"He's been out of here for half an hour, so it should be anytime."
"Where's Plain's assistant?" Lucas asked.
"Down in the studio."
"Mind if I chat with him?"
"Go ahead. I'll call you when we roll him."
The studio consisted of five roomsone big open space with pull-down paper rolls mounted on the walls; a smaller room full of strange-looking tables with curved milky-white plastic tops; a small room with a group of hooded lights and a half-dozen chairs of different kinds, apparently a portrait studio; an office and storage space; and an entry.
Lucas found James Graf in the office. He was dressed in a black turtleneck and black slacks, and had a thin black beard. He looked, Lucas thought, like a picture of one of the old-time beatniks. Graf was lying on a couch, an arm thrown over his eyes. Lucas dragged a director's chair across the floor and sat down next to the couch. Graf lifted his head and looked wordlessly at Lucas. He'd been crying, Lucas thought.
"Did you see or hear anybody outside the studio or the apartment when you left for the grocery store?"
"I already talked."
"I'm from Minneapolis. I'm working on the Alie'e murder," Lucas said. "I just have a couple of questions. Did you see or hear anybody?"
"I didn't see anyone, but we heard people from time to time, when we were working. There'salways somebody around," Graf said. "People here work all night sometimes. They're always out wandering around in the hallways."
"But you didn'tsee anybody."
"No, but I did recognize one voice. Joyce, I don't know her last name, she's an artist, down the hall. I heard her yelling, and running in the hall. Laughing. This was a few minutes before I went out. I told the St. Paul police."
"How about cars in the parking lot?"
Graf dropped his head back, refocused on the ceiling, thinking, then shook his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't notice anything unusual. We did have a wrong-number phone call about two o'clock, which was pretty unusual, but I told St. Paul and they're checking."
"This artist, Joyce, was wandering around. For what?"
"I don't know." Graf pushed himself up on the couch. "But you know, she was downhere. He was killed upstairs, and to get upstairs, you have to go all the way to the middle of the building and take the elevator or the public stairs. Unless you take a fire escape. So if he was waiting up there, she probably wouldn't have seen him."
"You don't think he came in through here." Lucas nodded at the studio door.
"No. Ammy was on his way upstairs when I left, and the bolts on all the doors lock automatically. And those doors, they're steel. We've got maybe a hundred thousand dollars' worth of photo equipment and computer stuff in here, and the place is full of thievesstuff gets stolen all the timeso our doors aregood. The locks are good. So I think whoever it was, went up and knocked on the door upstairs, and killed Ammy when he answered it."
"Would Plain just open the door if somebody knocked?"
"Well maybe. I mean, everybody in the building knows everybody else, so if somebody knocks" He gestured at the door. "The doors upstairs are just like these: solid, no windows. If somebody knocks, you have to open it to see who it is. And maybe"
"What?"
"Maybe he thought it was me, coming back for something," Graf said.
"How often did he send you out?"
"Most nights when we're working. I'd go get some food somewhere and we'd eat it upstairs, in the kitchen. We don't like to have food in here, 'cause you get grease around, and crumbs, and then you get bugs and mice. There's just too much stuff in here."
"So he might have thought it was you, coming back."
"Yes."
"Did he have his shirt on when you last saw him?"
"Yes. And his shoes. He was going to take a shower."
"So whoever attacked him, it probably had to happen within a few minutes of your leaving."
"Probably. I don't think he'd taken his shower yet. His hair didn't look wet He always washed his hair, because if we were working a long time, it'd get greasy. That's what he always said."
"Do you think"
Allport shouted down from the apartment level. "We're gonna roll him."
Lucas went back upstairs. The medical examiner was pulling on yellow rubber gloves; a cop and an ME's assistant were already wearing them. A photographer squatted in the corner, sorting equipment out of a camera bag. An eight-foot-long sheet of plastic had been spread across the floor, just outside the blood puddle.
"Gonna turn him," Allport said.
"Gotta pick him up, straight up, keep him in the air, don't let him dip back into the puddle. Then we're gonna roll onto the plastic," the ME told the other two guys with gloves.
"Did you talk to somebody named Joyce?" Lucas asked Allport.
"Joyce Woo," Allport said, nodding.
The ME interrupted. "You're gonna have to move, we're gonna swing him right past you," he said. Lucas and Allport stepped back. The ME said, "Bill, you gotta hang on to the shoulder at the same time you pick up the hand or we'll lose him. With the blood on there, he could be slippery.
"She's an Oriental chick," Allport said to Lucas. "She was out in the hallway. She might've seen somebody, she might even have heard the shot, but she was so drunk at the time that she's not sure. I mean, she's sure, but we're not sure. Go talk to her."
"The phone call? The wrong number?"
"Still looking for it."
"Ready?" The medical examiner asked. "Lift"
When they moved the body, Lucas turned away. But he heard it. As it broke free of the partially coagulated blood, it sounded like a boot coming out of a mudhole.
They picked Plain straight up, carried him facedown to the plastic sheet, and then flipped him in midair and dropped him to the plastic. His eyes were open; Lucas winced and turned away for a moment.
"Nothing here," Allport said. "Boom, he falls down."
Lucas squatted, looked Plain in the face. "So strange," he said.
"What?"
"The killings at the party were improvised," Lucas said. "Who'd be crazy enough to go to a big party, planning to kill somebody in a hallway, and then strangle a famous model in a bedroom, with a hundred people around? Had to be improvised. It seemed almost accidental."
"This ain't," Allport said. "Maybe this Plain guy knew something and the killer had to shut him up."
Lucas stood up. "That's pretty complicated."
When Joyce Woo answered her door, she was holding a beer mug half full of white wine, and her apartment reeked of the stuff. She was short, stocky, moon-faced, and wore thick-lensed glasses. She invited him in, and slumped on a couch with paisley cushions. Lucas pulled up a kitchen chair.
"I told the other cops I saw somebody," she said, nipping at the wine, looking at Lucas over the rim of the glass. "Down the hall. But I didn't see him very well, 'cause I was playing catch-me-fuck-me with a friend."
"You were, uh"
"A guy I know from across the street, a computer-art guy. Not what you'd call real good-looking, but, what the hell, I'm not exactly the Queen of the May. And he's big where it counts, if you know what I mean?"
"Yeah, well" Big-where-it-counts was getting a workout, between the computer guy and Clark the welder. But she wasn't finished with the idea.
"It's like that with all the computer guys, you know?" She rolled her head back, staring at the ceiling, as if she were trying to unlock a conundrum. "I don't know why. You'd think the jocks would be the guys with big wieners, but it's never like that. It's always these thin skinny computer guys who got the package."
"You were playing" Lucas said, trying to wrench her back on track.
She rolled her head forward, focused on him, and said, "Yeah. He gives me a two-minute head start, and then if he can catch me in the building in five minutes, he gets to fuck me."
"Well, that sounds like"
"Sometimes I cheat and let him catch me," she said. She burped. "Anyway, we run all over the building. I was running down the hall, and I saw this guy in the stairwell. I yelled at him, just, 'Hello,' and kept going."