bedspreads coordinated with the window treatments and the carpet. He asked, 'The windows were locked?'
'In this room, yeah. But we got an open window down the hall,' one of the cops said.
'Let me see.'
'Check this first,' the cop said. He leaned forward, hovering an index finger over the inside of Alie'e's left elbow.
Lucas would have known what that meant even if he couldn't see the BB-sized bruise. A needle user. He sighed, nodded at the cop, said, 'Swanson,' and stepped back into the hallway. Swanson was a step behind.
'Look, you know what's gonna happen, so we've got to nail everything down,' Lucas said. 'Everything. I want everything sampled, swept, vacuumed. I want every test there is, on both women. I want interviews with everyone at the partyask everybody for a list of names, and make sure you get every goddamn last one.'
'Sure.'
'Who takes over when you get off?'
'I think Thompson.'
'Brief him. Do everything. We'll pay for every bit of science anybody can think of.' He looked back at the room. 'Did you look at her fingernails?'
'Yeah. They're clean. We'll get her vagina swabbed and get a rush on the semen.'
'And blood, we need blood right away. I want to know what kind of shit she was shooting.'
'Heroin.'
'Yeah, I know, but I wannaknow.'
'You gonna call Del?'
'In a minute.'
'There's a phone in the office. I was keeping it clear for incomings,' Swanson said.
'Show me the unlocked window This place doesn't look like the windows should be unlocked.'
'Hanson says they never are,' Swanson said. 'But she got them washed a couple of weeks ago, and they were all opened thenthey're some kind of tilt thing, so you can wash both sides from the inside.'
'I dunno.'
'Yeah, well, the window could have been unlocked then. Hanson says she never went around and checked them. She assumed they were all locked.'
The unlocked window was in another guest room, one door down the hall; this room had a different set of coordinated bedspreads, window treatments, and carpet. Lucas looked out through the window glass. Nothing but lawn and shrubs. 'Any muddy footprints outside the window, with a unique brand-logo impressed in the mud?'
'No fuckin' mud. It ain't rained in two weeks.'
'I was joking,' Lucas said.
'I wasn't. I went out and looked,' Swanson said. 'The grass ain't even crinkled.'
'All right. Where's that phone?'
Hansons home office was a small, purpose-built cubicle with cherry-wood shelves at one end for phone books, references, and a compact stereo. The cherry desk had four drawers, filing drawers to the left, envelope drawers to the right. A wooden Rolodex sat on the right side of the desk, a telephone on the left. A Dell 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 ProgramsAccessoriesAddress 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 again 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'shere?'
'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 itsaid 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, Hansons correspondent, a woman named Martha Carter, had seen Alie'e at aparty and she'd been flying on ccocaine.
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 tried 'Aliee,' without the apostrophe between thee's, and found only one new letter, about a dress.
