Read Easy Prey for Free Online Page A

laptop computer sat on a pull-out typing shelf, the wiring dropping out of sight, to appear behind a laser printer that sat on a two-drawer wooden filing cabinet beside the desk.
    “Hanson still in the living room?” Lucas asked Swanson.
    “Yeah.”
    “Go talk to her. Keep her entertained. . . . Ask her questions, start the witness list.”
    “You got it.” Swanson glanced at the laptop, nodded, and headed toward the living room.
     
 
WHEN HE WAS gone, Lucas shut the office door and turned on the computer. Windows 98 came up, and he clicked Programs—Accessories—Address Book. The address book was empty. He jumped back to the opening page and clicked on Microsoft Outlook. When it came up, he checked the Inbox and Sent folders and found that Hanson had a small e-mail correspondence.
    He picked up the phone and dialed Del’s number from memory, and as the phone began ringing, clicked on the Inbox folder again, clicked on Find, and typed in “Alie’e.”
    He was still typing when Del’s wife answered the phone. The answer was more like a groan than a word: “Hello?”
    “Cheryl, this is Lucas. Is Del there?”
    “He’s asleep, Lucas. He was trying to get you all night, but he couldn’t find you.” She was crabby. “What time is it, anyway?”
    “Sorry. Wake him up, we gotta talk.”
    “Just a minute. . . .”
    After a few seconds of background mumbling, Del came on the line. “You heard?”
    “Yeah, just now. What were you doing here?”
    After a moment’s silence, Del said, “What?” He sounded only semiconscious. Then, “Where’s here ?”
    “Sallance Hanson’s. You were at the party last night, right?” Lucas asked.
    “Yeah, but what’re you doing there?”
    “The Maison thing,” Lucas said.
    “What?”
    Lucas looked at the phone and then said, “You don’t know?”
    “Yeah, I called in,” Del said. “I called all over, looking for you. I even had your neighbor up north go look in your cabin, but you’d gone.”
    “You called in that somebody strangled Alie’e Maison?”
    Longer silence. Then, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
    “Somebody strangled Alie’e Maison and threw her body behind a bed in a guest bedroom,” Lucas said. “Another woman was killed and stuffed in a closet. Hanson thinks a street guy did it—said he was wearing an ‘I’m with Stupid’ shirt.”
    After a moment of silence, Del said, “You’re not joking. ’”
    “I’m not joking.”
    “Jesus Christ.” Del was awake now. And again, “Jesus Christ.”
    Behind him, Cheryl asked, “What happened?”
    “That was me, all right,” Del said. “I was there until one o’clock. I didn’t see Maison there after midnight or so.”
    “What were you doing?”
    “Runnin’ drugs, man. That goddamn place was an ocean of shit.”
    “Maison’s got fresh tracks on her arm.”
    “Yeah, they were all doing a little something,” Del said. “I was trying to figure out where it was coming from.”
    “Figure it out?”
    “No.”
    “You better get over here. I’m gonna have to talk to Hanson pretty quick.”
    “On my way.”
     
 
WHEN DEL HAD hung up, Lucas clicked on the Find Now button. The computer thought about it for a moment, then kicked out fifteen or twenty messages. He went through them as quickly as he could: Most of them were “Did you see” or “Did you hear about” Alie’e in a magazine spread. Two of them seemed relevant: Three months earlier, according to the date stamp, Hanson’s correspondent, a woman named Martha Carter, had seen Alie’e at a party and she’d been flying on c—cocaine.
    Lucas switched to the Sent folder, scanned it until he found Carter’s name and the right date. Hanson had replied to the cocaine comment, with the observation that friends told her that Alie’e had started using heroin.
    Lucas sent both letters to the printer, then went back to the Inbox, and the Find function, and typed in “Maison.” He got two letters he’d already seen. He