Mind Prey

there?”
    “Listen, we think you might have some trouble, you know, making the world work right. And we think you might know it. We can get you help…”
    “You mean I’m fuckin’ nuts? Is that what you mean?”
    “Listen, I personally had a bad episode of depression a few years back, and I know what it’s like. The shit in your head is wrong, and it’s not your fault…”
    “Fuck that, Davenport, there’s nothing wrong with my fuckin’ head. There’s something wrong with the fuckin’ world. Turn on your TV sometime, asshole. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
    And he was gone again.
     
    T HE PHONE COMPANY was automatically tracing all calls to Lucas’s cellular phone and alerting the Dispatch Department at the same time. Dispatch would start cars toward the phone. But when Lester called, two minutes after Mail hung up, he said, “He was too quick. He was on the strip near the airport. We had cars there in two minutes forty-five seconds after he rang you, but he was gone. We stopped seven vans, nothing going there.”
    “Damnit. He won’t talk for more than ten seconds or so.”
    “He knows what he’s doing.”
    “All right. I’m heading back.”
    “Sherrill came up with another problem case, a guy fooling around with children—he’s been screwing ten-year-old girls at a playground. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but if we get Manette back, she might wind up doing some time.”
    Lucas shook his head and looked at the phone, then said, “Frank, we’re not secure here. This phone is a fuckin’ radio.”
     
    L ESTER WAS WAITING when Lucas got back.
    “This Manette thing, the sex things,” he said.
    “Yeah?”
    “An awful lot of people know. They know down in Sex, and they’re pissed that they can’t move. It’s gonna get out, and it won’t be long.”
    “Are we running the names of all these guys?”
    “All of them.”
    “How about people they’ve abused? Could somebody be trying to get revenge on Manette?”
    Lester shrugged. “So we plug in all the victims. We got more goddamned names, and nothing coming up. What do you make of that thing out at the water tower?”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “He says it’s a clue, but what kind of a clue? Why was it full of water? Watery grave? Was it the barrel?”
    Anderson came through, handed each of them a fat plastic binder with perhaps three hundred pages inside. “Everything we’ve got, except what might come out of the lab on the doll. And we’re not getting anything from the feebs.”
    “Big surprise.” Lucas flipped through the text.
    “Any ideas?” Lester asked.
    “Watery grave,” Lucas said. “That’s about it.”
     
    N OTHING MOVED. N OBODY called.
    Lucas finally phoned Anderson: “There’s an interview in your book with one of Manette’s neighbors.”
    “Yeah?”
    “She said there was somebody hanging around in a boat, in a spot where there aren’t any fish. Maybe we ought to run boat licenses against the other lists.”
    “Jesus, Lucas, we got hundreds of names already.”
    Later, Lucas called St. Anne’s College and asked for the psychology department. “Sister Mary Joseph, please.”
    “Is this Lucas?” The voice on the other end was breathless.
    “Yes.”
    “We were wondering if you’d call,” the receptionist said. “I’ll go get her.”
    Elle Kruger—Sister Mary Joseph—picked up the phone a moment later, her voice dry: “Well, they’re all in a tizzy around here. Sister Marple goes off to solve another one. And this one’s a gamer, I hear.”
    “Yeah. And it’s ugly,” Lucas said. “I think one of the kids is dead.”
    “Oh, no.” The wry quality disappeared from her voice. “How sure?”
    “The guy who took them left a clue: a doll in an oil barrel filled with water. I think the doll was supposed to represent one of the kids.”
    “I see. Do you want to come over and talk?”
    “Weather should be home around six. If you’d like to walk over, I’ll cook some steaks.”
    “Six-thirty,” she said. “See you then.”
     
    O N HIS WAY home, Lucas took University Avenue toward St. Paul and stopped just short of the St. Paul city line. Davenport Simulations occupied a suite of offices on the first floor of a faceless but well-kept office building. Most of the offices in the building were closed. Davenport Simulations was completely lit up: most of the programmers started work in the early afternoon, and ran until midnight, or later.
    Lucas smiled at the