Mail had come up directly behind her, a third length of the rope held between his hands. He flipped it over Gloria's neck and twisted: the rope cut into the woman's throat, and she tried to turn, tried to grab the rope. Her face, eyes bulging, was inches from Andi's. Andi tried to swing away, to turn, but Mail shouted, "No, watch this. Watch."
She turned back. The woman's tongue was out now, and she did a little dance, her feet tapping on the floor, her arms windmilling for a moment, then her fingers would pluck at the rope, then she'd windmill again.
The muscles stood out in Mail's arms and face as he twisted the rope and controlled the woman at the same time; eventually, he held her slack body like a puppet, held her, held her, until her bladder relaxed and the smell of urine floated through the room. He held her for another ten seconds, but now he was watching Andi's face.
Andi was watching, but without much feeling: her capacity for horror had dried out as thoroughly as her tears. She'd imagined John Mail killing herself, or Grace, much in this way. And she'd dreamed of Genevieve, not at home, but in a grave somewhere, in her first-day-of-school dress. The murder of Gloria seemed almost insignificant.
Mail let go of the rope, and Gloria fell face-first to the floor, wide-eyed, and never flinched when it came up to meet her. Mail put a knee in her back, tightened the rope again, held it for another minute, threw a quick sailor's knot into it, then stood up and made a hand-dusting gesture.
"She was a pain in the ass," he said, looking down at the body. Then he smiled at Andi. "You see? I take care of you. She would've beat the shit out of you."
Andi's hands were still over her head, and she said, "This is hurting my shoulders…"
"Really? Tough shit." He walked behind her, put his hands around her waist, pressed his teeth against the back of her shoulder, and looked down at the body. "This is kind of-"he looked for a word and remembered Gloria's-"kind of neat," he said.
CHAPTER 19
Lucas's cellular phone buzzed, and he looked down at his pocket. "I told all my friends to stay off, unless it was an emergency," he said. Lester picked up another phone and dialed, and Lucas let the phone ring once more before he snapped it open and said, "Yeah?"
"Ah, Lucas." Mail's voice. Traffic was busy in the background. "Is your ass getting tired of chasing me? I'm thinking of going on vacation, tell you the truth."
"Are you driving around?" Lucas asked. He flapped his hand at Lester, nodding, and Lester whispered urgently into his phone, then dropped it and sprinted out of the room. "Feel pretty safe?"
"Yeah, I'm driving," Mail said. "Are you trying to track me?"
"I don't know. Probably," Lucas said. "I need to talk to you and I need to finish what I've got to say, with no bullshit."
"Well, spit it out, man. But don't take too long. I've got a clue for you. And this is a good one."
"Why don't you give me that, first?" Lucas said. "Just in case I piss you off."
Mail laughed, and then said, "You're a funny guy. But listen, this is a real clue. Not sort of remote, like the first one."
"Tell me about the first one?"
"Fuck no." Mail was amused. "But I'll tell you-if you figure this one out, you'll get me fair and square. You ever watch Monty Python? It'd be like"-he lapsed into a bad British accent-"a fair cop."
"So what is it?"
"Just a minute, I got it written down. I've got to read it to you, to get it right. Okay, here it is…" He paused, then said, in a reading voice: "A little blank verse, one-twelve-ten, four-four, one-forty-seven-nine, and a long line; twenty-three-two, thirty-two-nine, sixty-nine-twenty-two."
"That's it?" Lucas asked.
"That's it. This is a very simple code, but I don't think you'll crack it. If you do, I'm done. Mrs. Manette bet me that you'd break it. And I'll tell you, I have to be honest about this, you sure don't want her to lose the bet, Lucas. Hey, did you say it was all right for me to call you Lucas?"
Lucas said, "Mrs. Manette's still okay? Can I talk to her?"
"After the stunt she pulled last time? Bullshit. We had a hard little talk about that. What do you cops call it? Tough love?"
"She's still alive?"
"Yeah. But I'm gonna have to go. I feel like a whole cloud of cops are closing in on me."
"No, no-listen to me," Lucas said urgently. "You don't feel it, but you're ill. I mean, you're gonna die from it. If you come in, I swear to God nothing will happen to you, except we'll try to fix things…"
Mail's voice turned to a growl. "Hey, I've been fixed. Best and the brightest tried to fix me, Davenport. They used to strap me to a table and fix the shit out of me. Sometimes I remember whole months that I'd forgotten because they fixed me so good. So don't give me any of that fixed shit. I been fixed. I'm what you get, when they fix somebody." His voice changed again, went Hollywood. "But, hey, dude, I gotta run. Got a little pussy lined up after dinner, know what I mean? Catch you later."
And he was gone.
Lucas ran down the hall and through the security doors on the 911 center. Lester was already there, with a man Lucas recognized as an FBI agent. They were looking over the shoulder of one of the operators, who was speaking into a microphone: "Dark Econo-line van or like that, probably no further west than Rice Street…" Lester said to Lucas, "Probably 694, east to west. We're flooding it right now. We're taking every van off the road."
They hung around Dispatch for fifteen minutes, listening as vans were pulled off the highway wholesale. After a while, they walked back to the Homicide Office together and found Sloan with his feet on his desk, looking at a printout.
"Da clue," he said, waving the printout at them.
"Already?" Lucas said. "What do you think?"
"Could be Bible verses," Sloan said. "They got that kind of numbers and he used the Bible last time."
"Unless he's cooked up something clever and he's fucking with us," Lester said. "Maybe it's got something to do with the numbers."
"Maybe it's his address," Sloan said. "And his driver's license number."
"And maybe it's the Bible," Lucas said. "I've got somebody who can look into that possibility."
"Elle," Sloan said, looking up from the list of clues. "Does a nunnery got a fax machine?"
"Yeah," Lucas said, vaguely. He read through a transcript of the tape. "Shit."
"What?"
"Don't go away," Lucas said. "Let me fax this to Elle."
When he came back, five minutes later, he glanced around the Homicide Office. A half-dozen detectives were sitting at desks, talking, looking at maps, eating. Two of them had found a Bible and were paging through it with some perplexity.
Lucas stepped close to Sloan's desk and crooked a finger at Lester. Lester stepped over and Lucas said, in a low voice, "There were two things he said. He was fixed-so our guy has been in a state hospital. We've gotta be sure that every state hospital employee and every long-term resident has seen the composite."
Lester nodded. "Why are we whispering?"
" 'Cause of the other thing," Lucas said. "Remember how he knew that we'd spotted his gamer's shirt? Now he knows that Andi Manette tried to send a message to us. He knows. He's gotta be getting information. He's gotta."
"From here?" Lester breathed, looking around.
"Probably not, but I don't know. I'd bet it comes out of the family briefings. Somebody out there has a motive to get rid of Manette. Whoever it is, is talking to this guy."
Lester scratched his nose, nervous, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. "The chief is gonna be delighted," he said.
"Maybe we shouldn't tell her," Lucas said. "I mean, for her own good."
"What're you thinking about?" Lester said.
"I'm thinking that we ought to come up with a bunch of little nuggets, different nuggets, bullshit, that we feed through all the different family members-and then we wait to see if anything comes out the other side. Stuff that our guy would react to. If we can find who's feeding him, we can crack him. Or her."