Mind Prey

He’ll recognize the manipulation, but some people become so habituated to therapy that they need it, like a drug. She could keep him going.”
    “Like Scheherazade,” Weather said.
    “Like that,” Elle agreed.
    “I need to keep him talking,” Lucas said. “He calls me on the telephone, and we try to track him.”
    “Do you think he was in therapy with her? A patient?”
    “We don’t know. We’re looking, but we haven’t found much.”
    “If he is, then you should go to his problem. Not accuse him of being ill.”
    “I did that this afternoon,” Lucas said ruefully. “He got pissed…sorry.”
    “Ask him how he’s taking care of them,” Elle suggested. “See if you can make him feel some responsibility, or that you think he’s shirking a responsibility. Ask him if there’s anything you can do that would allow them to go free. Something he would trade. Ask him not to answer right away, but to consider it. What would he like? You need questions on that order.”
    Later, over the steaks, Lucas said, “We’ve got another problem. We’re going through Manette’s records. She was treating people for child abuse—and she hadn’t notified anybody.”
    Elle put down her fork. “Oh, no. You’re not going to prosecute.”
    “That’s up in the air,” Lucas said.
    Now Elle was angry. “That’s the most primitive law this state has ever passed. We know that people are ill, but we insist on putting them into positions where they can’t get help, and they’ll just go on…”
    “…Unless we slap their asses in jail…”
    “What about the ones you never find out about? The ones who’d like to get treatment but can’t because the minute they open their mouths, the cops’ll be on them like wolves?”
    “I know you’ve got a point-of-view,” Lucas said, trying to back out of the argument.
    “What?” Weather asked. “What happens?”
    Elle turned to her. “If a person abuses a child in this state, and realizes he’s sick, and tries to get treatment, the therapist is required to report him. If she does that, her records get seized by the state and are used as evidence against the patient. So as soon as the state acts, the patient, of course, gets a lawyer, who tells him to get out of treatment and keep his mouth shut. And if the man’s acquitted—they frequently are, since he’s admitted that he’s mentally ill and that casts doubt on the records, and the therapists are very reluctant witnesses—well, then he’s turned loose and all he knows for sure is that he can’t ever go back to treatment, because he might wind up in prison.”
    Weather stared at her for a moment, then said to Lucas, “That can’t be right.”
    “Sort of a Catch-22,” Lucas admitted.
    “Sort of barbaric is what it is,” Weather said sharply.
    “Child abuse is barbaric,” Lucas snapped back.
    “But if a person is trying to get help, what do you want? Throw him in a hole somewhere?”
    “Listen, I really don’t want to argue about it,” Lucas said. “You either believe or you don’t.”
    “Lucas…”
    “Listen, will you guys let me chicken out of this thing and eat my steak? For…gosh sakes.”
    “Makes me really unhappy,” Elle growled. “Really unhappy.”
     
    L ATE THAT NIGHT, Weather rolled up on a shoulder and said, “Barbaric.”
    “I didn’t want to argue about it with Elle right there,” Lucas said. “But you know what I really think? Therapy doesn’t work with child abusers. The shrinks are flattering themselves. What you do with child abusers is you put their asses in jail. Each and every one of them, wherever you find them.”
    “And you call yourself a liberal,” Weather said in the dark.
    “Libertine. Not liberal,” Lucas said, easing toward her.
    “Stay on your side of the bed,” she said.
    “How about if I put just one finger over?”
    “No.” And a moment later, “ That’s not a finger…”

10
    J OHN M AIL WATCHED the late news with a sense of well-being. He was alone except for the wide-screen television and his computers. He had a dial-up Internet link, and monitored twenty-four news groups dealing with sex or computers or both. He had two phone lines and three computers going at once. As he watched the news, he punched through alt.sex.blondes on the ’Net, and now and then pulled out a piece and shipped it to a second computer.
    Mail was a little sleepy, a little burned out, with a pleasant ache in his lower belly and a burn on his knees. Andi