Mind Prey (12 page)

And he was gone.

After a moment, Grace crawled over to one of the plates, poked the food, tasted it. "It's not very warm."

Andi said, "But we need it. We'll eat it all."

"What if he poisoned it?"

"He doesn't have to poison it" Andi said, coolly.

Grace looked at her, then nodded. They carried the plates back to the mattress, and in a second, they were gobbling it down. Grace stopped long enough to get two cans of strawberry soda, passed one to her mother, glanced at the Porta-Potti. "God, I'm gonna hate... going."

Andi stopped eating, looked at the pot, then at her daughter. A daughter of privilege: she'd had a private bathroom since she was old enough to sleep in her own room. "Grace," she said, "we are in a desperately bad situation. We're trying to stay alive until the police find us. So we eat his food and we aren't embarrassed by each other. We just try to hang on the best we can."

"Right," Grace said. "But I wish Genevieve was here..."

Andi choked, forced herself to hold it down. Genevieve, she thought, might be dead. But Grace couldn't be told that. She had to protect Grace: "Listen, honey..."

"She could be dead," Grace said, her eyes wide, like an owl's. "God,I hope she's not..." She put down her spoon and began to cry and Andi started to comfort her, but then dropped her plate and she began to cry as well. A few seconds later, Grace crawled next to her and they huddled together, weeping; and Audi's mind flashed back to the night when they'd all sprawled on the upstairs rug, laughing, after Genevieve's "God, that guy was really hung..."

Much later, Grace said, "He didn't say anything about being a sex pervert..."

"He's not listening," Andi said. "He hadn't heard it."

"Sowhat are we going to do?"

"We have to judge him," Andi said. "If we think he's going to kill us, we have to attack him. We have to think about the best ways to do that."

"He's too strong."

"But we have to try... and maybe... I don't know. Listen: John Mail is a very smart boy. But maybe we can manipulate him."

"How?"

"I've been thinking about that. If he's talking to this Davenport person, maybe we can send a message."

"How?"

Andi sighed. "I don't know. Not yet."

John Mail came back an hour later. Again they felt him coming before they heard him, the vibration of a body on the stairs. He opened the door as he had before, carefully. Andi and Grace were on the mattress. He looked at them both, his gaze lingering on Grace until she looked away, and then he said to Andi, "Come out."

Chapter
8

>

Lucas spent the early afternoon reading the papers, then tripping around to the television stations. After his last stop, he called in to Homicide and asked that Sloan be sent to meet him at Nancy Wolfe's office.

When Lucas arrived at Wolfe's, Sloan was examining the same NSX that Lucas had cruised in the morning.

"Heavy metal," he said, as he slouched over to Lucas. "Makes the Porsche look like a fuckin' Packard."

Sloan was a thin man, a man who looked at the world sideways, with a skeptical grin. He liked brown suits and had several of varied intensity: in the summer he leaned toward off-tans and not-quite-beiges, and striped neckties, and straw hats; in the winter, he went for darker tones and felt hats. He'd just shifted to winter wear, and was a dark spot in the parking lot.

"The NSX could bite you on the ass," Lucas said, looking at the car. He flipped the engagement ring in the air, caught it, and slipped it over the end of his thumb. The stone sparkled like high-rent fire.

"What're we doing?" Sloan asked.

"Good guy-bad guy with Nancy Wolfe, Manette's partner. You're the good guy."

"What has she got to do with it?"

"You know about the call from the asshole?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah, Lester played the tape for me."

"I've been running around asking questions," Lucas said. "Nobody--none of the papers, none of the stations--carried anything about the shirt. Nobody had anything about me working the case. The only people who knew, outside the department, were the family and a few people close to the family. Wolfe. A lawyer."

"Christ." Sloan scratched his head. "You think somebody's talking to him? The asshole?"

"Maybe. I can explain him knowing about me," Lucas said. "I can't explain the shirt, unless he made a pretty big intuitive leap."

"Huh." They passed the chewing-gum sculpture. Sloan looked up at it and asked, "How about Miranda?"

"Yep. We do the whole thing... And she asks for an attorney, we sayfine . I'm going after her pretty hard. We want to shake her up. Same thing for the rest of the family, when we get to them."

"Lucas, hey, Lucas." They'd started across the bridge, stopped for just a second to look at the koi, heard the woman's voice, turned and saw Jan Reed hurrying across the street. A TV van was making an illegal U-turn that would take it into the parking lot.

"Thisone makes my dick hard," Sloan muttered.

Reed had large dark eyes, auburn hair that fell to her shoulders, and long, tanned legs. She wore a plum suit and matching shoes, and carried a Gucci shoulder bag. She had a slight overbite; a tiny lisp added to her charm.

"Are you working this?" Lucas asked as Reed came up. "This is..."

"Detective Sloan, of course," Reed said. She took Sloan's hand, gave him a two-hundred-watt smile. Then to Lucas: "I'm trying for an interview with Nancy Wolfe. I understand her records were subpoenaed this morning by the local Nazis."

"That was me," Lucas said.

Reed's smile widened slightly: she'd known. "Really? Well, why'd you do that?"

Lucas glanced toward the truck and then said to Reed, "Jan, Jan, Jan. You've got a sleazy unethical microphone in the truck, don't you? I mean, my golly, that's very slimy, a really tacky, disgusting, snakelike invasion of my privacy. In fact, it's very close to criminal. It may even be criminal."

Reed sighed. "Lucas..."

Lucas leaned close to her ear and whispered, "Go fuck yourself."

She leaned close to his ear and said, "I like the basic concept, but I hate flying solo."

Lucas, backing away, felt the ring in his pocket and said, "C'mon, Sloan, let's see if we can get to Mrs. Wolfe before the media does..."

"Goddamnit, Lucas," Heed said, and she stamped her foot.

Inside, Sloan asked, "Do you really think they had a mike?"

"I'm sure they did," Lucas said.

"Do you think they heard what I said? About Reed making my dick hard?"

"No question about it," Lucas said, biting back a grin. "And they'll use it, too, the treacherous assholes."

"You're giving me shit, man. Don't give me shit, I need to know."

The receptionist looked like she wanted to hide when she saw Lucas and Sloan coming down the hall. Lucas asked to see Wolfe, and she said, "Dr. Wolfe is with a patient. She should be finished"--she looked at a desk clock--"in five minutes or so. I hate to interrupt..."

"When she's done," Lucas said. "We'll be in Dr. Manette's office."

Sherrill and Black were sitting on the floor, working through a pile of manila folders.

"Anything new?" Lucas asked.

"Hey, Sloan," said Sherrill.

"These people are nuts," Black said, patting a small stack of folders. "These are neurotic"--he pointed toward another, larger stack--"and the big stack are just fucked up," he said, pointing at a third pile. "Some of the nuts are in jail or in hospitals; some of them we don't know about. When we get one, we call it downtown."

"What are we doing about the bank guy?" Sherrill asked.

"I unloaded it on the chief," Lucas said. "Did you find any more of those?"

"Maybe. There are a couple where it seems like she's getting cute... cryptic notes. References to other files, which we haven't found. There are computer Piles somewhere, but we haven't found the disks. Anderson's gonna come down and take a crack at her system." She nodded at an IBM computer on a credenza behind Manette's desk.

Wolfe walked in then, her face grim, her anger barely suppressed, and faced Lucas. Her arms were straight to her sides, herfists clenched. "What do you want?"

"We need to ask you some questions," Lucas said.

"Should I get my attorney?"

Lucas shrugged. "It's up to you. I do have to warn you: you have a right to an attorney."

Wolfe went pale as Lucas recited the Miranda warning. "You're serious."

Lucas nodded. "Yes. We're very serious, Dr. Wolfe."

Sloan broke in, his voice cheerful, placating. "We really are just asking basic stuff. I mean, you have to make the decision, but we're not gonna sweat you, Miz Wolfe, I mean, we're not gonna pull a light down over your head. We're just trying to figure out a few angles. If this wasn't done by one of her patients, why was it done? It was obviously planned, so it wasn't just some maniac picking people at random. We need to know who would benefit..."

"This man"--Wolfe, talking to Sloan, jabbed a finger at Lucas--"suggested this morning that I would benefit from Audi's death. I resent that. Andi's my dearest friend, a life-long friend. She's been my best friend since college, and if something should happen to her, it would be a personal disaster, not a benefit. And I bitterly..."

Sloan glancedat Lucas, shook his head, looked back at Wolfe and said, "Sometimes Lucas and I don't see eye-to-eye on these things..."

"Sloan," Lucas said, in a warning tone. But Sloan held up a hand.

"He's not a bad guy," Sloan said to Wolfe. "But he's a street guy. I'm sure he didn't mean to offend you, but sometimes he sort of... overstates things."