Mind prey

Black dropped the printout next to the microfilm reader and went on, "… so the boss says, 'Get the fuck out of here. You're fired. I don't want to see your ass again.' So the guy drags out the door, really upset, gets in his car, and halfway home he's t-boned at an intersection by a teenager. Trashes his car, and the kid's got no insurance. Jesus. This is turning into the worst day of his life. So his car is towed, and the guy has to take the bus home-and when he gets there, eleven o'clock in the morning, he hears sounds coming from the bedroom. Like sex. Moaning, groaning, sheets being scratched. And he sneaks back there, and there's his wife, having sex with his best friend."

"No shit," said Sherrill.

"And the guy freaks out," Black said. "He yells at his wife, 'Get out of here, you slut. Get your clothes, get dressed, and get out. Don't ever come back or I'll beat your ass into the floor.' And he turns to his best friend and says, 'As for you-Bad dog! Bad dog!' "

"That's really fuckin' fu

"So don't laugh," Black said, knowing she liked it. And on the top of the printout he wrote "John Mail."

Irv was a broad-shouldered old man with a crown of fine white hair, with a pink spot in the middle of it. His nose was pitted and red, as though he might like his whiskey too much. He wore a faded fla

"Are you Irv?" Off to the left, there was a scorched stone foundation with raw dirt inside, and nothing else.

"Yeah." Irv squinted up at him. "You a cop?"

"Yeah, Mi

"I suppose." Irv rubbed his large nose with the back of one hand. "Don't have much else to do, and the insurance'll probably get me halfway there."

Lucas walked over to the foundation. There wasn't much evidence of fire, except for soot on the stones. "Got it cleaned up in a hurry."

The old man shrugged. "Wasn't anything in it but wood and glass, and a few mi

Lucas turned away, inspected the foundation some more, and, when Irv got his glasses straight, walked back and handed him the flier. "Did you see this guy in here last week?"

Irv tipped his head back so he could look at the flier with his bifocals. Then he looked up and said, "Is this the sonofabitch that burned me out?"

"Was he in here?"

Irv nodded. "I believe he was. He doesn't look quite like this-the mouth is wrong-but he looks something like it, and I wondered what he was doing when he came in here. He wasn't any fisherman; he didn't know how to start the kicker. And it was cold that day."

"When was this?" Lucas asked.

"Two days ago-the day the rain came in. He came back in the rain."

"You remember his name?"

Irv scratched his chin. "No, no, I don't. I'd have his name off his driver's license, in my receipt box. If I had a receipt box anymore." He looked up at Lucas, the sun glittering off his glasses. "This is the one that took the Manette girl and her daughters, isn't it?"

"Could be," Lucas said. And he thought: Yes, it is.

John Mail called Lucas at one o'clock in the afternoon. "Here I am, figuring the cops are coming down on me at any minute. I mean, I'm buying my food a day at a time, so I don't waste any. Where are you guys?"

"We're coming," Lucas growled. The voice was begi

"That's interesting," Mail said cheerfully. "I mean, that's very interesting. I best do as much fuckin' as I can, then, because I might not get any more for a while. Have to do with those hairy old assholes out at Stillwater."

"Be your asshole," Lucas snarled.

Mail's voice went cold: "Oh, I don't think so. I don't think so, Lucas."

"What?" Lucas asked. "You got a magic spell?"

"Nothing like that," Mail said. "But after people get to know me, they don't fuck with me; and that's the truth. But hey, gotta go."

"Wait a minute," Lucas said. "Are you taking care of those people? You've got them for now, and that puts some responsibility on you."

Mail hesitated, then said, "I don't have time to talk. But yeah, I'm taking care of them. Sometimes she makes me angry, but I don't know: subconsciously, she likes me. She always did, but she repressed it. She has a guilt complex about our doctor-patient relationship, but she used to sit there…"

He paused again, then said, "I've got to go."

Given a different context, he might have sounded almost human, Lucas thought, as the phone went click. As it was, he simply sounded insane.

"Fire," Lucas said to Black and Sherrill. "Sex. Probably he's been institutionalized-he talks about Stillwater like… I don't know. He doesn't really know about it, but he's heard a lot about it."

Lester came in. "He called from out in Woodbury somewhere."

"Woodbury. That's 494," Lucas said. "The guy's riding up and down the 494 strip, so he's someplace south."

"Yeah. We've whittled it down to one-point-two million people."

"The fire and sex thing," Sherrill said. "We got one just like that."

"Yeah." Black thumbed through a stack of paper. "This guy. John Mail. Let me see, he was fourteen when she saw him… Huh. He'd be about twenty-five right now."

Lucas looked at Lester. "That'd be pretty good. That'd be about prime time for a psycho."

Lester tapped the file. "Let's isolate that one and get on it."

Lucas looked at his watch; almost two o'clock. Nearly forty-eight hours since the kidnapping. He locked the door to his office, closed the blinds, pulled the curtains, put his feet back on his desk, and thought about it. And the more he thought about it, the more the telephone link seemed the best immediate possibility.

He closed his eyes and visualized a map of the metro area. All right: if they coordinated cops from all over the metro area-if they set everything up in advance-how far down could they push the reaction time? A minute? Forty-five seconds? Even less than that, if they got lucky. And if they caught him in a shopping center, some place with restricted access, only a couple of exits-if they did that, they should be able to seal the place before he could get the car out. They could process every plate in the lot, check every ID…

Lucas was putting the idea together when another thought occurred: what had Du

He sat up, turned on the desk light, rang Black's desk, got no answer, tried Sherrill, no answer. Got Anderson's daily book, flipped through it, found Du

A cop answered. "He's probably on his car phone, chief."

Lucas got the number and called, and Du

"Does your wife have a cellular?"

"Sure."

"A car phone, or a personal phone?"

"She carries it in her purse," Du