"Yeah. He was turned on."
"Yeah. And Alie'e's mom wasn't much of a prize, either. My mom didn't care what I did for a living; she thought the earth owed me one, and let it go at that. But Lil was living through Alie'e and I think she knew about Lynn's interest in sex."
"You think Lynn might have abused Alie'e?"
"No. Nope. I think Alie'e would have told me, and I think I would have seen it in her, the way she acted around her father. No, maybe it was just my expectations. Somebody's a dadyou don't think of his standing around trying to get a shot at the asses of his daughter's friends."
"Happens all the time," Lucas said. "I'll do it. For sure."
"But he was creepy about it."
"So no ideas."
"I told you before, I really think you've got to look at the people on the Internet. Those people"
"We've got somebody checking that, a computer guy named Anderson. If you can think of anything specific along those lines, call him. But the thing is, when he ran Alie'e's name through Alta Vista, he got 122,000 matches. We're trying to narrow them down."
"What's Alta Vista?"
"A search engine on the Net. You can look for names and so on."
"Okay. Well, I'll think about it. You know all about her brother, Tom."
"We're looking into him," Lucas said.
"He's an amazing guy. From what she said."
"Is he nuts?"
"She didn't think so. She thought he was holy," Jael said.
"How bright was she?" Lucas asked.
"Mmm, you've got to be smarter than average to make it as a model, but not a lot smarter. She wasn't intensely bright."
"So why were you hanging out with her?"
She smiled. "I thought everybody knew that."
"They know you were sleeping with her, but I thought there had to be a better reason."
"There wasn't," Jael said. "She was deep into herself, into feeling good. Intofeeling. That's what she did best, and she spread it around. She could make you discard everything else. And feel good. The sex was wonderful. Very intimate and very playful and very sexual. I mean, I can't really explain it to you, because you don't know what I'm talking about and you're not in a position to find out."
"Did her appearance have anything to do with it? And her being famous?"
"Probably. There was a whole package. When you were with her, you felt sexy and important and wicked and fun. And she'd make you forget everything else and justfeel. That's why she did those short pops: It was another aspect of feeling for her."
"So what about her boyfriend, Jax? What'd he think about all this? Sleeping with other women."
She shrugged. "Jax carried her bags. And slept with her every once in a while. He's basically a remora. He's probably back in New York right now, looking for somebody else."
"He is. You didn't like him?"
"It's not that. I just didn'tcare about him. Didn't even think about him when he was standing in front of me. He made himself into what he is. Not my fault. He wants to carry bags and hang out with pretty women, and that's what he does."
"Sounds bad," Lucas said.
"He doesn't think so." They sat in silence for a moment, then Jael said, "You and Marcy had a relationship."
"For six weeks or so. It was a little too intense."
She cocked her head. "Why would you walk away from intensity? Other people go their whole lives without intensity. They dream about it."
"like I said, this was a little too much. We were headed for a disaster."
"You mean, like, you'd strangle her or something?"
"No. But something was going to happen, and we'd wind up hating each other," Lucas said. "We didn't want to do that. Risk it."
"She's still sort of hung up on you," Jael said. "You know what would've been fun? For the three of us to go away. You and me and Marcy."
She said it so conversationally that Lucas was neither embarrassed nor surprised. He said, "I'm a little too Catholic for that. Marcy would be, too, if she was a Catholic."
"Oh, I don't think so," Jael said. "Not Marcy, anyway. I think she might be interested in the idea."
"Really?" She'd said it with some certainty, and now hewas surprised. He looked a question at her.
"No, no, we weren't playing. We hardly had a chance to talk," Jael said. "But you can sort of pick out people who like tofeel. Marcy's one of us."
"You mean, a little gay?" Lucas asked.
"No. That's not what I mean. You're one of us. I could tell from talking to you, and the way you look at women."
"I gotta stop talking about this," Lucas said. "Sure," she said. "It really makes me nervous."
"That's the Catholic part," she said. "You've probably been fighting it all of your life."
"Maybe," he said.
"You know," she said later, "I'm a little scared."
"I know. You should be."
"The way Plain was killed. He probably never had a chance even to say anything."
"The guy is nuts. But he's not some great force. We just haven't been able to find him. We will."
"Soon, I hope. I don't like being cooped up. I'm thinking of heading out to New York, as soon as I can get Plain taken care of."
"You could leave that to your father."
She shook her head. "Dad couldn't handle it."
"So New York's an idea," Lucas said. "But you wouldn't have any protection."
"I could stay in a hotel. How could he find me?"
"Something to think about," Lucas said.
Downstairs, as Lucas was leaving, Hutton asked, "Learn anything new?"
It wasn't meant as a double entrendre, but Lucas turned it into one. "A little more than I wanted," he said.
On the way home, he called St. Anne's, and got Elle on the line. "I know it's cold, but I could take you for an ice cream."
"Never too cold for an ice cream," she said. "I'll walk over, meet you there."
The ice cream shop was across the street from St. Anne's, and was recognized as the local nun hangout. Elle was sitting with three other nuns in a booth near the front of the shop when he walked in, and she laughed and said something to one of the other women and then stood up, and led the way toward the backa scene, Lucas thought, virtually identical to millions that had taken place in bars that night, if you took away the odor of spilled milk, and, of course, the nuns.
"Get a break?" she asked, and added, "I told Jim to make you a chocolate malt."
"That's fine. We've got a couple of things working. I think we've got an eye on the guy who killed Alie'e, and we've booby-trapped everybody the second guy might be going after."
"You're sure there's a second guy."
"I think so. And he's the guy who's bothering me. The homicide people have a candidate. Tom Olson."
"Ohhh no."
"The thing is, they have a theory," Lucas said. "The theory is, the same kind of mental pressures that made him an ecstatic also made him a multiple personality, and one of those personalities is a psychotic who made a run at Jael Corbeau but got chased off, killed Plain, came back after Jael Corbeau but shot Marcy instead, and then killed his parents."
"You say theory"
The malt came. He took it, shucked the straw, and told her what they had: the police shrink, the prediction on the apparent double suicide. At the end, she was shaking her head. "I would love to talk to this man. If you convict him and send him to the state hospital, Iwill go see him. Multiple personalities are so rare. They're rarer than than supernovas."
He smiled at the comparison. "Now, if I knew how rare supernovas are"