Mind Prey (10 page)

"Why do they have to hear?" Lucas asked. "If you don't make a big deal out of it, nobody'll know except the few people we actually talk to. And with them, we can make it seem like we got the information from someplace else--not deal with the records."

She was shaking her head. "If you go through those records, I'll feel it incumbent upon me to inform the patients."

Lucas tightened up and his voice dropped, got a little gravel. "You don't tell them before we look at them. If you do, by God, and one of them turns out to be the kidnapper, I'll charge you as an accomplice to the kidnapping."

Wolfe's hand went to the Hermes scarf at her throat: "That's ludicrous."

"Is it true that you'll get a half-million dollars if Andi Manette is dead?"

Wolfe's mouth tightened in a line that might have indicated disgust. "Get away from me," she said. She brushed at him with one hand and started down the hall toward Manette's office, "Just get away."

But as he was going out the door, she shouted down the hall, "Who told you that? George? Did George tell you that?"

Lucas hit a game store in Dinkytown, near the campus of the University of Minnesota, another on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, then dropped down to South Minneapolis.

Erewhon was run by Marcus Paloma, a refugee from the days of LSD and peyote tea. The shop was just off Chicago, a few blocks below Lake, surrounded by small stucco houses painted in postwar pastels, all crumbling into their crab-grass lawns.

Lucas parked and ambled toward the shop. The cool, rain-washed air felt alive around him, the streets clear of their usual dust, the leaves of the trees burning like neon.

The shop was exactly the opposite: dim, musty, a little dusty. Bins of comics in plastic sleeves pressed against boxes of used role-playing and war games. Lucite racks of metallic miniatures--drolls, wizards, thieves, fighters, clerics, and goblins--guarded the cash register counter.

Marcus Paloma was gaunt, with a goatee and heavy glasses, His thinning gray hair was worn bouffant; he was dressed in a gray sweatsuit with Nike cross-training shoes. He'd once finished eighth in the St. Paul Marathon. "I got a concept," he shouted down the store, past the bins of comics, when he saw Lucas. "I'm gonna make a million bucks."

John Mail was sitting in a folding chair, looking through a cardboard box of used D&D modules. He glanced down the store at Lucas, and then looked back into the box. Two other gamers, one of each sex, looked up when Paloma shouted at Lucas.

"A feminist role-playing game, modelled on Dungeons and Dragons," Paloma said, gradually moderating his voice as he walked toward Lucas. "Set in prehistoric times, but dealing with problems like heterosexual mating and child birth in an essentially lesbian-oriented setting. I'm calling it The Nest."

Lucas laughed. "Marcus, everything you know about feminism, you could write on the back of a fuckin' postage stamp with a laundry pen," he said.

The female gamer said, "Profanity is a sign of ignorance," and faced him, waiting to be challenged.

Marcus, coming up the store, said, "That was an obscenity, sweetheart, not a profanity. Get your shit straight. That's a vulgarity, by the way--shit is." To Lucas, he said, "How you been? Shoot anybody lately?"

"Not for several days," Lucas said. They shook, and Lucas added, "You're looking good."

"Thanks." Marcus's face was its usual dusty gray. "I'm watching my diet. I've eliminated all fats except a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, on salad, at noon."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Could you sign some stock since you're here?"

"Sure."

"Hey, are you Davenport?" the female gamer asked. She was a dark-haired high school senior, quivering with caffeine.

"Yes."

"I've gotBlades at home, I'd love you to sign it."

"You still got the book on that?" Marcus asked the girl.

"Sure," the girl said.

"I'll get him to sign a book on a used one, and you bring yours in, and well trade," Marcus said.

"Dude," said the girl.

"Marcus, we gotta go in the back," Lucas said. "I need to talk for a minute."

"All right, let me get those games." He stepped over to the cash register stand, took a half-dozen boxes off a rack, walked to the used bin and picked up two more, and led Lucas down the length of the store into the back. Just before ducking through a gray curtain into his office, he called back to the girl, "Keep an eye on the desk, will you, Carol?"

The office was filled with cardboard shipping boxes. A roll-top desk was shoved into a corner, buried under ten pounds of unopened junk mail. There were three chairs, one overstuffed and comfortable, two folding, covered with green vinyl. The room smelled of old newsprint and slightly stale cat food. A fat red tabby was lying on the back ledge of the rolltop. The cat looked at Lucas, and Lucas's gray silk suit, and seemed to think about it.

"Sit down," Paloma said, waving one hand expansively. "Damn cat is sitting on my orders. Get off of there, Bennie."

They talked the games business for a minute or two--who was winning, who was losing, the sales wars. "Listen, Marcus, something's up," Lucas said. He leaned forward and tapped Paloma on the knee.

"Sure. Cop business?" Paloma had done a little snitching for Lucas.

"Yeah. You heard about that shrink getting snatched? And her kids? Big news in theStrib this morning?"

"Yeah, I saw that," Paloma said, amazed. "Took her right out of the parking lot."

"The guy who did it might be a gamer," Lucas said.

"A gamer?" Paloma asked doubtfully. Another cat came out of the back, a gray one, a solemn female. Marcus picked her up and scratched her ears, and she stared at Lucas with her yellow eyes.

"Yeah. Big guy, wearing a GenCon t-shirt, middle twenties. Probably strong, like a body builder. Has a violent streak. Blond, shoulder-length hair."

"Nice Dexie," Paloma said to the cat. Then he shook his head, slowly, thinking. "Not really. Big and tough, huh? That doesn't sound like too many gamers." He scratched his nose, thinking. "Except..."

"Who?"

"The guy out there now--he's a big guy." Paloma nodded toward the door to the front. "Pretty tough-looking. And I think I've seen him in a GenCon shirt."

"Where? Sitting down? He was kinda short." Lucas looked toward the curtain that separated the office from the sales floor.

"He was sitting in an old folding chair. He's probably six-four, maybetwo-twenty . Strong as a bull," Paloma said.

Lucas stepped toward the door. "What's his name?"

"I don't know. I've seen him two or three times before. Never said much to me."

"Have you ever seen his car?"

"No. Not that I know of," Paloma said.

"Huh," Lucas said. He went back through the door in a hurry, but the dark-haired man was no longer sitting in the chair. To the girl he said, "Where did that guy go? The guy who was sitting over there..."

She shook her head. "He left. You gonna sign a book for me?"

"Who is he? You know him?" Lucas hurried toward the street door.

"Nope. Never saw him before," she said. "Why?"

"How about you?" he called back to the male gamer. "You know him?"

"Nope. I'm with her."

Out on the sidewalk, Lucas went to the corner and looked all four ways down the intersecting streets. No van in sight. Nothing but a green Mazda, driven by a redheaded woman in a green dress, who seemed to be lost.

How long had they been talking in the back? Four or five minutes, no more.

And the guy had gone, disappeared, in that time.

Lucas stood on the street corner, wondering.

The parking garage that had once faced the back entrance to City Hall had been razed, and Lucas left the Porsche on the street. Paloma, who'd been following in a Studebaker Golden Hawk, found another space a half-block further on. As they walked back toward City Hall, they could hear the City Hall bell ringer playing "You Are My Sunshine," the tune clanging out above police headquarters.

A thin man fell in step with them. As Lucas turned to him, Sloan said, looking up at the bell tower, "Hope there are no fuckin' acid-heads around right now."

Lucas grinned: "That would be hard to explain to yourself--'You Are My Sunshine' banging around your brain."

"Makes me want to jump off the tower. And I'm not even high," Paloma said.

Sherrill caught them in the hallway outside Lucas's office. She was carrying a manila file: "We've got a problem." She glanced at Paloma, then turned back to Lucas. "We need to talk. Now."

"What? They got a court order?" Lucas asked.

"No. But you're not gonna like it."

Lucas turned to Sloan: "Marcus is here to look at the composite on the Manette kidnapper. He might want to add some stuff. Could you get him down there?"

"Sure," Sloan said. And to Marcus: "Let's go."

Lucas opened his office, nodded Sherrill into a chair, and hung his coat and jacket on an old-fashioned oak coat rack. "Tell me," he said. And he decided that he liked the tomboy-with-great-breasts look. He'd never hit on Sherrill, and now couldn't think how he'd missed her.

"There's a guy named Darrell Aldhus, a senior vice president at Jodrell National," Sherrill said. "He's been diddling little boys in his Scout troop."

Lucas frowned. "Does this have anything..."

"No. Nothing to do with Andi Manette, except that she hasn't reported the guy. And that's a felony. What's happening is, is what everybody was afraid was gonna happen. Aldhus admits in here--" Sherrill slapped the file--"that he's had several sexual contacts with boys, and he's trying to get himself cured. If we go after him, a defense attorney is gonna tell him to get the hell out of therapy and don't say shit to anybody. Since all we've got is her notes, nothing on tape, we really don't have that strong a case--not without her to back them up. We could put the Sex guys on it, have them start talking to kids..."

"Do we have any of the kids' names?" Lucas asked.

"No, but if we went in hard, I'm sure we could find some," she said.

"Goddamnit." Lucas opened a desk drawer and put his feet on it. "I didn't want this."

"The press is gonna be on us like a hot sweat," Sherrill said. "This guyis big enough thatif we bust him, it'll be front-page stuff."

"In that case, we oughta do the right thing."

"Yeah? And what's that?" Sherrill asked.

"Beats the shit out of me," Lucas said.

"You figure it out," she said. She handed him the file. "I'm gonna go back and look at the rest of it. I wouldn't be surprised if Black hasn't already found more of these things... this was like the fourth file I looked at."

"But nothing on Manette?"

"So far, no--but Nancy Wolfe..."

"Yeah?"

"She says you're a bully," Sherrill said.

Lucas unloaded the Aldhus file on the chief, who treated it like a live rattlesnake.

"Give me a couple of suggestions," Roux said.

"Sit on it."

"While this guy is diddling little boys?"

"He hasn't done any diddling lately. And I don't want to start a fuckin' pie fight right in the middle of the Manette thing."

"All right." She looked at the file, half-closed her eyes. "I'll confer with Frank Lester and he can assign it to an appropriate officer for preliminary assessments of the veracity of the material."

"Exactly," Lucas said. "Under the rug, at least for now. How are the politics shaking out?"

"I briefed the family again, me and Lester, on the overnights. Manette looked like death had kissed him on the lips."

Sloan caught Lucas in the corridor.

"Your friend the doper looked at the composite: he says it could be our guy."

"Sonofabitch," Lucas said. He put his hands over his eyes, as if shielding them from a bright light. "He was right there. I didn't even see his face."

Greave had on a fresh , bluish suit; Lester's eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

"They giving you shit?" Lucas asked, stepping into Homicide.

"Yeah," Lester said, straightening up. "Whataya got?"

Lucas gave him a one-minute run-down: "It coulda been him."

"And it coulda been Lawrence of Iowa," Greave said.

Lester handed over the composite sketch based on information from Girdler and the girl. "Had a hell of a time getting them to agree on anything," Lester said. "I have a feeling that our eyewitnesses... Mmmm, what's the word I'm looking for?"

"Suck," said Greave.

"That's it," Lester said. "Our eyewitnesses suck."

"Maybe my guy can add something," Lucas said. The face in the composite was tough, and carried a blankness that might have reflected a lack of information, or a stone-craziness. "Did Anderson tell you about the GenCon shirt?"

"Yeah," Lester nodded. He stretched, yawned, and said, "We're trying to get a list of people who registered for the convention the past couple of years, hotel registrations... did you see theStar-Tribune this morning?"