"Who is he? You know him?" Lucas hurried toward the street door.

"Nope. Never saw him before," she said. "Why?"

"How about you?" he called back to the male gamer. "You know him?"

"Nope. I'm with her."

Out on the sidewalk, Lucas went to the corner and looked all four ways down the intersecting streets. No van in sight. Nothing but a green Mazda, driven by a redheaded woman in a green dress, who seemed to be lost.

How long had they been talking in the back? Four or five minutes, no more.

And the guy had gone, disappeared, in that time.

Lucas stood on the street corner, wondering.

The parking garage that had once faced the back entrance to City Hall had been razed, and Lucas left the Porsche on the street. Paloma, who'd been following in a Studebaker Golden Hawk, found another space a half-block further on. As they walked back toward City Hall, they could hear the City Hall bell ringer playing "You Are My Sunshine," the tune clanging out above police headquarters.

A thin man fell in step with them. As Lucas turned to him, Sloan said, looking up at the bell tower, "Hope there are no fuckin' acid-heads around right now."

Lucas grinned: "That would be hard to explain to yourself-'You Are My Sunshine' banging around your brain."

"Makes me want to jump off the tower. And I'm not even high," Paloma said.

Sherrill caught them in the hallway outside Lucas's office. She was carrying a manila file: "We've got a problem." She glanced at Paloma, then turned back to Lucas. "We need to talk. Now."

"What? They got a court order?" Lucas asked.

"No. But you're not gonna like it."

Lucas turned to Sloan: "Marcus is here to look at the composite on the Manette kidnapper. He might want to add some stuff. Could you get him down there?"

"Sure," Sloan said. And to Marcus: "Let's go."

Lucas opened his office, nodded Sherrill into a chair, and hung his coat and jacket on an old-fashioned oak coat rack. "Tell me," he said. And he decided that he liked the tomboy-with-great-breasts look. He'd never hit on Sherrill, and now couldn't think how he'd missed her.

"There's a guy named Darrell Aldhus, a senior vice president at Jodrell National," Sherrill said. "He's been diddling little boys in his Scout troop."

Lucas frowned. "Does this have anything…"

"No. Nothing to do with Andi Manette, except that she hasn't reported the guy. And that's a felony. What's happening is, is what everybody was afraid was gonna happen. Aldhus admits in here-" Sherrill slapped the file-"that he's had several sexual contacts with boys, and he's trying to get himself cured. If we go after him, a defense attorney is gonna tell him to get the hell out of therapy and don't say shit to anybody. Since all we've got is her notes, nothing on tape, we really don't have that strong a case-not without her to back them up. We could put the Sex guys on it, have them start talking to kids…"

"Do we have any of the kids' names?" Lucas asked.

"No, but if we went in hard, I'm sure we could find some," she said.

"Goddamnit." Lucas opened a desk drawer and put his feet on it. "I didn't want this."

"The press is gonna be on us like a hot sweat," Sherrill said. "This guy is big enough that if we bust him, it'll be front-page stuff."

"In that case, we oughta do the right thing."

"Yeah? And what's that?" Sherrill asked.

"Beats the shit out of me," Lucas said.

"You figure it out," she said. She handed him the file. "I'm gonna go back and look at the rest of it. I wouldn't be surprised if Black hasn't already found more of these things… this was like the fourth file I looked at."

"But nothing on Manette?"

"So far, no-but Nancy Wolfe…"

"Yeah?"

"She says you're a bully," Sherrill said.

Lucas unloaded the Aldhus file on the chief, who treated it like a live rattlesnake.

"Give me a couple of suggestions," Roux said.

"Sit on it."

"While this guy is diddling little boys?"

"He hasn't done any diddling lately. And I don't want to start a fuckin' pie fight right in the middle of the Manette thing."

"All right." She looked at the file, half-closed her eyes. "I'll confer with Frank Lester and he can assign it to an appropriate officer for preliminary assessments of the veracity of the material."

"Exactly," Lucas said. "Under the rug, at least for now. How are the politics shaking out?"

"I briefed the family again, me and Lester, on the overnights. Manette looked like death had kissed him on the lips."

Sloan caught Lucas in the corridor.

"Your friend the doper looked at the composite: he says it could be our guy."

"Sonofabitch," Lucas said. He put his hands over his eyes, as if shielding them from a bright light. "He was right there. I didn't even see his face."

Greave had on a fresh, bluish suit; Lester's eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

"They giving you shit?" Lucas asked, stepping into Homicide.

"Yeah," Lester said, straightening up. "Whataya got?"

Lucas gave him a one-minute run-down: "It coulda been him."

"And it coulda been Lawrence of Iowa," Greave said.

Lester handed over the composite sketch based on information from Girdler and the girl. "Had a hell of a time getting them to agree on anything," Lester said. "I have a feeling that our eyewitnesses… Mmmm, what's the word I'm looking for?"

"Suck," said Greave.

"That's it," Lester said. "Our eyewitnesses suck."

"Maybe my guy can add something," Lucas said. The face in the composite was tough, and carried a blankness that might have reflected a lack of information, or a stone-craziness. "Did Anderson tell you about the GenCon shirt?"

"Yeah," Lester nodded. He stretched, yawned, and said, "We're trying to get a list of people who registered for the convention the past couple of years, hotel registrations… did you see the Star-Tribune this morning?"

"Yeah, but I missed the television last night," Lucas said. "I understand they got a little exercised."

Lester snorted. "They were hysterical."

Lucas shrugged. "She's a white, professional, upper-middle-class woman from a moneyed family. That's the hysteria button. If it was a black woman, there'd be one scratch-ass guy with a pencil."

A phone rang in the empty lieutenant's office, and Greave got up and wandered over, picked it up on the fourth ring, looked back toward Lucas.

"Hey, Lucas-you've got a call. The guy says it's an emergency. A Doctor Morton."

Lucas, puzzled, shook his head and said, "Never heard of him."

Greave shrugged, waved the phone. "Well?"

Lucas said, "Jesus, Weather?" He took the phone from Greave. "Davenport."

"Lucas Davenport?" A man's voice, young, but with back gravel in it, like a pot smoker's rasp.

"Yes?" There was silence, and Lucas said, "Dr. Morton?"

"No, not really. I just told them that so you'd answer the phone." The man stopped talking, waiting for a question.

Lucas felt a small tingle at the back of his throat. "Well?"

"Well, I got those people, Andi Manette and her kids, and I saw in the paper that you're investigating, and I thought I ought to call you 'cause I'm one of your fans. Like, I play your games."

"You took them? Mrs. Manette and her daughters? Who the hell is this?" Lucas dosed his voice with impatience, while frantically waving at the other two. Lester grabbed a phone; Greave looked this way and that, not sure of what to do, then hurried to his cubicle and a second later came back with a tape recorder with a suction-cup pickup. Lucas nodded, and while Mail talked, Greave licked the suction cup, stuck it on the earpiece of the phone, and started the recorder.

"I'm sorta the Dungeon Master in this little game," John Mail was saying. "I thought maybe you'd like to roll the dice and get started."