Chapter 18

Tuesday. Fourth day of the case.

As beaten up as he was, he hadn't been able to sleep. Hadn't been able to drive Marcy out of his head, or Weather. Or Catrin. And Jael Corbeau was there in a corner, watching. He even thought about standing in the barnyard with Mrs. Clay, the night he delivered the fishing boat, and what might've happened with their lives in other circumstances.

And he thought about the Olsons, dead together in the hotel, and their son, running toward the highway, pulling his hair out to the sides of his head, as though trying to pull a devil out of his skull.

He hadn't been able to sleep, but somehow must have, for a while. He might have been asleep, he thought, when the alarm went off, and shook him out of bedit was one of those nights when he couldn't tell whether he was awake or only dreaming that he was awake, the dreams punctuated by the liquid green light from the clock as he touched it at two, three, four, and five o'clock. He didn't remember touching it at six, and now at seven the alarm went

Marcy. He called the hospital and identified himself. She was still listed as critical, in intensive care. Still alive, still asleep. He stood in the shower for ten minutes, slowly waking up. Drove out to a SuperAmerica store for a shot of coffee. Rolled into the parking ramp a few minutes after eight.

Loring was waiting in homicide with Trick Bentoin. "Del called. He's on the way," Loring said. "He says to turn on your cell phone."

"Yeah, yeah."

Del looked as beat up as Lucas felt, grinned when he arrived, said, "Well, you look like shit," and Lucas said, "So that's two of us." Del asked, "Have you been to the hospital?"

"No. I called. She's still asleep."

"Let's go over for a minute," Del said. "You can get more face-to-face."

They walked over in the cold morning, breathing steam into the air. The streets were crowded with cheerful going-to-work people. Not long, Lucas thought, before Thanksgiving and then Christmas.

"Christmas coming," Del said, picking up the thought.

At the hospital, they got almost nothing from the nurses, because the nurses knew almost nothing.

"Let's go see if Weather's in," Lucas suggested.

"Yeah?" Dell looked at him curiously. Weather couldn't look at Lucas; not last year, anyway. Had something changed?

"Yeah. Come on."

Weather was in the women's locker room. A nurse went in and got her, and she came out in her scrubs and booties. She said, " 'Lo, Del. You're looking like you look a little tired."

"Thanks," Del said dryly.

Lucas asked, "You talk to any of your pals about Marcy? We can't get anything downstairs."

"Her blood pressure's a little funky," Weather said. "It could be shock, but Hirschfeld's afraid she might've sprung a leak. They're watching her."

Lucas panicked. "Sprung a leak? What does that mean? Sprung a leak?"

Weather touched his hand. "Lucas, it can happen. As messed up as she was, it'd be a miracle if they did everything perfectly. If it's a leak, it's not huge. She's just a little funky."

"Jesus Christ, Weather"

Weather said to Del, "You're gonna have to watch our boy here. There's nothing he can do about this, but he's going into full Lucas mode."

Lucas was still shaken when they left, and Del was more curious than ever. "You've been talking to Weather?"

"Bumped into her last night. First time we'd talked forever."

"She seems different," Del ventured. The unfinished part of the thought waslike she didn't hate you anymore.

"Time passes," Lucas said.

On the way out to the prison, they talked tactics with Trick.

"According to your brilliant plan," Trick said, "I sit on my ass until you tell me to walk. Then I come in."

"Yeah, but when you come in, you come in shining like the fuckin'sun," Del said.

"Shining like the fuckin' sun for Al-Balah," Trick said in disgust. "If that cocksucker died this afternoon, we'd have to go over to the cathedral and light candles in thanksgiving."

"You a Catholic?" Lucas asked.

"Fuck no," Bentoin said. "Fuckin' bead-rattlin', genuflectin', ring-kissin' assholes."

"Men Lucas are Catholic," Del observed. "Since you got a Frenchy name"

"You figured wrong," Bentoin said.

"So what are you?"

Bentoin looked out the car window at the cornfield going by and said, sourly, "An ex-Catholic."

Lucas started laughing, and then Del, for the first time since Marcy was shot.

The interview room was painted an indefinite pastel color, as though the painters had a bunch of pastels but not enough of anything, so they poured them altogether and came up with a lime-cream-rose-baby blue, which resolved itself into a pastel sludge. Al-Balah's lawyer, a pretty good three-cushion-billiards player named Laziard, was sitting on a bench with his briefcase by his left foot, reading a pamphlet about items forbidden as gifts to inmates. He looked up when Lucas came in with Del.

"My, my, a deputy chief," Laziard said. "You must be a little worried. Hey, Del."

"We figure you're gonna sue us for a billion dollars," Lucas said.

"You got the number right," Laziard said genially as Lucas and Del chose spots on the benches.

"So we thought we should show a little concern, just in case we find Trick again," Lucas said.

"Just in case?" A wrinkle appeared on Laziard's forehead. "I thought Del had him."

Del shrugged. "I talked to him, but I didn'tarrest him. I didn't have anything to arrest himon. He told me he was checked into the Days Inn down on the strip, and when I snuck out and checked, hewas. But the next day, when we went down to pick him up, he'd checked out. We just missed him."

Lucas said, "The problem is, he might've gone back to Panama. The guys in the county attorneys office don't want to hear any of this 'Del saw him' shit. They want to seeTrick."

"What are you telling me?" Laziard demanded. "What"

The door opened in the back wall, and they all turned. Rashid Al-Balah stepped into the room, a guard a step behind him. Al-Balah was a shaved-head black man with a heavy face and two-day beard. He glowered at Lucas, gave a few seconds of hate to Del. The guard pointed him at a bench. Al-Balah sat down and asked Laziard, "How much longer?"

"We're trying to figure that out," Laziard said.

"What? What're you trying to figure out?" Al-Balah's voice was rising. "Get me the fuck outa here."

"There's a problem," Lucas said. "Trick went away, and the county attorneys office is being a stick-in-the-mud about it. They want to actually see his ass before they do anything. I'm sure we'll find him, sooner or later."

"Sooner or fuckin' later?" Al-Balah shouted. "I packed my shit this morning. I'm ready togo. Right now, motherfucker."

"This is not going well," Del muttered to Lucas.

"What? What'd you say?" Al-Balah was getting angrier.

The guard snapped, "Cool down." Al-Balah looked at him, and the guard took a half-step forward and set his feet. "Just cool down. Keep your place."

Al-Balah sagged on the bench. "I packed my shit," he said to Lucas. "You're supposed to get me the fuck out of here. I packed my shit up, man."

"We're doing what we can," Del said. "I'm the guy who brought the whole thing up, you know?"

Lucas jumped in. "I didn't actually come out here myself to talk about cutting you loose. I actually came out with a question." He looked at Laziard. "A question for your client."

"A question?"

"You know about the Alie'e Maison case," Lucas said to Al-Balah. "There was another woman killed the same night, the same place."

"Yeah, yeah, I been seeing it on my TV," Al-Balah said.

"This woman, Sandy Lansing, she was dealing. But she was just the street hookup, we don't know who was running her. We'd like to find out, and we thought you might know. You know all that shit."