Easy Prey by John Sandford Page B

balding, but still had the remnants of a hairline. “Think anyone would notice?”
    â€œThey look like little bushes planted into the side of a grassy hill, the hair plugs do,” Rose Marie said. “You don’t ever want anybody on a staircase above you, looking down.”
    â€œAh, that’s the old-style plugs,” the mayor said. “I’m thinking about micro-implants—they’re supposed to be really natural.” They chatted about plastic surgery and micro-implants for a few minutes, aging politicians doing what they did best—schmoozing—until Lucas yawned again. The mayor stopped the chitchat in the middle of a sentence and asked, “How dead is she?”
    â€œPretty dead,” Lucas said, sitting up. “Strangled. Maybe raped. Did Rose Marie tell you about the second woman?”
    The mayor’s head went back, and he gave Lucas a startled-deer look, as much as a short, barrel-chested, balding, former personal-injury attorney can have a startled-deer look. “A second woman?”
    He turned to Rose Marie, who shrugged and said, “Not my fault. A second body turned up, stuffed in a closet. I just found out.”
    â€œAnother model?” Swiveling to Lucas.
    â€œNo,” Lucas said. He gave the mayor a short rundown on the double murder. “Your friend Sallance Hanson says if we give her any trouble, she’s gonna call you.”
    â€œFuck her,” the mayor said. “Chain-whip her if you want.”
    â€œReally?” Rose Marie’s eyebrows went up.
    â€œShe gave me two hundred bucks,” the mayor said.
    â€œFor that much, she gets a signed photograph. I sure as shit don’t run interference on a murder.” He looked back at Lucas. “Do we have any leads?”
    â€œProbably, but not that I know of,” Lucas said. “We’re still processing the scene. Maison had been putting some dope in her arm, heroin probably. The other woman was red around the nose, like she’d seen a lot of coke.”
    â€œChamber of Commerce is gonna love that, coke and heroin,” the mayor said. “What do we tell the movie people?” The movie people were television reporters.
    â€œWe tell them it’s probably a dope-related murder,” Lucas said.
    The mayor frowned. “Dope-related sounds bad.”
    â€œ Everything sounds bad,” Lucas said. “But saying that it’s dope makes it simple to understand. And that’s what we need. Simple. Boring. Understandable. Nothing exotic. No orgies, no weird sex, no big money or jealous lovers, no scandal. Just a bad guy somewhere. And the movie people’ll believe heroin. There’s so much heroin in the fashion business that it was a look not very long ago. All the models had this fagged-out doper look. It won’t surprise anybody.”
    â€œWe don’t want it to drag out: We don’t want it to become some culture thing for the movie intellectuals to get onto.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m saying,” Lucas said. “We don’t want anything mysterious or exotic. A dope-related killing fits.”
    â€œTell him about the window,” Rose Marie said.
    â€œWindow?”
    â€œA bedroom down from the murder room—the room where Maison’s body was, if that was the murder room, and it probably was—had an unlocked window. Somebody could have gone out that way. Or, more to the point, might have come in. A cat burglar.”
    â€œWith all the people in there? There must’ve been lights.”
    â€œLights seem to pull cat burglars in,” Lucas said. “They get a buzz from going into a house where people are-- ’cause they’re nuts. Generally, you get a cat burglar, you get a guy who’s gonna start raping the victims. Or killing them. They’re thrill freaks.”
    â€œAh, man.” The mayor shook his head.
    â€œIt’s better to stay with the dope story,”