There would, he thought, be quite a few names before he finished the list.
Chapter 8
On the way back to police headquarters, Lucas took out his cell phone, thumbed it on, and called Rose Marie Roux on her command line. She picked up and Lucas said, 'We got the media fixed. The raid turned up a ton of grass, and a bunch of coke and heroin. I think they all bought it.'
'Good. Now we need a second act.'
'It's like managing the media has gotten more important than finding the killer.'
Roux said, 'You know the truth about that, Lucas. We'll either get the killer or we won't, no matter what the media does. But the media can killus. And I don't have anything else I'd rather be doing right now.'
For the rest of the day, Lucas hung around the interrogation rooms, listening in. One item came up earlyAlie'e didn't have any dope in her possession, or any cooking equipment for the heroin, or a syringe or needles. Somebody else put the dope on her, but nobody at the party was admitting to the use of dope, and nobody knew anybody else who was using.
A question they asked everyone involved the scribble on Sandy Lansing's wrist. They got the answer to that in the early afternoon.
'A woman named Pella,' Swanson told Lucas. 'She's going to England in December, for three weeks, and Lansing was going to get her a rate at a hotel. She said Lansing wrote her name on her wrist to remember to set it up.'
'This holds water?'
Swanson shrugged. 'Does with me, I guess. Pella said a decent hotel in London is gonna cost her two hundred a night, but with Lansing's connection, she can get the same room for one and a quarter. That's something like fifteen hundred bucks in savings.'
'And this Pella doesn't know anything about the dope?'
'She said she met Alie'e for the first time last night, and said three words to her. But she looks kinda wired I wouldn't be surprised if she carried a little toot in her purse.'
'All we have to do is crack one of them,' Lucas said. 'Get somebody to rat out her friend.'
Lester stopped by: 'We grabbed Hanson's computer, but most of what we're getting is bullshit.'
'They talked about dope,' Lucas said.
'She said it was just rumors.'
'She's bullshitting us.'
'Of course she is.'
Two uniformed cops from St. Paul brought in a huge man named Clark Buchanan, who, improbably, told them that he was a model and, incidentally, a welder.
'Model what?' one of the interrogating cops asked skeptically. 'Lunch buckets?'
'You know, clothes and shit,' Clark said. 'I was the other guy in the Alie'e shoot. She was doing the clothes up front, I was making some sparks in the back.'
Clark didn't know anything about drugs at the party. 'I had some drinks, that's all I saw.'
'Lotta drinks?'
He shrugged. 'Maybe a half-dozen. Maybe ten. Vodka martinis. Goddamn. I'll tell you something, guysrich people make good fuckin' vodka martinis.' He stayed at the party until one o'clock, then caught a cab and went home. He remembered the name of the cab company and that the driver's name was Art. They asked a few more questions and cut him loose.
Early in the afternoon, Alie'e's parents arrived with a group of friends and talked first to the mayor, and then the mayor walked them over to Roux's office. Roux called Lucas, who went down to her office and stood in the back, with Lester, as the chief explained what was happening with the case.
Both Lynn and Lil Olson were dressed from head to toe in black, Lynn in a black-on-black suit that may have come from Manhattan, and Lil in a black lace dress that dropped over a black silken sheath; she also wore a black hat with a net that fell off the front rim over her eyes; her eyebrows matched the hat, severe dark lines, but her hair was a careful, layered honey-over-white blond, like her daughters. Her eyes, when Lucas could see them, were rimmed with red. Alie'e got her looks from her father, Lucas thoughtthe cheekbones, the complexion, the green eyes. Lynn Olson was a natural blonde, but his hair was going white. In the black suit, he looked like a famous artist.
The friends were dressed in flannel and jeans and corduroy; they were purely Minnesota.
' She was going to be in themovies,' Alie'e's mother said, her voice cracking. 'We had a project just about set. We were interviewing costars. That was the big step, and now'
Rose Marie was good at dealing with parents: patient, sympathetic. She introduced Lucas and Lester, and outlined how the case would be handled.
Lucas felt a strange disjuncture here: Alie'e's parents, who were probably in their late forties, looked New York, their black-on-black elegant against their blond hair and fair complexions. The words they used were New York, and even their attitude toward Alie'e was New York: all business. Not only was their daughter dead, so was the Alie'e enterprise.
But the sound of the language was small-town Minnesota: round Scandinavian vowels, 'oo' instead of 'oh,' 'boot' instead of 'boat.' And every few sentences, a Minnesota construction would creep out.
Rose Marie was straightforward. She mentioned the relationship with JaelLil said, 'But that was just a lark, girls'and the possibility of drugs. The Olsons' eyes drifted away from Rose Marie's and as Rose Marie was finishing, the door opened, and a heavyset man stepped in, looked around.
He wore jeans, black boots, and a heavy tan Carhartt jacket, with oil stains on one sleeve. His hair was cut like a farmer's, shaggy on top but down to the skin over the ears. Lynn Olson stood up and said, 'Tom,' and Lil stopped sniffling, her head jerking up. The big man scowled at them, nodded at the people from Burnt River, looked at Lucas, Lester, and then at Rose Marie. 'I'm Tom Olson,' he said, 'Alie'e's brother.'
'We were just telling your parents what we're doing,' Rose Marie said.
'Do youknow what you're doing?' he asked Rose Marie.
'We handle this kind of'
'You're dealing with a nest of rattlesnakes,' Olson said. 'The best thing you could do is beat all of them with a stick. They are sinners, each and every one. They are involved in drugs, illicit sex, theft, and now murder. They're all criminals.'
'Tom,' Lil said. 'Tom, please.'
'We're questioning everyone who was with Alie'e in the past day,' Rose Marie said. 'We're very confident'
Tom Olson shook his head once and looked away from her, at his parents. 'So. After twenty-five years of abuse, she comes to this. Dead in Minneapolis. Full of drugs, the radio says, heroina short pop, the radio sayswhatever that is. Some kind of evil they have a special name for, huh? We didn't hear about that in Burnt River.'
Lester's eyes flicked at Lucas, as Lynn Olson stood up and said 'Tom, take it easy, huh?'
Olson squared off to his father and said, 'I'm not going to take it easy. I can still remember when we called her Sharon.'
'We need to talk to you,' Lester said to Tom Olson.
'To question me? That's fine. But I know almost nothing about what she was doing. I had one letter a month.'
'Stillwe'd like to talk.'
Olson ignored him, turned to his parents, shook a finger at them. 'How many times did I tell you this? How many times did I tell you that you were buying death? You even dress like the devil, in Satan's clothes. Look at you, you spend more money on one shirt than good people spend on a wardrobe. It's a sickness, and it has eaten into you'
He was starting to foam, shaking not just his finger but his entire body. Lucas pushed away from the wall, and Lynn Olson got back on his feet and said, 'Tom, Tommy. Tommy'
