"Was he going up or down?"
"Don't know. He was just there, in the stairwell," she said.
"He didn't answer?"
"No."
"What time was it?" Lucas asked.
"I don't know, but early. Or late. Whatever. I talked to Jimmy for a minute this morning, after they found the body."
"This is Jimmy, Plains assistant?"
"Yeah. Anyway, he heard me yelling in the hallway, and the only time I was yelling that they would have heard was about the time I saw the guy. So when I saw him, Plain was still alive."
"You didn't think it was weird that somebody was wandering around the building in the middle of the night?" Lucas asked.
"This building? I'd think it was weird if people weren't wandering around in the middle of the night."
"The St. Paul police said you might have heard a shot."
"Maybe. I heard a loud noise, but it might have been a door banging shut. We've got all these metal doors in here, and they echo off the concrete when you let them bang shut," she said. "I didn't think about it at the time, except that I heard it."
"This guy in the hallway looked like what?"
"Porky. That's all I can say. Porky. He was sort of turned around from me" A puzzled look crossed her face. "You know something that crossed my mind? This is stupid. I thought the guy might be the vending machine guy. We got a vending machine guy who looks like thisguy."
"Did you tell the other cops that?" Lucas asked.
"No, I just thought of it," she said.
"The vending machine guy wouldn't be here at that time in the morning."
"No."
"But you play catch-me-fuck-me at that time."
"Sure. The way it works is, I drink myself into a stupor in the morning, which I'm doing now. Then I sleep until about three o'clock or maybe four o'clock. Then I get up, and I feel like shit and I eat something, and then I work. I work until midnight, and then you know, whatever. I eat again, and sometimes Neil comes over and we play. And then, when I start getting sleepy, I start drinking."
"Did this Neil guy, your friend, did he see the man in the stairwell?"
"The other cops went and got him up, and he said he didn't see anybody," she said.
"All right." Lucas looked around the apartment, which seemed spartan if not absolutely bare. The only thing hung on the walls was a Kliban cat calendar. "What kind of art do you do?" he asked.
"Conceptual," she said.
Lucas had just turned the corner at the top of the stairs when he heard the woman scream. The scream came from Plain's apartment, and the cop at the door turned to look inside. A second later, a woman ran out, directly into the green concrete-block wall on the opposite side of the hall. She ran into it full-face, staggered from the blow, ran another step, and then Lucas caught her as she sagged toward the floor. The woman held on and turned her face sideways, and Lucas first registered the scars.
Jael Corbeau. She wrapped her arms around him, blindly, using him for support. Lucas half turned, and Allport came through the door, spotted them.
"Ah, Jesus," he said. "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have" He looked at Lucas. "We told her she'd have to wait until we got him to the medical examiners to see him. We had the sheet over him and she just stooped down and ripped it off before we could stop her. Jesus, Miz Corbeau, I'm sorry"
"I gotta go home," she said. "I gotta go home."
"Where's your car?" Lucas asked. He let her go, but she held on to his jacket with one hand. She hadn't looked at his face yet; he was a handy post.
"I don't have a car. A friend brought me."
"Is he still here?"
"No, the police wouldn't let him come up, so I told him I'd catch a cab. I thought, I thought, I thought I thought I'd be here for a long time. But I gotta go home. If I can't have him" She looked back at Plain's door.
"Where do you live?" Lucas asked.
Now she looked up at him. "South Minneapolis."
"I'll give you a lift," Lucas said. He looked at Allport. "Do you need to talk to her?"
Allport shrugged. "Sooner or later, but it doesn't have to be this minute. We can talk to her this afternoon or tomorrow unless you think you might have some information we need, Miz Corbeau."
"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know"
"You better go on home. We'll have somebody call you this afternoon Get some rest."
Lucas said, "The Woo woman. She said that the guy she saw in the hall looked like the vending machine guy."
Allport's forehead wrinkled. "She didn't say anything about that to us."
"She's a little drunk," Lucas said.
"The vending machine guy?"
Lucas said, "This way," and took Jael toward the door Halfway down, she stopped suddenly and said, "I have to make the arrangements."
"Not now," Lucas said. "There's nothing you can do here."
"A funeral."
"Call somebody from your house. If you don't have a funeral director, I can get you the name of a guy who'll take care of you," Lucas said.
"Oh, God." They started down the hall again.
"Did you call your folks?" Lucas asked.
"My mother's dead. My father I'll have to find him. He's in Australia or someplace right now."
At the first floor, there was a short wide flight of steps down to the door and they could see a cop standing with his back to the glass. Lucas pushed through and the cop half turned, and Lucas heard somebody say, "That's her and that's Davenport."
Jael stopped, and a knot of people in dark coats hurried toward them; down the street were two TV trucks. A still photographer started ratcheting shots with an F5, and a TV cameraman was already shooting, while another ran down the street, towing a reporter on the end of a microphone cord. Lucas recognized the towed reporter as an old friend who'd done a turn as a studio talking-head, and now was back on the street.
Jael squared off against the cameras, looked up at Davenport, waited for the second camera to come up, smiled, and said, "I just want to say, go fuck yourselves." To Lucas: "Where's your car?"
"Across the street." He took her arm and they went left, and the late-arriving reporter followed.
"Lucas, is he dead?"
Lucas turned his head and said, "This is St. Paul. Ask St. Paul."
"Yeah, but"
They hurried across the street into the furniture store parking lot, the reporter trailing behind, the camera on the end of her tether. Lucas stuffed Jael in the driver's side and the reporter, an old friend, followed him around the back of the car and said, in a low tone, "Answer one question."
He leaned toward her and said, "Stick your microphone under your coat." She did, and he whispered, "Plains dead. He was shot to death. A very bad scene. You didn't get it from me."
In the car, Jael sat silently, hunched, staring straight ahead, as they crossed the interstate, hit a couple of red lights, and then dropped down a ramp onto the roadway heading west toward Minneapolis. After a while, she said, "Honest to God."
"What'd you say? I'm sorry"
"Nothing. Honest to God, I can't believe he's dead." She looked at him. "You were one of the men who interviewed me. I remember you."
"Yeah."
"You look mean. I kept thinking you were going to say something mean," she said.
"Thanks, I appreciate that. I'll write it in my book of memories."
She said, "I'm sorry if I offended you."
"No"
"Its the scars," she said. She reached out and touched his neck, a white scar that had resolved itself into a question mark. "How'd that happen?"
"Oh you know."
"No. You'll have to tell me."
"A little girl shot me," Lucas said. "A surgeon had to do a tracheotomy so I could breathe."
"Not a very good surgeon, from the looks of the scar."
"She did it with a jackknife," Lucas said. "She's a pretty good surgeon."
"Why did a little girl shoot you? Like, really a little girl?" Jael asked.
"Yeah. Really. Because she was in love with the guy who was abusing her, and I was chasing him. She was trying to buy him time to get away."