Mind Prey

programmer. “His girlfriend knows my computer games, ’cause she said they suck. So I’m wondering, if there were stories on TV and in the papers about how my computer guys were counter-gaming this asshole, I wonder if he’d take a look? You know, cruise the building. How about if we had a really…progressive-looking woman talking to him?”
    “Sounds a little thin,” Sloan said. “He’ll be suspicious after that radio gag. But he might.”
    “I’ll talk to the PR chick,” Lucas said. “See if we can get something going.”
    “Don’t call her a chick, huh? You make me nervous when you talk that way. She carries a can opener in her purse,” Sloan said.
    “Okay.”
    Sloan was driving too fast through traffic, and when Lucas tilted his head back, he punched the radio up, a country station, and they listened to Hank Williams, Jr., until Lucas said, “I feel like my head’s stuffed with cotton.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing’s going through it at all.” He was fumbling with his hand and looked down and saw the ring on his thumb at the same moment that Sloan saw it.
    “You gonna ask her, or what?”
    “Every time I go home, she’s asleep,” Lucas said. “When I get up, she’s gone.”
    “You’re a cop; that’s the way it goes. She’s smart enough to know that,” Sloan said. “At least you’re not doing shift work.”
    “Yeah, it’s just this fuckin’ case,” Lucas said, holding the ring up to the windshield, peering through the rock. “After this case, we can get back on some kind of schedule.”
     
    L UCAS CLEARED THE idea with the chief, then talked to Anita Segundo, the press liaison.
    “I don’t know whether we should tell them it’s bullshit, and that they’re helping catch the kidnapper, or just feed them the story,” Lucas said.
    “It wouldn’t be honest to just feed them the story—but that’s the way I’d do it,” Segundo said. She was dark-haired, with a smooth, olive complexion and large black eyes. She spoke with a slight West Texas accent, biting off her words like a TV cowgirl.
    “How fast could we get it done?” Lucas asked.
    “I could tip the TV stations to what might make a good story—and they’d jump all over it. Anything to do with Manette is hot stuff. Of course, the papers’ll bite if TV does.”
    “Give me an hour,” Lucas said. “Then put it through.”
     
    L UCAS FOUND B ARRY Hunt in a huddle with salesmen, pulled him out, and outlined the story idea. Hunt thought about it for fifteen seconds, then nodded. “I don’t see a downside, as long as we have enough cops around for protection.”
    “You’ll have the cops. But the downside is, it might not work,” Lucas said.
    “That’s not what I meant,” Hunt said. “I meant, there’s no downside for us. Whether or not we catch the guy, we can use the stories—video and print—in our PR. You know, tracking a vicious nut kidnapper blah blah blah.”
    “Oh.” Lucas scratched his head. He’d hired the guy to think like this. “Yeah. Listen, then, I’d like Ice to make the presentation to the TV people.”
    Hunt studied him for a moment and then said, “You’re going a little deeper than I expected. But you’re right—if we have the protection.”
     
    T HE PROGRAMMERS THOUGHT the idea was great: Ice almost hopped up and down when Hunt said she’d lead the presentation of the story. The idea fit with her sense of humor.
    “Listen, you guys,” Lucas said anxiously, “if you pull their weenies too hard, they’re gonna know. Then they’re gonna screw us, because the press don’t like to get their weenies pulled. Worse than that, this guy, this asshole, he might know. He’s no dummy. We gotta play this straight: or mostly straight. We gotta look good. So let’s, like, you know, try not to…” He trailed off.
    “What?” somebody asked.
    “Geek out,” Lucas said.
    “One thing we could do,” said Ice, “is we could take that composite you’ve been passing around, and make up a hundred different variations of what he looks like. We could do that in an hour with one of the landscape programs. Then we could call them up for the TV people. It’d be very visual…”
    “Do that,” Lucas said, jabbing a finger at her. “Now, I was thinking—when we tried to grab him by tracing the phone call…” He explained the FBI’s cellular phone direction-finding gear. “That’s really high tech. I thought there might be something in it.”
    “All right, how about this,”