"Who?"
"I don't know-but I'm fairly sure it's either Nancy Wolfe or Helen Manette. None of the other people were around for both the sessions that Mail got information from."
"But which?"
"I don't know," Lucas said. "There just isn't any way to tell. They've both got motives-money, emotional problems, or both. In fact, it could have been Tower Manette or Dunn, but they didn't feel right, and when I talked to Mail, he said it was a she. So now I think it's got to be either Manette or Wolfe."
"So what're you going to do?"
"I'm arresting both of them," Lucas said. "I'm gonna have them dragged down here, searched, I'm gonna give them jail smocks and have them stuck in separate rooms, and I'm gonna have Franklin and Loring and Del and Sloan yell at them, until one of them cracks."
"Jesus Christ." Lester stared at him. "What about the innocent one?"
"I'm gonna apologize," Lucas said.
"You're fuckin' crazy," Lester said.
"Mail's on his way to kill those people. You heard the tapes. But he was a long way out, up north, and we've got ears tangling up traffic all over the south side of the Metro area. It'll take him awhile to get there-but he will get there, and when he does, he's gonna kill them. That's how much time we've got."
"Does Roux know about this?" Lester asked.
"She's outa touch…"
"So am I," Lester said. He pulled open the door. "I never talked to you."
And he was gone. Lucas felt peculiarly alone, standing in his empty office. Nothing to do now except wait for the women to arrive. Then he heard footsteps outside, and Lester was back.
"How are you gonna cover it?" Lester demanded. "You got anything?"
Lucas shook his head. "Moral appeals. We were doing the only thing we could to save Manette's life, and the kid, if she's still alive."
Lester turned in a circle and said, "Christ, twenty-four years on the force." He ran a hand through his hair and said, "I gotta go do some paperwork."
Lucas said, "Frank: could you get us a helicopter in here? Across the street on the government center plaza?"
Lester thought for a second, then gave a quick nod. "Yeah, I can do that." And he was gone again.
Nancy Wolfe came in screaming. Helen Manette came in weeping.
Helen Manette arrived first, wrapped in a nightgown, with Tower Manette six feet behind her. They were moving fast, a tight clutch of cops, the fat Franklin and the frightening Loring and the middle-aged suspect, Tower Manette trotting a few feet behind, his white hair standing up in peaks. He spotted Lucas and ran at him, his thin face white with anger, his thin-man's wattles shaking with rage.
"What in the hell is going on?" He turned to point at the cops with his wife. "I'm told you're behind this… this fucking travesty of justice."
"Your wife has been arrested in the course of our investigation," Lucas said coldly. "I'd suggest you shut up."
"We've got a lawyer coming," Manette shouted. The cops were almost out of sight and Manette turned to run after them, shaking his finger at Lucas. "It's all over for you, you…"
"He sounded pleased," Lester said, stepping into the hallway.
Lucas couldn't suppress a cop-smile, an unhappy rictus that appeared when the world had turned to shit and there was no way out. "Yeah… how about the helicopter?"
"It's coming; it'll be across the street on the plaza."
"Excellent."
Nancy Wolfe, dressed in pajamas, a housecoat, and slippers, was frightened and angry, a towering rage that expressed itself in tears and nearly incoherent screaming: "I will sue, goddamn you, goddamn you all."
She saw Lucas and wrenched away from Del. "You will never again," she said, but couldn't finish. Del had cuffed her and when he tried to lead her past Lucas, she jerked her arm away and Lucas thought she was going to come after him with her teeth. "You are, you are…" she said. Again, she failed to find the word, but a thin line of saliva dribbled out the left side of her mouth.
"Take her down," Lucas said to Del. "Send the pajamas to the lab."
"My pajamas," she said. "My pajamas…"
Lucas waited until they were down the stairs, and out of sight, then hurried after them. Del, Sloan, Franklin, and Loring were gathered outside the processing room. Helen Manette had already been searched, photographed, and isolated, and her clothes had been packaged for a lab inspection. She'd been given a jail smock to replace them.
Wolfe was being photographed, and would be searched and her clothes taken away.
And Franklin said, "Ah, man, this scares the shit outa me. This scares the shit outa me, man. Christ, I think we oughta let up."
"Too late," Lucas said. "We're already in it. If we break one of them, we're out the other side. Now, when you get in there with them, I want them scared. We need all the pressure you can put on them: nobody gets hit, but you get your face right down in theirs, you…"
Loring said, "Behind you…"
Lucas turned around. Tower Manette was coming through the glass doors, an attorney in tow.
"I want to see my wife."
"When we're finished with the processing," Lucas said.
"We want to see her right fucking now," Manette shouted, jostling past Sloan toward Lucas.
"Touch another fuckin' cop and we'll put your ass in jail," Lucas snapped.
The attorney pulled Manette's sleeve, said, "Tower, cool off." And to Lucas: "We want to see Mrs. Manette, and we want to see her immediately. We have reason to believe that her civil rights have been grossly violated."
"Get a court order," Lucas said.
"We will," the attorney said. "We'll have one here in fifteen minutes." To Manette, he said, "C'mon, Tower: this is the way to do it."
"You motherfucker," Manette said to Lucas. "I met you in my house, I treated you like… like… quality, and you do this, you fuckin'…"
"What?" Lucas asked, genuinely curious. "Fuckin' what?"
"Trash," Manette said. And he was gone.
Franklin, who had been turning the partial plate in his mouth so his large front teeth rotated through his lips, clicked the plate back in place with his tongue, chuckled, and said, "You WASPs, he didn't know what to call you. Wanted to call you a nigger or a spic, but you're as white as he is."
"He's gonna be black and blue if something don't happen," Loring said, looking back at the processing rooms. "You think they'll get that court order?"
"Yes, I do," Lucas said. "That's why you get to be like Tower Manette. So you can wake up a judge and get a pal out of jail. Now: when you get in those rooms…"
Wolfe sat in the bare interview room, small with the bodies around her, her hair wild, her eyes large and frightened. The three men pressed in around her, Loring smoking, the smoke gathering around her head; she tried to stand up, once, but Del pushed her back into the chair. Lucas had never seen anything quite like it, an interrogation from a bad movie.
"How did you talk to him?" Loring asked. "That's all we want to know. How did you get in touch with him? Was he a patient? Were you treating him?"
"I don't know him, I don't…"
"Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, we know he was a patient. Were you fucking him? Was that it? Is that why you're protecting him?"
"I'm not protecting anybody," she wailed.
"Aw, c'mon, for christ sakes, he's gonna go out there and kill your partner, and I'll tell you what, honey, you're gonna go into the women's prison and the dykes out there are gonna make a meal outa you. You don't wanna spent the rest of your life snuffin' up strange pussy, you better start talking right now."
Del, standing behind her, put his hands over his eyes: Loring was over the edge. Del waved him off, and, playing the soft guy, said, "Listen, darling, I know what it's like to be attached to somebody. I mean, you get involved with a guy like Mail…"
"I wasn't involved," she shrieked, her head twisting. "I didn't do anything, Christ, I want a lawyer, I want a lawyer now, you can't do this."
"You'll get a lawyer when we fuckin' well say you can," Loring said, his voice a slap in the face. "Now, what I want to know is how we can reach him. All we want is a phone number, or somebody who can tell us where we can get a phone number."