sorta what I wanted to ask yon about.'
'What?'
'When gay guys kill each other, it can be pretty rough: a lot of mutilation, a lot of anger. A lot of knives, for some reason. You see guys stabbed twenty or thirty times.'
'Passion turns to anger when things go wrong; Passion and anger are linked. What were these women like? Was it all very sexual, or was it less sexual and more something else?'
'That's what I was worrying about. One of the women suggested that while it was sexual, it wasn't aggressively sexual. She said it was more like cuddling. But there was a sexual actstroking, oral sex. But it didn't seem crazy.'
'It might not have been. The cultural prohibition against lesbian sex is not nearly as strong as it is against male homosexuality. If a man becomes involved in gay sex there's a tremendous amount of stress, at least initially,' Elle said. 'Women sometimes can go from friendship with another woman to occasional touching, to sex, and back to friendship, in a seamless way, without much guilt or stress. That's why you don't see so many violent lesbian murders. The stress isn't so high.'
'All of the women involved were also involved with men. The relationships sometimes were simultaneous.'
'That's not unusual. There are some women who are How'll I put this? Reflexively lesbian, that's what theyare. They are as interested in women as well, as you are. But many women, especially young women they may just drift along, having relationships with women as well as with men. There's even a kind of fashionable element to it.'
'All right.'
'Have you looked at Alie'e's family?'
'Somebody has. I met her folks. I don't think they'd get the Good Housekeeping seal for parenting They dragged her all over the country since she was a baby, pushing her into showbiz. Living through her.'
'Mmm.'
'And she's got a goofy brother.'
'That's interestingit suggests there must've been some serious stresses in the family.'
'Yeah. He's a peasant preacher out around Fargo somewhere. Gives away his clothes.'
Elle said, 'Not Tom Olson?'
Lucas looked at the phone, then put it back to his ear. 'Yeah. You know him?'
'He's a saint. Oh, boy.'
'Oh boy' was rough language from Elle. 'What?'
'He reallyis a saint. He's an evangelical Christian, he believes the rapture is coming next month or next year or whatever, because he can see it coming. Rolling in, like a wave. He might be schizophrenic; he is definitely an ecstatic. We had a novice here, from out that way, the Red River. She went home to visit her folks. He was preaching at a bowling alley. She went to see him with some of her girlfriendssort of a lark. She came back and quit the convent and quit the church and began wandering around the Red River preaching Christ's gospel. I try to stay in touch with her: She told me that Olson sometimes gets the stigmata.' Her voice hushed with the word 'stigmata.'
'You gotta be sh kidding me.'
'No. I'm not.'
As a Catholic, Lucas was severely lapsed, but he nevertheless felt a chill crawl down his spine at the idea of the stigmata. Bleeding from Christ's wounds in the hands, the feet, the side, even from the crown of thorns. 'So he thinks he's God?'
'Oh, no. Absolutely not,' Elle said. 'He sees himself as a messenger, preparing the way.'
'John the Baptist, then,' Lucas said.
'I don't think he'd put it that way. You're being cop-sarcastic, and he's a very serious man.'
'He was in the office today. He was intense.'
'Where was he when the murder was committed?' Elle asked.
'In Fargo. Out there somewhere. That's his story. But you think he could have done it?'
'I don't know. Sainthood is generally a mystery, but it involves very deep emotional streams, and often something very dark. He may have very deep feelings about his sister. And because of his emotional condition, he might be very demonstrative.'
'He was, with the chief.'
They talked for a few more minutes, Lucas filling in the details of the crime. Elle would think about them, and call if anything occurred to her. They said goodbye, and Lucas started back to the study. Halfway there, he turned, went back to the phone, and called the nunnery again. The same young depressive nun answered, and he waited the same two minutes for Elle to pick up.
'Something else?'
'You know what you said to me when you first came to the phone?'
'I don't know. I was teasing you.'
'You asked something like, 'What's going on with the Alie'e Maison murder?' '
'Yes?' She was puzzled.
'Nobody ever asks about the other woman. Lansing. She's like a piece of Kleenex that got used.'
'Mmm. To be honest, Ihaven't thought of her,' Elle confessed.
'You know, when you were hurt you were hurt because somebody was trying to distractme. And it worked for a while. With everybody saying Alie'e, Alie'e I hope we're not looking in the wrong direction.'
'As long as we keep that in mind,' Elle said. After a second of silence, she added, 'I'll think about her. Pray for her.'
Late that night, as he sat on the bed taking off his socks, Lucas remembered Trick BentoinTrick the gambler, the man who wasn't dead, who hadn't been killed by a brand-new lifer out at Stillwater. Lucas had forgotten to call the county attorney, and so, apparently, had Del; they'd talked to each other a dozen times during the day, and neither had mentioned it again.
Lucas muttered a short obscenity to himself. Folks were gonna be pissed about the delay. Even though itwas kinda funny.
But he wasn't thinking about Trick when he drifted off to sleep. He was thinking about what he should wear to lunch tomorrow. Lunch with Catrin.
Even later that night, not far from Lucas, but across the Mississippi in Minneapolis, Jael Corbeau heard a scratching 'round her door. Her eyes popped open, and she sat up. She was exhausted, but she hadn't been able to sleep. She'd taken a pill, but her body fought it. Alie'e: Amnon said she was infatuated, that Alie'e was nothing more than a willing reflection of Jael's own need for a special kind of pleasurefor a languid, wicked, fashionable lover. A beautiful lover. And Jael feared it was true, that she was shallow, dissolute. Trendy.
The scratching on the door popped her out of the depressive cycle. She recognized the sound as soon as she heard it. Somebody was trying to get in.
Jael lived in a small house on the south side of the loop, not far from the Metrodome. Her bedroom was on the second floor; the first was occupied by her workshopa throwing room, a glazing room, a kiln room with two big electric Skutts, and a wedging room where she stored clay and did the preliminary workups. The workups that'd built her arms and shoulders: The cops had asked her about that. One had taken her hand, told her to squeeze. She had, and he'd pretended to wince. Fucking with her. Trying to intimidate her. It hadn't worked.
She wasn't intimidated by the cops, and she wasn't intimidated by the scratching at the door. During the worst of the crack years, the scratching would come every week or two. But crack was fading, burning out: She hadn't had an attempt in a year or more.
Still.
She rolled out, knelt as if in prayer, and felt under the edge of the bed. Her fingers picked it up immediately: the cold steel of the barrel. She pulled it out, an old pump Winchester 12-gauge. Moving swiftly through the dark, she went into the bathroom to the barred, frosted-glass window over the tub. The window was double-hung, and the slides were waxed. She unlocked it, slipped it up.
Down below, a heavyset man in black crouched on the stoop, prying amateurishly at the lock. Bushes flanked the stoop, so he would be invisible from the street, unless somebody looked straight up the walk.
