Mind Prey

Carolina.”
    Sherrill, still damp, strolled in, pulled off the tennis hat, slapped it against her coat, then took off her coat and hung it up. She nodded at Lucas, tipped her head at the radio, and said, “Have you been listening?”
    Lucas said, “Just now,” and to Greave, “Did you ask him not to?”
    Greave nodded. “The standard line. I said we should keep it to ourselves so the perpetrators don’t know exactly what we have, and so we can present a better image if we get to court.”
    “Did you say perpetrator ?” Lucas asked.
    “Yeah. So shoot me.”
    “I’d say he didn’t give a fuck,” Sherrill said, fluffing her hair. “I was listening on the way over. He’s remembering stuff he didn’t give to us…”
    “Making it up,” Lucas said.
    “Everybody’s gotta be a movie star,” Greave said. And they paused for a moment to listen:
    Dr. Girdler, you know, the police don’t stop crime; they simply record it, and sometimes they catch the people who do it. But by then, it’s too late. This kidnapping is a perfect example. If Mrs. Manette had been carrying even a simple handgun, or if you had been carrying a handgun, you could’ve stopped this thug in his tracks. Instead, you were left standing there in the hallway and you couldn’t do anything. I’ll tell you, the criminals have guns; it’s time we honest citizens took advantage of our Second Amendment rights…
    “Damnit,” Sherrill said. “It’s gonna turn into a circus.”
    “Already has.” They all turned toward the door. Frank Lester, deputy chief for investigation, stepped inside with a handful of papers. He was tired, his face drawn. Too many years. “Anything more?”
    Lucas shook his head. “I talked to Dunn. He seems pretty straight.”
    “He’s a candidate, though,” Greave said.
    “Yeah, he’s a candidate,” Lucas said. To Lester: “Have the Feds come in yet?”
    “They’re about to,” Lester said. “They can’t avoid it much longer.”
    Lucas twisted the engagement ring around the end of his forefinger, saw Lester looking at it, and pushed it down in his pocket. Lester continued, “Even if the Feds come in, Manette wants us working it, too. The chief agrees.”
    “Jesus, I wish this shit would stop,” Greave said, rubbing his forehead.
    “Been doing it since Cain and Abel,” said Anderson.
    Greave stopped rubbing: “I didn’t mean crime. I meant politics. If crime stopped, I’d have to get a job.”
    “You could probably get on the fuckin’ radio with that suit,” Sherrill said.
    Lester waved them silent, held up a yellow legal pad on which he’d scribbled notes. “Listen up, everybody.”
    The talk died as the cops arranged themselves around Lester. “Harmon Anderson will be passing out assignments, but I want to outline what we’re looking at and get ideas on anything we’re missing.”
    “What’s the overtime situation?” somebody called from the back.
    “We’re clear for whatever it takes,” Lester said. He looked at one of the papers in his hand. “Okay. Most of you guys are gonna be doing house-to-house…”
    Lester dipped his head into a chorus of groans—it was still raining outside—and then said, “And there’s a lot of small stuff we’ve got to get quick. We need to know about the paint in the parking lot by morning. And we need to check the school, for that color or type of paint. Jim Hill here”—he nodded at one of the detectives—“points out that you hardly ever see poster paint outside a school, so maybe the school is somehow involved.”
    “Her old man did it,” somebody said.
    “We’re checking that,” Lester said. “In the meantime, we got the blood on that shoe, and we need somebody to walk the blood tests around, ’cause we need to know quick if the blood’s Manette’s or one of the kids’. If it’s not—if it’s somebody else’s—we’ll run it through the state’s DNA offender bank. And we need to talk to the University medical school, get Manette’s blood type. I’m told she occasionally volunteered for medical studies, so they may even have a DNA on her, and if the blood on the shoe belongs to one of the kids, a DNA might tell us that…”
    “DNA takes a while,” said a short, pink cop who wore a snap-brim hat with a feather in the hatband.
    “Not this one,” Lester said. He looked at the paper again. “We need Ford Econolines checked against all her patients, against the school staff, all relatives, and against whatever