"Say hello to Weather," Hunt said. He seemed about to say something else but stopped. Lucas was halfway out the door before he realized what it was, and walked back. Hunt had just sat down in his office, and Lucas stuck his head in. "This Manette thing can't last for more than a couple of weeks, so set a meeting with the bank. And lay out the stock thing we talked about-the share plan."
Hunt nodded. "I've been meaning to bring it up."
Lucas said, "Now's the time. I told you if it worked, you'd get a piece of it. It seems to be working."
Weather.
Lucas toyed with the engagement ring: he should ask her. He could feel her waiting. But the advice was rolling in, unsolicited, from everywhere, and somehow, it slowed him down.
Women suggested a romantic proposaclass="underline" a short preface, declaring that he loved her, with a more or less elaborate description of what their life together would be like, and then a suggestion that they marry; most of the men suggested a plain, straight-forward question: Hey babe, how about it? A few thought he was crazy for tying up with a woman at all. A park cop suggested that golf would be a complete replacement for any woman, and cheaper.
"Fuck golf," Lucas said. "I like women."
"Well, that's the other half of the equation," the guy admitted. "Women are also a complete replacement for golf."
"Anything?" Weather asked as soon as he came in the door. He could feel the ring in his pocket, against his thigh. "With the Manettes?"
"Bizarre bullshit," he said, and he told her about the oil barrel. "Elle's coming over at six-thirty; I promised her steak."
"Excellent," Weather said. "I'll do the salad."
Lucas went to start the charcoal and touched the ring in his pocket. What if she said no, not yet…? Would that change everything? Would she feel like she had to move out?
Weather was bustling around the kitchen, bumping into him as he got the barbecue sauce out of the refrigerator. She asked with elaborate, chatty unconcern, "Do you think you and Elle would have gotten married, if…"
"If she'd hadn't become a nun?" Lucas laughed. "No. We grew up together. We were too close, too young. Romancing her just wouldn't have seemed… right. Too much like incest."
"Does she think the same way?"
Lucas shrugged. "I don't know. I never know what women think."
"You wouldn't rule it out, though."
"Weather?"
"What?"
"Shut the fuck up."
Sister Mary Joseph-Elle Kruger-still wore the traditional black habit with a long rosary swaying by her side. Lucas had asked her about it, and she'd said, "I like it. The other dress… it looks dowdy. I don't feel dowdy."
"Do you feel like a penguin?"
"Not in the slightest."
Elle had been a beautiful child, and still ran through Lucas's dreams, an eleven-year-old blonde touched by grace and merriment: and later scarred by acne so foul that she'd retreated from life, to emerge ten years later as Sister Joseph. She'd told him that her choice was not brought by her face, that she had a vocation. He wasn't certain; he never quite bought it.
Elle arrived in a black Chevrolet as Lucas was putting the first of the steaks on the grill. Weather gave her a beer.
"What's the status?" Elle asked.
"One's dead, maybe; the others aren't yet," Lucas said. "But the guy is cracking open and all the gunk is oozing out of his head. He's gonna kill them soon."
"I know her-Andi Manette. She's not the most powerful mind, but she's got an ability to… touch people," Elle said, sipping the beer. The smell of steak floated in from the porch. "She reaches out and you talk to her. I think it's something that aristocrats develop. It's a touch."
"Can she stay alive?"
Elle nodded. "For a while-for longer than another woman could. She'll try to manipulate him. If he's had therapy, it's hard to tell which way he'll jump. He'll recognize the manipulation, but some people become so habituated to therapy that they need it, like a drug. She could keep him going."
"Like Scheherazade," Weather said.
"Like that," Elle agreed.
"I need to keep him talking," Lucas said. "He calls me on the telephone, and we try to track him."
"Do you think he was in therapy with her? A patient?"
"We don't know. We're looking, but we haven't found much."
"If he is, then you should go to his problem. Not accuse him of being ill."
"I did that this afternoon," Lucas said ruefully. "He got pissed… sorry."
"Ask him how he's taking care of them," Elle suggested. "See if you can make him feel some responsibility, or that you think he's shirking a responsibility. Ask him if there's anything you can do that would allow them to go free. Something he would trade. Ask him not to answer right away, but to consider it. What would he like? You need questions on that order."
Later, over the steaks, Lucas said, "We've got another problem. We're going through Manette's records. She was treating people for child abuse-and she hadn't notified anybody."
Elle put down her fork. "Oh, no. You're not going to prosecute."
"That's up in the air," Lucas said.
Now Elle was angry. "That's the most primitive law this state has ever passed. We know that people are ill, but we insist on putting them into positions where they can't get help, and they'll just go on…"
"… Unless we slap their asses in jail…"
"What about the ones you never find out about? The ones who'd like to get treatment but can't because the minute they open their mouths, the cops'll be on them like wolves?"
"I know you've got a point-of-view," Lucas said, trying to back out of the argument.
"What?" Weather asked. "What happens?"
Elle turned to her. "If a person abuses a child in this state, and realizes he's sick, and tries to get treatment, the therapist is required to report him. If she does that, her records get seized by the state and are used as evidence against the patient. So as soon as the state acts, the patient, of course, gets a lawyer, who tells him to get out of treatment and keep his mouth shut. And if the man's acquitted-they frequently are, since he's admitted that he's mentally ill and that casts doubt on the records, and the therapists are very reluctant witnesses-well, then he's turned loose and all he knows for sure is that he can't ever go back to treatment, because he might wind up in prison."
Weather stared at her for a moment, then said to Lucas, "That can't be right."
"Sort of a Catch-22," Lucas admitted.
"Sort of barbaric is what it is," Weather said sharply.
"Child abuse is barbaric," Lucas snapped back.
"But if a person is trying to get help, what do you want? Throw him in a hole somewhere?"
"Listen, I really don't want to argue about it," Lucas said. "You either believe or you don't."
"Lucas…"
"Listen, will you guys let me chicken out of this thing and eat my steak? For… gosh sakes."
"Makes me really unhappy," Elle growled. "Really unhappy."
Late that night, Weather rolled up on a shoulder and said, "Barbaric."
"I didn't want to argue about it with Elle right there," Lucas said. "But you know what I really think? Therapy doesn't work with child abusers. The shrinks are flattering themselves. What you do with child abusers is you put their asses in jail. Each and every one of them, wherever you find them."
"And you call yourself a liberal," Weather said in the dark.
"Libertine. Not liberal," Lucas said, easing toward her.
"Stay on your side of the bed," she said.
"How about if I put just one finger over?"
"No." And a moment later, "That's not a finger…"
CHAPTER 10
John Mail watched the late news with a sense of well-being. He was alone except for the wide-screen television and his computers. He had a dial-up Internet link, and monitored twenty-four news groups dealing with sex or computers or both. He had two phone lines and three computers going at once. As he watched the news, he punched through alt.sex.blondes on the 'Net, and now and then pulled out a piece and shipped it to a second computer.