Mortal Prey

could get her off the street…I mean, hell, she has to have a trial and everything.”
    A spark of intelligence showed in Rinker’s eyes: “They’re gonna put her to sleep anyway, no matter what you say,” he said. “One way she’s free, and maybe she’ll get away. If you get her in jail, they’re just gonna put her to sleep. Better to get shot than that, having to wait around in a place like this”—he flipped one hand at the sterile room—“and then have somebody tie you to a table and put a thing in your arm.”
    “Maybe, but maybe not,” Lucas said. “But I’ll tell you this: She’s not only hurting herself, and you, she’s hurting her friends. She’s crashing someplace around here, with one of her friends, and whoever that is…she’s just as guilty now as Clara is. She’s taking her friends down with her. Does that sound right?” He put a little authority into it, and watched Rinker’s wavering intelligence crawl back in a hole.
    Rinker mumbled, “I guess not,” and he looked at his hands.
    “Do you know her friends here?” Andreno asked.
    Rinker said nothing at all, didn’t seem to have heard the question. His eyes flattened, he seemed even slacker in the shoulders, as though his mind had slipped away.
    Andreno repeated himself: “Do you know her friends?”
    Rinker stayed away for another few seconds, then his eyes focused and he pulled himself out of wherever he’d gone. He shook his head. “She never said nothing about friends around here. I didn’t know anything about St. Louis. I took off for Los Angeles as soon as I was old enough.” He stopped, catching himself.
    Lucas pushed: “Then where were her friends? She must have had friends back home somewhere.”
    “Maybe,” Rinker conceded. He licked his lips. “I wouldn’t know nothin’ about that. She was older’n me.”
    They worked on him for another fifteen minutes, but nothing came out of it. He was not only a thrown-away kid, Lucas realized; he did have some mental deficit, or otherness. He slipped away when they pressed him, and only reluctantly came back.
    When they ran out of questions, Lucas and Andreno sighed simultaneously, and Lucas said, “Well, hell,” and Andreno said, “Wish we could help you, son. These goddamn feds…they can be real assholes.”
    “I gotta get out of here,” Rinker said, struggling to come alive. “I got all my stuff back in L.A. If I don’t get back, Larry or Jane is gonna find it and they’ll just flat sell it. They’ll sell it first chance they get. Got some good stuff, there. Got a suit. Got a radio.”
    “I wish—” Andreno began.
    “I gotta get out of here,” Rinker said, cutting him off. His eyes were big, and going oily, and he looked around the room, looked for a window or a crack or anything that might let in some air. “I mean I just…I just…I gotta get out of here. I can’t breathe, I got dreams…”
    “About Clara?” Lucas asked.
    “About me. I’m like this big moth, like the moths that come at night when you’ve got flowers, they’re like hummingbirds, but they’re moths, and I’m one of them, and these guys catch me and I’m flapping my wings and they keep pulling at me like they’re gonna pull my wings off, and my feelers. I got these big feelers like feathers and they’re gonna pull them off. And they were all laughing and when I sat up on the bunk last night I thought I was there, that they were pulling my wings off, and I couldn’t breathe, I just kept flapping my wings….”
     
    LUCAS CALLED THE jailer, then told Rinker, “We’ll try to do something. Gotta be a little patient, though.”
    Andreno chipped in: “Hold on, son.”
    When the jailer took him away, Rinker looked back at them and said, “I really gotta get back. All my stuff is in L.A. They’re gonna sell it if I don’t get back.”
     
    MALONE HAD A TAPE . “If you want to listen to it again, it’s all there,” he said, as they took the elevator down.
    “I only saw one thing,” Lucas said, looking at Andreno. “Clara had a friend or maybe a couple of friends back home. He didn’t want to say it.”
    “Shouldn’t be hard to find, if they’re still there,” Andreno said. “Town’s about two blocks long.”
    “We’ve had agents out there,” Malone said. “Interviewed everybody—nothing. Her mother’s a vegetable, barely remembers Clara. We’ve gone over the whole house, from top to bottom, looked at every scrap of paper.”
    “Find any