"What were the pictures of?" Lucas asked.

Plain tilted his head. "You don't know?"

"No."

"Some investigation," he said to the brown-haired man. Then: "I spent all yesterday morning and the early part of the afternoon doing a fashion shoot with Alie'e."

"Did you have a personal relationship with Alie'e?" Sloan asked.

"What do you mean, personal? You mean, was I fucking her?"

"Or anything else," Lucas said.

"No. I wasn't fucking her. I wasn't interested in her. She was a dummy. She was like a toy that you plugged your dick into. Or, if you were a woman, that you stuck your tongue into. She was interested in feeling good, and that was about it," he said.

"Your sister was involved with her?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah. They were gobbling each other, or whatever women do. Sticking heroin in their arms, putting coke up their noses."

Sloan said, "Hmph," and Lucas asked, "I was talking to some woman who was at the party, and she said you were so jealous of the relationship between Alie'e and your sister that you might kill Jael if you had the chance. Which suggests that Alie'e was more to you than just another model."

Plain tipped his head, regarding Lucas with some curiosity, and said, "You're lying. Nobody told you that. But that's interesting. You apparently got hold of something, somewhere, and you don't know quite what it is."

"Get a lawyer," his friend said from the corner.

Lucas grinned involuntarily. He'd been caughtand that madehim curious. "Tell me why you think I'm lying."

"Because you got it just backwards," Plain said.

"What?"

"I wasn't jealous because my sister took Alie'e away from me. I'm a little jealousI admit itbecause Alie'e took Jael away from me."

In the immediate silence, the brown-haired friend said, "Oh shit," and Lucas and Sloan looked at each other, trying to figure out what Plain had just said. Plain, picking on Sloan because he was the straighter-looking of the two cops, leaned toward him and said, "Yup. I was fucking my sister."