Mind Prey (6 page)

"Sole beneficiary?"

"Yeah... except, you know,Nancy Wolfe wouldget a half-million. They do pretty well in that partnership, and they both have key-man--key-woman--insurance to help cover their mortgage and so on, if somebody died."

"Is a half-million a lot for Nancy Wolfe?"

Dunn thought again, and then said, "It'd be quite a bit. She pulls down something between $150,000 and $175,000 a year, and she can't protect any of it--taxes eat her alive--so another half mil would be nice."

"Will you sign a release saying that we can look at your wife's records?" Lucas asked.

"Sure. Why wouldn't I?"

"Because a lot of medical people think psychiatric records should be privileged," Lucas said. "That people need treatment, not cops."

"Fuck that. I'll sign," Dunn said. "You got a paper with you?"

"I'll have one sent over tonight," Lucas said.

Dunn was watching Lucas's hand and asked, "What're you playing with?"

Lucas looked down at his hand and saw the ring. "Ring."

"Uh-oh. Coming or going?" Dunn asked.

"Thinking about it," Lucas said.

"Marriage is wonderful," Dunn said. He spread his arms. "Look around. A box for everything and everything in its box."

"You seem... sort oflighthearted about this whole thing."

Dunn suddenly leaned forward, his face like a stone. "Davenport, I'm so fuckin' scared I can't spit. I honest-to-God never knew what it meant, being scared spitless. I thought it was just a phrase, but it's not... You gotta get my guys back."

Lucas grunted and stood up. "You'll stick around." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah." Dunn stood up, facing him. "You're a tough guy, right?"

"Maybe," Lucas said.

"Football, I bet."

"Hockey."

"Yeah, you got the cuts... Think you could take me?" Dunn had relaxed again, and a faintly amused look crossed his face.

Lucas nodded. "Yeah."

Dunn said, "Huh," like he didn't necessarily agree, and then, losing the smile, "What d'you think--you gonna find my wife and kids?"

"I'll find them," Lucas said.

"But you won't guarantee their condition," Dunn said.

Lucas looked away, into the dark house: he felt like something was pushing his face. "No," he said to the darkness.

Chapter
4

>

The Homicide office resembled the city room of a slightly seedy small-town daily. Individual cubicles for the detectives were separated by shoulder-high partitions; some desks were neat, others were a swamp of paper and souvenirs. Three different kinds of gray or putty-colored metal file cabinets were stuck wherever there was space. Old fliers and notes and cartoons and bureaucratic missives were tacked or taped on walls and bulletin boards. A brown plastic radio the size of a toaster, the kind last made in the sixties with a big, round tuning dial, saton top of a file cabinet, a bent steel clothes hanger jammed into the back as an antenna. An adenoidal voice squeaked from the primitive speaker.

"... is one of the most historical of crimes, from the Rape of the Sabine women to the Lindbergh kidnapping of our own era..."

Lucas was drinking chicken noodle Soup-in-a-Cup, and paused just inside the door with the cup two inches from his lips. The voice was familiar, but he couldn't place it until the DJ interrupted:

You're listening to Blackjack Billy Walker, go ahead, Edina, with a question for Dr. David Girdler...

Dr. Girdler, you said a minute ago that kidnapping victims identify with their kidnappers. All I can say is, that's a perfect example of what happens when the liberal school system shoves this politically correct garbage down the kids' throats, teaching them things the kids know are wrong but they gotta believe because somebody in authority says so, like these union hacks that call themselves teachers...

Girdler'svoice was consciously mellow, hushed, artificially and dramatically deepened. He said:

I understand your feelings--heh heh--about this, although I don't entirely agree with your sentiments: there are many good teachers. That aside, yes, that identification often takes place and begins within hours of the kidnapping; the victims may actually suggest ways that the police can be more effectively foiled in their efforts...

Lucas stared at the radio, not believing it. Greave was sitting at his desk, eating a Mr. Goodbar. "Sounds like a fuckin' politician, doesn't he? He couldn't wait to get on the radio. He walked out of the school and drove right down to the station."

"How long has he been on?" Lucas finished the Soup-in-a-Cup and dropped the cup in a wastebasket.

"Hour," Greave said. "Lotta newsies have been looking for you, by the way."

"Fuck 'em," Lucas said. "For now, anyway."

A dozen detectives were milling around the office--everybody from Homicide/Violent Crimes, more from Vice, Sex, and Intelligence. Some were at desks, others were parked on swivel chairs, some were leaning against file cabinets. A very tall man and a very short one were talking golf swings. A guy from Sex elbowed past with a cafeteria tray full of cups of coffee and Coke. Almost everybody was eating or drinking. The office smelled like coffee, microwave popcorn, and Tombstone pizza.

Harmon Anderson wandered over to Greave's desk, eating a chicken-salad sandwich. A glob of mayonnaise was stuck to his upper lip. "Anything for a buck," he said between chews. Anderson was a hillbilly and a computer expert. "Girdler isnot a doctor. He has a B. A. in psychology from some redneck college in North Carolina."

Sherrill, still damp, strolled in, pulled off the tennis hat, slapped it against her coat, then took off her coat and hung it up. She nodded at Lucas, tipped her head at the radio, and said, "Have you been listening?"

Lucas said, "Just now," and to Greave, "Did you ask him not to?"

Greave nodded. "The standard line. I said we should keep it to ourselves so the perpetrators don't know exactly what we have, and so we can present a better image if we get to court."

"Did you say perpetrator?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah. So shoot me."

"I'd say he didn't give a fuck," Sherrill said, fluffing her hair. "I was listening on the way over. He's remembering stuff he didn't give to us..."

"Making it up," Lucas said.

"Everybody's gotta, be a movie star," Greave said. And they paused for a moment to listen:

Dr. Girdler, youknow, the police don't stop crime; they simply record it, and sometimes they catch the people who do it. But by then, it's too late. This kidnapping is a perfect example. If Mrs. Manette had been carrying even a simple handgun, or if you had been carrying a handgun., you could've stopped this thug in his tracks. Instead, you were left standing there in the hallway and you couldn't do anything. I'll tell you, the criminals have guns; it's time we honest citizens took advantage of our Second Amendment rights ...

"Damnit," Sherrill said. "It's gonna turn into a circus."

"Already has." They all turned toward the door. Frank Lester, deputy chief for investigation, stepped inside with a handful of papers. He was tired, his face drawn. Too many years. "Anything more?"

Lucas shook his head. "I talked to Dunn. He seems pretty straight."

"He's a candidate, though," Greave said.

"Yeah, he's a candidate," Lucas said. To Lester, "Have the Feds come in yet?"

"They're about to," Lester said. "They can't avoid it much longer."

Lucas twisted the engagement ring around the end of his forefinger, saw Lester looking at it, and pushed it down in his pocket. Lester continued, "Even if the Feds come in, Manette wants us workingit , too. The chief agrees."

"Jesus, I wish this shit would stop," Greave said, rubbing his forehead.

"Been doing it since Cain and Abel," said Anderson.

Greave stopped nibbing: "I didn't mean crime. I meant politics. If crime stopped, I'd have to get a job."

"You could probably get on the fuckin' radio with that suit," Sherrill said.

Lester waved them silent, held up a yellow legal pad on which he'd scribbled notes. "Listen up, everybody."

The talk died as the cops arranged themselves around Lester. "Harmon Anderson will be passing out assignments, but I want to outline what we're looking at and get ideas on anything we're missing."

"What's the overtime situation?" somebody called from the back.

"We're clear for whatever it takes," Lester said. He looked at one of the papers in his hand. "Okay. Most of you guys are gonna be doing house-to-house..."

Lester dipped his head into a chorus of groans--it was still raining outside--and then said, "And there's a lot of small stuff we've got to get quick. We need to know about the paint in the parking lot, by morning. And we need to check the school, for that color or type of paint. Jim Hill here"--he nodded at one of the detectives--"points out that you hardly ever see poster paint outside a school, so maybe the school is somehow involved."

"Her old man did it," somebody said.

"We're checking that," Lester said. "In the meantime, we got the blood on that shoe, and we need somebody to walk the blood tests around, 'cause we needto know quick if the blood's Manette's orone of the kids'. If it's not--if it's somebody else's--we'll run it through the state's DNA offender bank. And we need to talk to the University medical school, get Manette's blood type. I'm told she occasionally volunteered for medical studies, so they may even have a DNA on her, and if the blood on the shoe belongs to one of the kids, a DNA might tell us that..."

"DNA takes a while," said a short, pink cop who wore a snap-brim hat with a feather in the hatband.

"Not this one," Lester said. He looked at the paper again. "We need Ford Econolines checked against all her patients, against the school staff, all relatives, and against whatever data base we can find on felony convictions, Minnesota and however much of Wisconsin we can get. We need to see if any Manette- or Dunn-related companies own Econolines. Go to Ford, see if we can get a list of Econolines from their warranty program--they said it was an older one, so go back as far as you can. We need to run the registration lists for Econolines against her patient list, which we're trying to get..."

Anderson broke in. "I'm setting up a data base of patient names. Any name that pops up in the investigation, we can run against the list--so get all the names you can. All the teachers at the school, her phone records, anything."

Lester nodded and continued. "We need to check Manette's and Dunn's credit ratings, see if anybody's gotmoney problems. Check insurance policies. What else?"

"Manette's putting together an enemies list," Lucas said.

"Run that, too," Lester told Anderson. "What are we missing?"

"Public appeals," said a black cop in a pearl-gray suit. "Pictures of Manette and the kids."

"All the news outlets already have some kind of pictures, but we're putting out some high-quality stuff in the next couple of hours," Lester said. "There's some talk of a reward for information. We'll get back to you on that. And I want to say now, all the news contacts should go through the Public Affairs Department. I don't want anybody talking to the press. Everybody clear on that?"

Everybody was. Lester turned to Sherrill. "How's the house-to-house going?"

"We've hit all the houses where the residents could see the school, except for two, where there's nobody home, and we're looking for those people in case they were there during the kidnapping," Sherrill said. "The only thing we have so far is one woman who saw the van, and she picked out Econoline taillights as the lights she saw. So we think that ID is solid. Now we're going back for a second round, to talk about what people might've seen in the past couple of days--and we're doing the same thing in Manette's neighborhood. If this was planned out, he must've been scouting her. So, that's about it."

"Okay," Lester said. He looked around the room. "You all know the general picture. Get your assignments from Anderson and let's get it on the road. I want everybody breaking their balls on this one. This one's gonna be tough, and we need to look good."

As the other detectives gathered around Anderson, Lucas leaned toward Greave and asked, "Did the kid, the witness kid, did she see anything different from what Girdler gave us?"

Greave scratched the back of his head, and his eyes defocused. "Ah, the kid, I don't know, I didn't get much from her. She was fairly freaked out. Didn't seem like much."

"You got her phone number?" Lucas asked.

"Sure. You want it?"

"Doesn't she live over in St. Paul? Highland Park?"

"Someplace around there..."

Lester caught Lucas outside his office as Lucas was locking the door.

"Any ideas?" he asked.

"What everybody else says--money or a nut," Lucas said. "If we don't get a ransom call, we'll find him in her files or in her family."

"There could be a problem with the files," Lester said. "Manette talked to the Wolfe woman and she hit the roof. I guess there was a hell of an argument. Medical privilege."