Mind Prey

smoker’s rasp.
    “Yes?” There was silence, and Lucas said, “Dr. Morton?”
    “No, not really. I just told them that so you’d answer the phone.” The man stopped talking, waiting for a question.
    Lucas felt a small tingle at the back of his throat. “Well?”
    “Well, I got those people, Andi Manette and her kids, and I saw in the paper that you’re investigating, and I thought I ought to call you ’cause I’m one of your fans. Like, I play your games.”
    “You took them? Mrs. Manette and her daughters? Who the hell is this?” Lucas dosed his voice with impatience, while frantically waving at the other two. Lester grabbed a phone; Greave looked this way and that, not sure of what to do, then hurried to his cubicle and a second later came back with a tape recorder with a suction-cup pickup. Lucas nodded, and while Mail talked, Greave licked the suction cup, stuck it on the earpiece of the phone, and started the recorder.
    “I’m sorta the Dungeon Master in this little game.” John Mail was saying. “I thought maybe you’d like to roll the dice and get started.”
    “This is bullshit,” Lucas said, stretching for time. Lester was talking urgently into his telephone. “We run into you assholes every time something like this gets in the paper. So listen to this, pal: you want to get your face on TV, you’re gonna have to do it on your own. I’m not gonna help.”
    “You don’t believe me?” Mail was perplexed.
    Lucas said, “I’ll believe you if you can tell me one thing about the Manettes that’s not in the newspaper or on television.”
    “Andi’s got a scar like a rocket ship,” Mail said.
    “A rocket ship?”
    “That’s what I said. An old German V-2 with a flame coming out of the ass-end. You can ask her old man where it is.”
    Lucas closed his eyes. “Are they all right?”
    “We’ve had a casualty,” John Mail said, offhandedly. “Anyway, I gotta go before you trace this and send a cop car. But I’ll call back, to see how you’re doing. Do you have a cellular phone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Give me the number.”
    Lucas recited the number, and Mail repeated it. “You better carry it with you,” he said. Then, “This really turns my crank, Davenport. OK, so roll a D20.”
    “What?”
    “On your Zen dice.”
    “Uh, okay…just a minute.” In the office, Lester was bent over the desk, talking urgently into the phone. Lucas said, “I’m rolling…I get a four.”
    “Ah, that’s a good roll: Here’s the clue: Go ye to the Nethinims and check ’em out. Got that?”
    “No.”
    “Well, then, tough shit,” Mail said. “Doesn’t look like you’re gonna do too well.”
    “We’re already doing well. We knew you were a gamer,” Lucas said. “We’ve been on your ass since last night.”
    Mail exhaled impatiently, then said, “You got lucky, that’s all…”
    “Not luck: you’re fuckin’ up on the details, pal. You’d be a hell of a lot better off…”
    “Don’t tell me how I’d be better off. Not one fuckin’ guy in a million would’ve recognized that shirt. Blind fuckin’ luck.”
    And he was gone. Lucas turned to Lester, who was working two phones at once. After a moment, he put one down, then the other, looked up at Lucas, shook his head. “Not enough time.”
    “Jesus, half the people in town have Caller ID. And we’re still calling up the company for traces?” Lucas said. “Why don’t we get a goddamn Caller ID like half the civilians in the state?”
    “Well,” Lester said. He shrugged: he didn’t know why. “Was it him?”
    “I’d bet on it,” Lucas said. He told Lester about the scar like a rocket ship.
    “What—you think it’s on her ass or something?”
    “That’s what I think,” Lucas said. “We better check with Dunn. But the way he said it, that’s what I think…And he said they’d had a casualty. I think somebody’s dead.”
    “Aw, shit,” Lester said.
     
    T HEY WENT OVER Greave’s tape together, three or four other cops gathering around to listen. They played it through once without interruption, then went back and listened to pieces. They could hear cars in the background. “Pay phone at a busy intersection. Big fuckin’ help,” Lester said. “And what’s a D20? And who are the Nethinims?”
    “D20s are twenty-sided dice. Gamers use them,” Lucas said. “I don’t know about the Netha-whachamacallits.”
    “Sounds like some kind of street gang, but I never heard of them,” Greave said. “Play it