Mind Prey

asked.
    “You want to work this?” Lucas asked.
    Sloan shrugged. “I ain’t got much else. I got that Turkey case, but we’re having trouble getting anybody who can speak good Turk, so it’s not going anywhere.”
    “I’ve never met any Turks who didn’t speak pretty good English,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, well, you oughta try investigating a Turk murder sometime,” Sloan said. “They’re yellin’ no-speaka-da-English when I’m walking down the street. The guy who was killed was outa Detroit, he was sharkin’, he probably had thirty grand on the street and nobody was sorry to see him go.”
    “Talk with Lester,” Lucas said. “We need somebody to keep digging around the Manettes, Wolfe, Dunn, and anybody else who might make something out of Andi Manette dying…” He flipped the engagement ring up in the air and caught it, rolled it between his palms.
    Sloan said, “You’re gonna lose that fuckin’ stone. You’re gonna drop it and the ring is gonna bounce right down a sewer.”
    Lucas looked in his hand and saw the ring: he hadn’t been conscious of it. “I gotta do something about this, with Weather.”
    “There’s pretty general agreement on that,” Sloan said. “My old lady is peeing her pants, waiting for you to ask. She wants all the details. If I don’t get her the details, I’m a dead man.”
     
    G REAVE WAS WAITING with a sheaf of computer printer-paper and handed it to Lucas. “There’s not much. The Nethinims were mostly just mentioned in passing—if there’s anything, it’s probably in Nehemiah. Here, 3:26.”
    Lucas looked at the passage. Moreover the Nethinims dwelt in Ophel unto the place over against the water gate toward the east, and the tower that lieth out.
    “Huh.” He passed the paper to Sloan and walked down the office to a wall map of the Metro area, traced the Mississippi with his finger. “One thing you can see from the river is all those green water towers,” he said. “They’re like mushrooms along the tops of all the tallest hills. The water gate could be any of the dams.”
    “Want me to check?”
    Lucas grinned. “Take you two days. Just call all the towns along here.” He snapped his finger at the map. “Hastings, Cottage Grove, St. Paul Park, Newport, Inver Grove, South St. Paul, like that. Tell them you’re working Manette and ask them to swing a patrol car by the water towers; see if there’s anything to see.”
     
    B LACK SHOWED UP ten minutes later, morose, handed Lucas a file and a tape. “Guy’s messing with kids. Somebody ought to cut his fuckin’ nuts off.”
    “Pretty explicit?”
    “It’s all there, and I don’t give a shit what the shrinks say. This guy likes doing it. And he likes talking about it—he likes the attention he’s getting from Manette. He’ll never stop.”
    “Yeah, he will,” Lucas said, flipping through the file. “For several years…I’ll take it to the chief. We want to hold off until Manette’s out of the way.”
    Black nodded. “We got some doozies in the files.” He sat down opposite Lucas, spread five files on the desk like a poker hand, pushed one toward Lucas. “Look at this guy. I think he may have raped a half-dozen women, but he talks them out of doing anything about it. He brags about it: breaks down for them, weeps. Then he laughs about it. He says he’s addicted to sex, and he’s coming on to Manette…right here, see, she mentions it, and how she might have to redirect his therapy.”
     
    T HEY WERE READING files an hour later when Greave hurried in. “They’ve got something in Cottage Grove.”
    Lucas stood up. “What is it?”
    “They said it’s like an oil drum under one of the water towers.”
    “How do they know?”
    “It’s got your name spray-painted on it,” Greave said.
    “ My name?”
    Greave shrugged. “That’s what they said—and they are freaked out. They want your ass down there.”
     
    O N THE WAY down to Cottage Grove, the cellular buzzed and Lucas flipped it open. “Yeah?”
    Mail cooed, “Hey, Davenport, got it figured out?”
    Lucas knew the voice before the third word was out. “Listen, I…”
    But he was gone.

9
    S IX BLOCKS FROM the water tower, Lucas ran into a police blockade, two squad cars V-ed across the street. The civilian traffic was turning around, jamming up the street. He put the Porsche on the yellow line and accelerated past the frustrated drivers, until two cops ran toward him waving him off.
    A red-faced patrolman, one