Mind prey

CHAPTER 17

Anderson tracked Gloria Crosby through the state records, starting with a driver's license to get her exact age, then into the national crime computers-she'd been twice convicted of shoplifting from Walgreen's drug stores-and through the court records into the mental health system. Crosby had been in and out of treatment programs and hospitals since she was a young teenager; her home address was listed as North Oaks, a suburban bedroom north of St. Paul.

"We oughta get some people up there," Anderson said, leaning in the office door.

"I'm not doing anything except reading the book," Lucas said, taking his feet out of his desk drawer. "Is Sloan still wandering around?"

"He was drinking coffee down in Homicide."

They took Lucas's Porsche, Sloan driving it hard. Lucas said, "I hope Gloria doesn't set our guy off. If he gets the feeling that people know…"

Sloan, grunting as he shifted up and hammered the Porsche through the North Oaks entry, said, "If I was Gloria, I'd be very fucking careful. Very careful." The address came up, a small redwood rambler that looked out of place among the larger homes. The house was set into a low rise, with a split-rail fence defining the yard. Sloan asked, "Put it right in the driveway?"

"Yeah. I'll take the back."

"Sure."

Sloan squealed into the driveway, hit the brakes, and they were out, Lucas heading around the side of the house. The grass on the open parts of the yard had been thoroughly burned off, though the summer hadn't been especially hot or dry. In the shadier spots, it was long and ragged, untended.

Sloan walked up to the front door, passed a picture window with drawn curtains, stopped, peered through a crack in the curtains, saw nobody, and rang the doorbell.

Marilyn Crosby was a slight, gray-haired woman, stooped, suspicious, her face lined with worry. She stood in the doorway, one hand clutching her housecoat at the throat. "I haven't seen her or heard from her since last spring, some time. She wanted money. I gave her seventy-five dollars; but we're not close any more."

"We need to talk," Sloan said, low-keyed, relaxing. "She may be involved with the man who did the Manette kidnapping. We need to know as much about her as we can-who her friends are."

"Well…" She was reluctant, but finally pushed the door open and stepped back. Sloan followed her in.

"She's not here, is she?" Sloan asked.

"No. Of course not." Crosby frowned. "I wouldn't lie to the police."

Sloan looked at her, nodded. "All right. Where's your back door?"

"Through there, through the kitchen… What?"

Sloan walked through the kitchen with its odor of old coffee grounds and rancid potatoes and pushed open the back door.

"Lucas… yeah, c'mon."

"You had me surrounded?" Crosby seemed offended.

"We really need to find your daughter," Sloan said. Lucas came inside, and Sloan said, "So let's talk. Is your husband home?"

"He's dead," Crosby said. She turned and walked back into the house, Sloan and Lucas trailing behind. She led them to a darkened living room, with a shag carpet and drawn curtains. The television was tuned to Wheel of Fortune. A green wine bottle sat next to a lamp on a corner table. Crosby dropped into an overstuffed chair and pulled up her feet.

"He was out cutting a limb off an apple tree, got dizzy, and went like that." She snapped her fingers. "He had seventy thousand in insurance. That was it. I can't get at his pension until I'm fifty-seven."

"That's a tragedy," Sloan said.

"Three years ago last month, it was," she said, looking up at Sloan with rheumy eyes. "You know what his last words to me were? He said, 'Boy, I feel like shit.' How's that for last words?"

"Honest," Lucas muttered.

"What?" She looked at him, the suspicion right at the surface. Sloan turned so Crosby couldn't see his face, and rolled his eyes. Lucas was stepping on his act.

"Have you seen this man? He might have been younger when he came around," Sloan said, turning back to Marilyn Crosby. He handed her the composite drawing. She studied it for a moment and then said, "Maybe. Oh, last winter, maybe, he might have come around once. But his hair was different."

"Were they with anyone else?"

"No, just the two of them," she said, passing the composite back. "They were only here for a minute. He was a big guy, though. Sort of mean-looking, like he could fight. Not the kind Gloria usually came back with."

"What type was that?"

"Bums, mostly," Crosby said flatly. "No-goods who never did anything." Then, confidentially, to Sloan: "You know, Gloria's crazy. She got it from her father's side of the family. Several crazy people there-though, of course, I didn't know it until it was too late."

"We need the names of all her friends," Lucas said. "Friends or relatives that she might turn to. Anybody. Doctors."

"I don't know anything like that. Well, I know a doctor."

"There's a reward for information leading to an arrest," Lucas said. "Fifty thousand."

"Oh, really?" Marilyn Crosby brightened. "Well, I could go get the things she left here. Or maybe you'd like to come up and look in her room. You'd know better than I do what you're looking for."

"That'd be good," Sloan said.

Gloria Crosby's bedroom was an eleven-foot-square cubicle with a window in one wall, a bed, and a small pine desk and matching dresser. The dresser was empty, but the desk was stuffed with school papers, music tapes, rubber bands, broken pencils, crayons, rock 'n' roll concert badges, drawings, calendars, pushpins.

"Usual stuff," Sloan said. He went through it all. Lucas helped for a few minutes, then found Marilyn Crosby in the kitchen, drinking from the wine bottle, and got the name of Gloria's last doctor. He looked the name up in the phone book, noted the address, and called Sherrill, who was doing phone work on the patients they'd uncovered at the university. "Anything you can get," Lucas said.

When he got back to the bedroom, he lay down on Gloria Crosby's bed, a narrow, sagging single-width that was too short by six inches. A Mr. Happy Tooth poster hung on the wall opposite the bed. "Hi! I'm Gloria!" was written in careful block letters on the cartoon molar. The molar was doing a root dance on a red line that might have been an infected gum.

"Three names so far," Sloan said, nodding at the pile of junk on the desk. He was halfway through it. "From high school."

"We've got a better shot at the pharmacy. She'll have to go in there sooner or later," Lucas said. He sat up. "We should check the places she was hospitalized and get the names of patients who overlapped with her, and run them against Manette's patient list."

"Anderson's already doing that," Sloan said.

"Yeah?" Lucas dropped back on the bed and closed his eyes.

After a minute, Sloan asked, "Taking a nap?"

"Thinking," Lucas said.

"What do you think?"

"I think we're wasting our time, Sloan."

"What else is there to do?"

"I don't know."

As they were leaving, Marilyn Crosby leaned in the kitchen doorway. She held a twelve-ounce tumbler of what looked like water, but she sipped like wine. "Find anything?"

"No."

"If, uh, my daughter got in touch-you know, if she wanted more money or something-and if I put you in touch with her, who'd get the reward?"

"If you put us in touch and we got the information from her, you'd get it," Lucas said. "We know she knows who it is. All we have to do is ask her."

"Leave a number where I can get you quick," Marilyn Crosby said. She took a sip from the glass. "If she calls, I'll get in touch. For her own good."

"Right," Lucas said.

Sloan took the wheel again, and Lucas slumped in the passenger seat and stared out the window as they dropped past the wooded lawns and headed toward the gate.

"Listen," he said finally, "have you met the new PR chick? I only talked to her a couple of times."

"Yeah. I met her," Sloan said.

"Is she decent?"

Sloan shrugged. "She's okay. Why?"

"I'd like to get a story written about my company, but I don't want to go around and ask somebody to do it. I'd like to get the PR chick to talk the idea around, and have the TV people come to me."

Sloan said doubtfully, "I don't know, it's a private business and all. What're you thinking?"

"This guy, whoever he is, is fairly intelligent, right?"

"Right."

"And he plays computer games. I'd be willing to bet that he's a computer freak. Ninety percent of male gamers are," Lucas said. He was staring sightlessly out the window, thinking of Ice, the 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."

Lucas 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."

Lucas found Barry 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."

The 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," said another programmer, a short redhead with a yellow pencil behind each ear. "We scan in a map of Dakota County, do some lift-up 3-D shit, then program where the helicopters were and do some graphic overlays on the signal strengths, like we're trying to refine where on the map the signals came from…"

"Can you do that?" Lucas asked. "I mean, really?"

The programmer shrugged: "Beats the shit outa me. Maybe, if we had the data. But I was thinking more like, you know, making a cartoon for the TV people."

"Jesus, I can see it. We'd do the whole screen in blood red," Ice said. She looked at Lucas. "It'd look great: they'd eat the whole thing."

"That's what we want," Lucas said. "It's only gotta hold water for a couple of days."

The receptionist stepped into the doorway of the work room, looked around for Hunt, saw him perched on the end of a work bench. "Barry? We've got Channel Three on the phone. They want to do a story."

Hunt hopped off the bench. "How long do you guys need?"

Ice looked around the room, said, "We'll need a few hours to set up, get everything together."

"Could you do it tomorrow morning?"

"No problem," Ice said.

"Excellent," said Lucas.