Mind Prey

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 guy is big enough that if 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.
     
    L UCAS 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.”
     
    S LOAN CAUGHT L UCAS 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.”
     
    G REAVE 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 the Star-Tribune this morning?”
    “Yeah, but I missed the television last night,” Lucas said. “I understand they got a little exercised.”
    Lester snorted. “They were hysterical.”
    Lucas shrugged. “She’s a white, professional, upper-middle-class woman from a moneyed family. That’s the hysteria button. If it was a black woman, there’d be one scratch-ass guy with a pencil.”
    A phone rang in the empty lieutenant’s office, and Greave got up and wandered over, picked it up on the fourth ring, looked back toward Lucas.
    “Hey, Lucas—you’ve got a call. The guy says it’s an emergency. A Doctor Morton.”
    Lucas, puzzled, shook his head and said, “Never heard of him.”
    Greave shrugged, waved the phone. “Well?”
    Lucas said, “Jesus, Weather?” He took the phone from Greave. “Davenport.”
    “Lucas Davenport?” A man’s voice, young, but with back gravel in it, like a pot