"Probably, 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."

"Chamber 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.

"We tell them it's probably a dope-related murder," Lucas said.

The mayor frowned. "Dope-related sounds bad."

"Everythingsounds 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 alook not very long ago. All the models had this fagged-out doper look. It won't surprise anybody."

"We don't want it to drag out: We don't want it to become some culture thing for the movie intellectuals to get onto."

"That's what I'm saying," Lucas said. "We don't want anything mysterious or exotic. A dope-related killing fits."

"Tell him about the window," Rose Marie said.

"Window?"

"A bedroom down from the murder roomthe room where Maison's body was, if that was the murder room, and it probably washad an unlocked window. Somebody could have gone out that way. Or, more to the point, might have come in. A cat burglar."

"With all the people in there? There must've been lights."

"Lights 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."

"Ah, man." The mayor shook his head.

"It's better to stay with the dope story," Lucas said.