Easy Prey (40 page)

And that, Lucas thought, was it for the night. Olson, in an almost businesslike way, began talking about Amnon Plain. “A biblical name, Amnon. And Plain, that's important. As soon as I heard the name, I thought this was a message; as soon as I heard of his murder, I was sure of it. I've spoken in this church about my admiration for the Plain people, our brothers the Amish and the Mennonites, and although our beliefs may be different, in that thing, in the belief in the Plain, we agree. The Plain will save you. You have seen some people here in blue vests; those are handmade blue vests, they all made them themselves. If you accept the Plain, make yourself a vest. Put it on. Then kill your TV. Kill your Internet connection. Turn away from the magazines that overflow with the Evil.”

Suddenly they were back in it, but this time it was different, humping along in an almost orgasmic frenzy built around the word
Plain,
and the evocation of the death of Amnon Plain, and the clear message to God's children.

As the frenzy built, Jael's fingers dug into Lucas's leg, dug in and held, and as Olson talked, the lights in the church continued to dim until it was nearly dark inside, with the only light around Olson at the front as he preached. He was tying himself in a knot, Lucas thought; his body was shaking with the violence of his words. People began to stand up and cry out—then the entire congregation was on its feet, and the wailing began again. . . .

And Olson, in the light, reached a new climax, dropped to his knees in an agony and threw up his hands, palms to the audience. Blood ran from wounds in his palms down his forearms, and the wailing became so intense that Lucas could hardly bear it.

Then Olson collapsed, and the wailing stopped as though a switch had been thrown, and the people of the audience looked at each other in stunned appreciation. A man from one of the front rows went to kneel beside Olson, and then another, and between them they got him back on his feet and led him to the side of the room, and then out of sight.

The thin man who'd been collecting money outside stepped into the light at the front of the church and said into the now-hushed room, “Reverend Olson will be back in a moment. For those of you who are new to the church, or our community, and are interested in Reverend Olson's concept of Plain, I would like to say a few words.

“There is no church of Plain. No money is collected, there is no organization. If you feel that you can be Plain, and you wish to be Plain, then make a vest. Or don't make a vest, if you don't wish to. Some of us find it easier to make the vest, as a reminder of what we are about. But I don't want any of you women making vests for your men. They should make their own, and if it doesn't come out just right . . . then show them how, but let them do the work. The vest won't save you, it's just a piece of cloth. But you'll find that it keeps you very, very warm. . . . On the back of your song sheet, we've included a little sketch, a little pattern, for making your vest.”

There was a rustle of paper as people looked, and the man said, “If you'd like to sing, you're welcome to. If anyone is a bit too warm, you're welcome to step outside for a bit. So why don't we start with, ‘You Are My Sunshine, ' and all of you singers make room for those who need to get out for a breath.”

A number of people started moving toward the back, and Lucas grabbed Jael's arm and they stepped over the last couple at the end of the pew, into the aisle, and out into the churchyard. “I'd say we got our money's worth,” Jael said, looking back at the church. The first chorus of “You Are My Sunshine” broke through the doors.

Lucas was looking at the paper in his hand. “None of these songs are religious songs,” he said. “They're all, like, old-timey sing-along songs.”

“You want to go back and sing?” Jael asked.

“No. I've had about enough,” Lucas said.

“So have I. When he started talking about Plain, that was like being electrocuted.” They walked back to the car, climbed in. And she said, “I know this is going to sound like the Hollywood bullshit Olson's trying to get away from, but . . . he's good. He's really good at it. Something about the way he looks, like a big tough hillbilly, and his voice . . .”

“You gonna make a vest?” Lucas asked.

“There's something in what he says,” Jael said. “Especially if you don't have to sign up for the great Christian march to the Pearly Gates. The way he was talking, anyone could be Plain. There's a lot of that Plain feeling with potters.”

“Except that it's too late,” Lucas said. “At this point, being Plain is purely a luxury that most of us can't afford. Like big expensive artist pots.”

 
 
IN THE CAR, she asked, “Do you think that the blood was faked? That he cut himself?”

“Not unless he's the biggest hypocritical phony on the face of the earth, and he sure doesn't give off that vibration.”

“But if he was the biggest hypocritical phony, he
wouldn't
give off that vibration.”

“I don't know, but I'll tell you what: I saw him go down—faint, or have some kind of a fit—after his parents were killed, and he wasn't faking that. This thing tonight was over in that direction: It looked real to me.”

“So he's nuts?”

“Depends on your definition of nuts,” Lucas said. “There are some genuine ecstatics running around out there, and he apparently is one of them. Maybe they're nuts, I don't know.”

“You don't think he did it. You don't think he killed Plain,” Jael said.

“There's some evidence that he did.”

“I wasn't asking you a question,” Jael said. “I know there's some evidence, but I can tell: You don't think he did it.”

“You're wrong. I think it's possible that he did it. But the . . . being . . . who did it is not the one we see. Tonight we saw a saint; maybe there's a devil in there, too. We just haven't seen it yet.”

They were halfway back when Lucas's phone buzzed. “You turned your phone on?” Jael asked. “I thought the joke was you never turned it on.”

“Things are coming together,” Lucas said as he fumbled it out. “If somebody makes a move, I want to know it.” He thumbed the answer button. “Yeah.”

“This is Frank, Lucas. Where're you at?”

“Down on 494 by France. Somebody moving?”

“Your boy Rodriguez is dead,” Lester said.

“What?”

“He might've killed himself,” Lester said. “That's what they're saying.”

“C'mon, man, how'd he--”

“Jumped. Down that open space thing inside a building, what do you call it—an atrium. He jumped down the atrium in his building. He's pretty busted up.”

“Who's there?”

“Couple of our guys, and now St. Paul's coming in. I'm heading over. I've got to call Rose Marie, and then I'm going.”

“See you there.”

24

JAEL BITCHED AND moaned, but Lucas dropped her at her studio before he went on to St. Paul. The St. Paul scene was a business-district replay of the murder scene at Silly Hanson's, with cop cars piled up along the curb and four big TV vans parked illegally down the street, reporters and cameramen milling around them.

A woman from one of the stations pointed at him, at the Porsche, and lights came up, putting a nearly opaque glare on the windshield. As he threaded his way past them, he could hear a woman shouting, “Lucas,
Lucas . . .
” and somebody slapped the car.

He pulled in beside a Jeep that he recognized as Lester's, got out, showed his badge to a St. Paul cop, and asked, “Where?”

The cop pointed at the building's main doors, and Lucas walked in, down a hallway toward a cluster of cops, then out into the open atrium space. Rodriguez was still on the floor, uncovered. His face had been crushed like a milk carton. Lester nodded as Lucas walked up.

“Ah, for Christ sakes,” Lucas said in disgust. “Who was on him?”

“Pat Stone and Nancy Winter,” he said. “Over there.”

Stone and Winter were both patrol cops, borrowed for the loose net they'd had on Rodriguez. Lucas walked over and asked, “What happened?”

Winter said, “He left here, went out to his apartment, went inside. We saw the light come on in his living room, and we were just getting snug when he walked back out and got in his car. So then he drove over to a CompUSA and went inside and bought some stuff, we didn't get close enough to really see what he was getting, and then he came back out and drove back down here.”

“You couldn't see what he bought?”

“No, I'd already gone back outside, but I could see him through the window at the cash register. Nothing big, whatever it was. Still got to have it on him, unless somebody took it. In his briefcase.”

“All right. Then what happened?”

“I watched the ramp exit while Pat ran back to the Skyway and watched his office,” Winter said.

“When he showed up in his office, then I was gonna call Nancy back,” Stone said, picking up the story. “But he never showed up in the office. I was in the Skyway, so we know he didn't go out that way.”

“Aren't there other Skyway exits?”

“Not open this late,” Stone said. “Only open my way. You can only get out of the building three ways: the Skyway past me, the parking ramp, and the front door—that has a push bar. The other ground-floor doors are locked.”

“We thought maybe he'd stopped in the can,” Winter said. “I showed my badge to the lady in the ramp's pay booth, and then I got my keys out and started jingling them like I was looking for my car, and walked up the ramp until I saw his car, to make sure he'd parked. Then I walked back out and Pat still hadn't seen him. So I sorta strolled over to the door and looked in—I didn't have a key, so I couldn't
get
in at that point—and I saw this lump way down on the floor. I wasn't sure what it was, but I got the lady in the pay booth to let me inside, and . . . You saw him.”

“How long from the time he drove in the garage until you saw the lump?” Lucas asked.

“We've been trying to figure that out. We were talking on cell phones, so you can probably get the exact time from the calls, but I figure it was about ten minutes,” Winter said.

“I think it might have been a little longer,” Stone said. “I think it might have been ten minutes before you walked up the ramp, then another few before you came back out, then walked down and looked in the door. . . . Maybe twelve or thirteen minutes.”

“You can tell from the phone calls,” Winter repeated. The two cops were anxious to get out from under, Lucas realized. And he couldn't see what else they might've done.

“All right,” Lucas said. “You done good, guys.”

Stone glanced at Winter, relieved. Lucas went back to the circle of cops around Rodriguez's body.

“Where's his briefcase?”

“Up there.” He pointed up, at the railing around the second floor of the atrium. “He set it down before he took the dive—if he took a dive.”

“He's a big guy to have somebody throw him over without a fight,” one of the St. Paul cops said.

“Goddamn TV was all over him. He was about to lose his ass,” another one said.

Lucas said, “I want to look in his briefcase.”

“Crime-scene guys working it,” one of the St. Paul cops said. “Take the elevator.”

Lucas went up, found a crime-scene cop probing the briefcase. “Papers,” he said. “This thing.” He held up a plastic box in his latex-covered hand.

“What is it?” Lucas asked.

The crime-scene guy turned it in his hand. “Zip disk, two-pack.”

“How about a receipt? You see a receipt in there?”

The cop dug back into the briefcase and came up with a slip of paper. He held it away from himself, in better light: “CompUSA. Zip disk. Two-pack.”

Lucas walked back downstairs. The St. Paul chief of police was coming down the hall, two steps behind Del. Del lifted a hand, and the St. Paul chief said, “He jump?”

Lucas said, “I don't know, but I'd send a guy down to get his computer. I think he came down to clean out his disk drive. Maybe changed his mind when he walked up to the railing.”

They all looked up at the railing. The St. Paul chief said, “Woodbury is out at his apartment. They say there's no note.”

“Didn't have time to write one.” Lucas looked at Del. “You wanna ride out to Woodbury?”

Del looked down at Rodriguez's body, then up at the railing, and said, “Might as well. Elvis has left the building.”

As they stepped away, the St. Paul chief said, “If he jumped . . . he took a lot of problems with him.”

 
 
ON THE WAY out to Woodbury, Del called the Woodbury cops and got directions. Rodriguez's apartment was in one of his own buildings. “The Penthouse suite,” the cop said, deploying a capital
P.
“That's what I'm told.”

“Find out who was watching his phones tonight,” Lucas said. “Find out if there was a call.”

Del checked. “Not a single call at his apartment today,” he said.

“Goddamnit.”

Rodriguez's building was a routine-looking apartment with a pea-gravel finish over concrete block, double-glass doors, and a line of mailboxes and buzzers between the two doors. A Woodbury patrolman sent them to four, the top floor. His apartment door was open, and Lucas stepped in, with Del just behind. “Dope money,” Del said as soon as he was inside.

All the walls had flocked wallpaper; the furniture all came from the same store, and that was Swedish modern; high-style graphics on the walls. A plainclothes cop stepped toward them. “Chief Davenport. I'm Dave Thompson.”