Mind Prey

spaniel, and the day was beginning as quietly as a mouse. “I mean, you know, for a nightmare.”
     
    R EPORTERS FROM FIVE television stations and both major papers showed up at the company headquarters at noon. Lucas talked for five minutes about police tactical simulation software and gaming programs, then passed the reporters to Ice.
    Ice said, with the camera rolling, “We’re gonna show you how we’re gonna catch this sucker and nail his butt to the wall.”
    Lucas saw the quick smiles from the cameramen and the reporters: he had a hit on his hands. Barry Hunt caught his eye and they nodded at each other.
    “The first thing is, we know what he looks like.”
    Ice ran the art program that manipulated the facial characteristics of the composite drawing of the suspect, adding and deleting hair, mustaches, beards, glasses, and collar styles. The other techies set up a camera to take pictures of the on-air reporters and manipulate their faces through the various styles. Then they put up a show that involved rotating three-dimensional maps of the Twin Cities, supposedly showing general locations of the kidnapper’s hideout.
    “It’s going fuckin’ great, as long as nobody asks what it means and how it’ll help catch the guy,” Ice muttered to Lucas just before he left.
    Lucas looked back at the crowd of laughing reporters standing around the computer displays: “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “This is great video. Nobody’ll be stupid enough to ask anything that’d spoil it.”
     
    A T THREE O’CLOCK the Dunn task force met at the federal building, with Roux, Lucas, and Sloan representing the city. Roux and Sloan were just walking in when Lucas arrived, and Roux said, “Dunn’s picking up the money. The feds are all over him.”
    “Excellent,” Lucas said.
    Dumbo and twenty FBI agents were packed in a conference room, with space left for the three city reps. Lucas sat down next to a girl whom he thought must be an intern of some sort, though she hardly seemed old enough. Fifteen, he thought, or sixteen. She looked at him, a level, speculating glance that struck him as too old for her body and face. He felt uncomfortable with her sitting behind him as he faced Dumbo.
    Dumbo laid out the procedure: fourteen agents on the ground in seven cars, plus a chopper with a spotter in the air. “We’ve already marked his car with an infra-red flasher wired into the taillight. I understand that Minneapolis uses the same technique,” Dumbo said, his ears flapping.
    “Something like it,” Sloan said. “I like the taillight deal. That’s a nice touch. We oughta talk.”
    Dumbo looked pleased: “So. You guys want to ride in the chopper or go on the ground?”
    “I’m ground,” Lucas said.
    “I’ll go with Lucas,” Sloan said. “We’ve got to coordinate on the radio codes.”
    “Sure.” Dumbo pointed at one of the FBI technical people.
    “Who’s going into the rest stop?” Lucas asked. “It’s gotta look good.”
    “Marie,” Dumbo said, and nodded at the woman behind Lucas. Lucas glanced back at her and she grinned. “We’ll put her in a high school letter jacket and a pleated skirt, give her some bubble gum. She’ll go in right behind Dunn and head for the phones. There are four of them in a pod. We’re monitoring all four. If Dunn has to wait, so will she. If they don’t, she’ll get on one and start talking to her boyfriend. She’ll be looking for anything and anybody.”
    Roux, peering at the woman from across the table, said, “You’re either precocious or older than you look.”
    “I’m thirty-two,” the woman said, in a sweet young soprano.
    “And Danny McGreff”—Dumbo nodded at a man with a large square face and two-day beard—“will get there a half-hour before Dunn is scheduled to, will get Dunn’s phone and stay on it until he sees Dunn come in the door. Then he’ll say good-bye, and drop it on the hook and leave. We don’t think anyone should be waiting—there’s never been a time when all four of them have been tied up, in the time we’ve been monitoring them.”
    “So you’ll have one agent in the place and at least one outside…”
    “We’ll have three in the place,” Dumbo said. “There’s a storage room, lockable, and we’ll put two men in there a couple of hours ahead of time. They simply won’t come out, and there won’t be any way to check inside without a key.”
    As the meeting was breaking up, Dumbo said, “Let’s try to