends, and push a little. Find out where the money came from."
"I thought maybe you could do the hotel end," Lane said.
"Me? I'm a deputy chief of police."
"Yeah, but the hotel's assistant manager in charge of keeping things right is an old pal of yours."
"Who's that?" Lucas asked.
"Derrick Deal."
"You gotta be shitting me."
"I shit you not, Deputy Chief of Police."
On the way out of the building, Lucas passed Rose Marie Roux puffing down the hall. " 'Muff-Divers' Ball?' " she asked, hooking his arm.
"That's what the headline said," he answered, mildly flustered.
"How many euphemisms do men have for the female sexual organ?" she asked.
"That's not a place you wanna go," Lucas said.
"How long before we catch the guy?"
"Another place"
She nodded. "that I don't want to go."
Derrick Deal had once been an assistant county assessor, more or less. His actual position was bagman for a city council cabal that was selling cut-rate property assessments. The cabal ran into trouble when Deal tried to hit up a machine-shop owner, who happened to be the uncle of a vice cop. The cop did some cop shit and got a tape of Deal soliciting a payoff.
Then the cop made a mistake. He believed that if he simply nailed Deal, that Deal's brother assessors would, in turn, punish his uncle by running up his assessments, even as Deal went off to six weeks in jail. So instead of arresting him, the cop let Deal listen to the tape, and told him to lay off. Deal misinterpreted the threat and ran to his city council protectors. They went to the chiefthis was three chiefs agowho squashed the vice cop like a bug. The vice cop found himself working traffic management on construction sites.