Mind Prey

keep the radio communications clean, huh? Washington has asked us to allow a cameraman to ride with us tonight, for a documentary being made, uh, anyway for a documentary. I’ve agreed.”
    On the way out the door, an FBI technician muttered at Lucas, “Keep your box on Fox.”
     
    S LOAN SAID, “W E could be in a world of hurt.”
    “How?” Roux asked. They pushed through the brass revolving doors onto the street.
    “They’ve got everything figured out,” Sloan said. He started peeling a Dentine pack. “Everything’s on a schedule. But this can’t be as easy as it looks—there’s a joker in the deck somewhere.”
    Lucas looked up and down the street, and saw a one-time pimp named Robert Lika, whom the local wits called Leica because of his fondness for flashing preteen girls. Lika was peeing into a doorway, one hand braced on the door jamb as though the doorway were an ordinary urinal. “Will you look at this?”
    “Rather not,” said Roux, and her face colored.
    “You’re a little pink,” Lucas said.
    “You know, you didn’t see much of that until the last two or three years,” Roux said, looking down at Lika. “Now you see it all the time. It’s such a weird…turn.”
     
    T HE FEDERAL OPERATION was already moving, but Lucas and Sloan wouldn’t be involved until Dunn started toward the rest stop. The feds were monitoring him: after making a morning round of the banks, he’d gone to his office and was still there.
    Sloan’s wife had had a bunion removed, and her foot was still tender, and Sloan snuck off to do some grocery shopping on city time. Lucas, restless, caught lunch at a cop bar, put twenty dollars on the Vikes over Chicago, eating the eight-point spread—the Bears sucked—walked the skyways for a while, looking at women and clothes, and played with the ring in his pocket.
    He was gonna do it, he decided. Something simple—no juvenile tricks, no sophomoric misdirection or declarations. He’d just ask. What could she say, other than no? But she wouldn’t say no. She had to know what he was thinking—she could read his mind, she’d proved that. Hell, she was probably getting impatient; maybe she saw all this delay as some kind of insult. But the main thing was, she wouldn’t say no. Well, technically, you know, she could say no. What if she started out to be really nice about it…Fuckin’ women.
    Wonder what Dunn’s doing?
     
    A T FOUR-THIRTY, HE went back to the office, got the files out, and started reading through again. The file on the dead kid, where was he? Let’s see, subject reported to have jumped from the Lake Street Bridge, reporting officers called boat…
    The PR woman stuck her head in the door. “Lucas, they’re talking about you on TV, on the promos, so you’ll be up in the next couple of minutes if you want to watch.”
    “Yeah, I want…” Lucas had just turned the page on the report and looked up at the PR lady, but an after-image stuck in his eye and the after-image was Gloria. He looked back down at the page, trying to find it.
    “Lucas?”
    “Yeah, I’ll be along…” Where was it? He found it at the bottom of the page:
    “…witness Gloria Crosby said he’d been depressed since getting out of the state hospital and had stopped taking his prescription medication. Crosby said he may have been taking street drugs and had been acting irrational and that on 8/9 she had him admitted to Hennepin General for apparent drug overdose. Crosby said subject called her and asked to meet him at the Stanley Grill on Lake Street and that when she got there he was already walking toward the bridge. She walked after him, but when she got to the bridge the subject was standing on the railing and stepped off before she could approach him. Crosby said she ran back to Stanley Grill to call for assistance…”
    Damnit. Gloria Crosby. Crouched over the desk, he thumbed through the rest of the papers, trying to figure out what had happened. The phone rang and he snatched it off the desk:
    “What?”
    “Lucas, you’re on…”
    “Yeah, yeah.” He banged down the receiver, went back to the papers, and then picked up the phone again, punched in Anderson’s number.
    “This is Lucas…”
    “Lucas, you’re on…”
    “Yeah, yeah, fuck that, listen, you gotta get everything you can find on a guy named John Mail, DOB 7/7/68. Did time in the state hospital. We need the most recent photo we can find. Check the DMV and find his parents…wait, wait, I’ve