Hadn't the police force ever heard of telephones?
Then he stared at the screen for a little while, as his cigarette burned down between his fingers. At last he put the cigarette out and went downstairs again to the bar.
If he had to do some heavy thinking, he told himself, there was absolutely no reason why he couldn't enjoy himself a little while doing it.
The evening rush had begun, and Malone found himself a stool by the simple expedient of slipping into one while a drinker's back was turned. Once ensconced, he huddled himself up like an old drunk, thus effectively cutting himself off from interruptions, and lit another cigarette. Ray was down at the other end of the bar, chatting with a red-headed woman and her pale, bald escort. Malone sighed and set himself to the job of serious, constructive thinking.
How, he asked himself, do you go about catching a person who can vanish away like so much smoke?
Well, Malone could think of one solution, but it was pretty bloody. Nailing the kids to a wall would probably work, but he couldn't say much else for it. There had to be another way out. For some reason Malone just couldn't see himself with a mouthful of nails, a hammer and a teen-ager.
That sounded a little better. The trouble was that Malone simply didn't have enough information, and knew it. Obviously, the kids could carry stuff with them when they teleported; the stuff they stole proved that. And their clothes, Malone added. Apparently the kids didn't arrive at wherever they went stark staring naked.
But how close to a teleport did the things he carried have to be?
In other words. Malone thought, if you put handcuffs on a teleport, would the handcuffs vanish when the teleport did? And did that include the part of the cuff you were holding?
What happened if you snapped half the cuff around your own wrist first? Did you go along with the teleport? Or did your wrist go, while you stayed behind and wondered how long it would take to bleed to death?
All the questions were intriguing ones. Malone sighed, wishing he knew the answer to even one of them.
It was somewhat comforting to think that he'd managed to progress a little, anyway. The kids hadn't meant anybody to find out about them--but Malone had found out about them, and alerted all the cops in town, as well as the rest of the FBI. He knew just who they were, and where they lived, and how they performed the "miracles" they performed.