Mind Prey

her skull backwards…”
    He liked watching her talk, her enthusiasm for the work, even when he had no idea of what she was talking about. He’d seen a half-dozen operations now, gowning up and learning where to stand, how to stay out of the way. The precision of it astonished him as did her easy way of command, and he found himself thinking that he could have done the work and been happy with it.
    Although there was an odd, steely ego that went with surgeons, Weather had it—she ran the operating room like a sergeant major might—and so did George Howell, Weather’s mentor. Howell was a fiftyish reconstructive surgeon who often stopped by when Weather was working, and Lucas usually felt a small, controllable urge to stuff the guy in a sewer somewhere, though Howell was a good enough guy.
    “Are you listening?” Weather asked.
    “Sure,” Lucas said, peering down into the toaster. “It’s just that I’m near death.”
    “There’s something wrong with your metabolism.” she said. “How can you be doing six things at three o’clock in the morning, but you can’t add two and two at six o’clock in the morning? You should have a physical. How long has it been?”
    Lucas rolled his eyes. “Having some guy shine his flashlight up my asshole isn’t gonna improve my addition,” he said. He looked glumly out the kitchen window. A robin hopped in the yard, peering this way and that for worms. “Christ, where’s my .45 when I need it?”
    Weather, up from the table, stopped to look outside, saw the robin and said, “I’d turn you in to Friends of Animals. You’d have bird lovers over here at five in the morning, making dove calls on the front porch.”
    “More fodder for the .45,” he said. They ate together, talking about the daily routine, then Lucas kissed her good-bye, patted her on the ass, and went to lie facedown on the couch.
     
    S HERRILL AND B LACK were finishing at Manette’s office. Lucas stopped by at eight o’clock, still feeling that he was out of his time zone. Black was the same way, grumping at his partner, shaking his head at Lucas. “Six guys. No women. Anderson has the rundown on all of them. They’ll all be in today’s book. We’re looking at all of them, and the FBI’s going through its records. Now we’re going back and looking at the second choices…the not-so-looney tunes.”
    “How about the six?”
    “Severe goofs,” Black said.
    “Severe,” Sherrill repeated. Like Weather, she was fairly chipper; in fact, seemed to soak up chipperness from Lucas and her partner. “I’d still like to know what we’re doing about the sex cases.”
    “We’ll get to them,” Lucas promised. “We just don’t want the media up in smoke. Not any more than they already are.”
    “I think Channel Three set new records in stupidity last night,” Sherrill said. “The stuff they were saying was so stupid it made my teeth hurt.”
    “I don’t understand what those guys are about,” Black said. “I really don’t.”
    “Making money,” Lucas said. “That’s all they’re about.”
    As Lucas was leaving Manette’s office, the receptionist, who’d been so flustered the first day, held up a hand, then looked both ways into the inner offices, a furtive look that Lucas recognized instantly. He continued out into the hall, looked back, caught her eye, and turned left. At the end of the hall was an alcove with Coke, coffee, and candy machines. A second later, she found him there, sipping a Diet Coke.
    “I feel not so good, talking to you,” the woman said. She wore a name tag that said “Marcella,” and her voice was tentative, as though she hadn’t made up her mind.
    “Anything might help,” Lucas said. “Anything: There are two kids out there.”
    She nodded. “It’s just that with all the arguments and lawyers, it makes me feel…disloyal. Nancy doesn’t have to know?”
    Lucas shook his head. “Nobody will know.”
    The woman glanced nervously back at her office again. “Well: Andi’s files are complete, but only for here.”
    Lucas frowned, gestured with the cup of Coke. “Only for here? I was told that this is the only place that she worked.”
    “On her own. But when she was doing her post-doc work, at the U, she did lots of people in the Hennepin County jail. You know, court-ordered evaluations. Most of them were juveniles, but that was so long ago that lots of them would be adults by now.”
    “Did she ever mention anyone in particular?”
    “No,