Mind Prey (27 page)

"Yeah, I was talking to Dunn."

"Well, Jesus, sir, I don't know what you said, but he cracked up. He's back in his bedroom."

"Ah."

"Do you want me to get him?"

"No, no, let him go. Tell him I'm sorry, okay?"

"Sure, I will..."

"And after he's got back together, ask him if I could get a copy of the Manette Trust document. They must have one around."

Lucas, still wide awake, crawled back into bed and lay looking at the ceiling for a moment, then rolled over and gripped Weather's shoulder and whispered in her ear, "Can you wake up?"

"Hmmm?" she asked sleepily.

"Are you operating in the morning?"

"At ten," she said.

"Oh..."

"What?" She rolled more on her back and reached up and touched his face.

"I need to talk to you about the case. I need an opinion from a woman. But if you're working..."

"I'm fine," she said, more awake now. "Tell me."

He told her, and finished with, "Tower could die anytime. If Andi and the kids are gone, his wife is gonna get a load. Whatever he's got, plus--maybe--whatever's in the trust. Probably four million, plus a million-dollar house. So the question is, could Nancy Wolfe do that? How about Helen?"

Weather had been listening intently. "I can't say--it could be either one. Normally, I'd say no to Wolfe. Even if she's having an affair with Tower, she can't be so sure that he'll marry her, that she'd already be maneuvering for the money. Not to the extent of killing three people. Helen, well, Helen doesn't have anything invested in Andi and the children. She was having an affair with Tower before Andi's mother was gone--so she and Audi probably dislike each other. And if Helen knows about the affair with Nancy Wolfe, maybe..."

"Yeah. If Andi and the kids are gone, she gets more from a divorce, if there is one. If Andi and the kids are gone, and Manette croaked from the stress, or from the stress before a divorce, or' both... well, all the better. So Helen looks good."

"Except."

"Except," Lucas repeated.

"Except that we don't know much about Wolfe's relationship with Andi Manette. They are partners and old friends, we're told--but that's exactly where you'll find some really deep, rich, suppressed hatreds. Things that go back decades. My best friend in high school got married when she was nineteen, had a bunch of kids, and wound up flipping burgers in a motel. The last time I saw her, I realized... I think she hates me. Andi was always rich, Wolfe didn't have money; Andi married a man who Wolfe met first, and who went on to become a multimillionaire. Andi has good-looking kids, Wolfe is at the time of life when she's got to face the possibility that she won't get married and have children at all. And maybe Andi would interfere with this affair. I wonder if she knows about it. Anyway--that's all pretty emotional stuff and pretty tangled up."

"Yeah. And there's something else," Lucas said. "If somebody sicced a fruitcake killer on Andi Manette, who'd know more about picking a fruitcake killer than Wolfe?"

"Maybe you're looking at the wrong files," Weather said. "Maybe you should be looking at Nancy Wolfe's." After a moment, "And there's always George Dunn."

"He doesn't feel right to me, anymore," Lucas said. "He'd have to be a great liar, a great actor."

"In other words, a sociopath," Weather said.

"Glad you said that," Lucas said.

"A lot of very successful businessmen are--at least, that's what I've heard anecdotally. Like surgeons..."

"Nancy Wolfe once called him a sociopath," Lucas said.

"... and if he were facing a divorce that would cut his business in half... How much did you say he was worth?" Weather asked.

"If he wasn't lying, could be anything up to thirty million."

"So Andi Manette's death could be worth fifteen million dollars to him," Weather said. "I'll tell you something. Rich people get very attached to their money. It's like one of their organs, or more than that. If you asked most people who have two million dollars whether they'd rather lose one million, or lose a foot, I think most of them would rather lose the foot."

"But that only holds if Andi Manette really wants a divorce," Lucas said. "Dunn says he was trying to put it back together."

"What elsewould he say? That he hates her and he's glad they were kidnapped?"

"Yeah." The problem wasn't a lack of motive. The problem was picking one.

"Don't forget the last possibility," Weather said. "Tower. Her father."

"You've got a sick mind, Karkinnen."

"It wouldn't be the first time that a father went after his daughter. If he's desperate..."

Lucas lay flat on his back, his fingers laced across his stomach, and he said, "When I had my little bout of depression, whenever that was, one of the worst things was lying awake at night with everything running through my head, in circles, and not being able to stop it. This isn't quite the same, but it's related. Jesus. I keep going around and around: Dunn, Wolfe, the Manettes; Dunn, Wolfe, the Manettes. The answer is there."

Weather patted his leg. "You'll figure it out."

"Something else is bothering me. I saw something in Gloria Crosby's apartment, but I can't remember what it was. But it's important."

She pushed herself up: "Youforgot ?"

"Not exactly forgot. It was there, but it's like I never really recognized it. It's like when you see a face in the street, and an hour later you realize it was an old classmate. Like that. I saw something..."

"Sleep on it," she said. "Maybe your subconscious will kick it out."

After a while in the dark, after Weather had rolled back to her own pillow, he said, "You know, those two Bible verses have me whipped, too. Must be Stillwater. That would be too much of a coincidence--or a trick, or something--not to be right. But what's he talking about?"

And Weather said something that sounded like "ZZZzzttug."

When he woke, before he opened his eyes, he thought of the Bible verses. Maybe thenot was the key. Be ye notas the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee . But even if thenot was the key word, he thought wryly, ye had no understanding. And who was coming near unto whom?

He thought about it through shaving, through the shower, and came up with nothing brilliant, and began dressing. The day was gorgeous: sunlight slanted in through the wooden blinds in the living room, and the whole feel was that of a perfect fall day. As he put on a shirt and tie, he watched theOpeners morning show. The weatherman said that the low pressure system responsible for all the rain had rambled off to the east and was presently peeing on Ohio; additional micturatory activity could be expected in New York by evening, if you were going there. The weatherman said neitherpeeing normicturatory , but should have, Lucas thought. He found himself whistling, stopped to wonder why, and decided a nice day was a nice day. The kidnapping wasn't the day's fault, but he stopped whistling.

"So we're stuck?" Roux asked. She lit a cigarette, forgetting the one already burning in an ashtray behind her. Her office stank of nicotine, and would need new curtains every year. "All we can do is grind along?"

"I had those Bible verses sent out to Stillwater," Lucas said. "Maybe the local cops will figure something out."

"And maybe the fairy godmother will kiss me on the sweet patootie," Lester said.

"Nasty thought," Roux said. "Nasty."

"I think we ought to start pushing the big four: the Manettes, Dunn, Wolfe. Start taking them apart. Somebody is talking."

Roux shook her head. "I haven't entirely bought that. We've got the wiretaps going, but I don't think I'm ready for a full-scale assault."

"Who's listening to the wires?" Lucas asked.

Lester made a sound like he was clearing his throat.

"What?"

"Larry Carter, from uniform, then tonight, uh, Bob. Greave."

"Ah, shit," Lucas groaned.

"He can do that," Lester said defensively. "He's not stupid, he's just..." He groped for a phrase.

"Investigatively challenged," Roux suggested.

"That's it," Lester said.

Lucas stood up, "I've gotten everything I can out of the raw paper on Dunn, Wolfe, and the Manettes, and I want to look at all the stuff from the hospitals and the possible candidates from Andi Manette's files," he said. "That's where it'll break--unless we get a piece of luck."

"Good luck; there's a lot of it," Lester said. "And you better pick up a new copy of Anderson's book. There's more new stuff in there. We got lists coming out the wazoo."

Lucas spent the day like a medieval monk, bent over the paper. Anything useful, he xeroxed and stuck in a smaller file. By the end of the day, he had fifty pieces of paper for additional review, plus a foot-tall stack of filesto take home. He left at six, enjoying the lingering daylight, regretting the great day missed, and gone forever. This would have been a day to go up north with Weather, to learn a little more about sailing from her. They were talking about buying an S2 and racing it. Maybe next year...

They spent a quiet evening: a quick mile run, a small, easy dinner with a lot of carrots. Afterwards, Lucas dipped into the homework files, while Weather read a Larry Rivers autobiography calledWhat Did I Do ? Occasionally she'd read him a paragraph, and they'd laugh or groan together. As she sat in the red chair, with the yellow light illuminating half of her face, he thought she looked like a painting he'd seen in New York. Vermeer, that was it. Or Van Gogh--but Van Gogh was the crazy guy, so it must have been Vermeer. Anyway, he remembered the light in the painting.

And she looked like that, he thought, in the light.

"Gotta go to bed," she said, regretfully, a little after nine o'clock. "Gotta be up at five-thirty. We oughta do this more often."

"What?"

"Nothing, together."

When she'd gone, Lucas started through the stack of files again; came to the one marked JOHN MAIL; after the name, somebody had scrawled [deceased.]

This one had looked good, Lucas thought. He opened it and started reading.

The phone rang and he picked it up.

"Yeah?"

Greave: "Lucas, I'm peeing my pants. The asshole is talking to Dunn."

Chapter
21

>

Greave met Lucas at the elevator doors. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie hanging around his shoulders, his hair sticking up in clumps. "Christ, lit me up like a fuckin' Christmas tree," he said. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing."

He led Lucas down a bare but brightly lit hallway toward an open office door, their heels echoing on the tile floor.

"You call the feebs?" Lucas asked.

"No. Should I?"

"Not yet." The office was furnished with a cafeteria-style folding table, three office chairs, and a television. A group of beige push-button telephones and a tape recorder saton the table with a plateof donut crumbs; the TV was on but the sound was off, Jane Fonda hustling a treadmill. A pile of magazines sat on the floor beside the table.

"Got it cued up," Greave said. He pushed a button on the recorder, and the tape began to roll with the sound of a phone ringing, then being picked up.

"George Dunn,"

"George?" Mail's voice was cheerful, insouciant. "I'm calling for your wife, Andi."

"What? What'd you say?" Dunn seemed stunned.

"I'm calling for your wife. Is this call being monitored? And you better tell the truth, for Andi's sake."

"No, for christ sakes. I'm in the car. Who is this?"

"An old friend of Andi's... Now listen; I want a hundred thousand for the package. For the three of them."

"How do I know this isn't a con?" Dunn asked.

"I'm gonna play a recording." There was some apparent fumbling, then Andi Manette's voice, tinny, recorded: "George, this is Andi. Do what this man tells you. Um, he said to tell you what we talked about the last time we talked... You called me from the club and you wanted to come over, but I said that the kids were already in bed and I wasn't ready to..."

The recording ended in mid-sentence and Mail said, "She gets a little sloppy after that, George. You wouldn't want to hear it. Anyway, you got any more questions about whether this is real?"

Dunn's voice sounded like a rock. "No."

"So. I don't want you to go to the bank and get a bunch of money with the numbers recorded and dusted with UV -powder and all that FBI shit. If you do it, I'll know, and I'll kill them all."

"I gotta get the money."

"George, you've got almost sixty thousand in case money, mostly kruggerrands, that nobody knows about, in a safety deposit box in Prescott, Wisconsin. Okay? You've got a Rolex worth $8,000 that you never wear anyway. Andi has $25,000 in diamond jewelry and a ruby from her mother, all in your joint safety deposit box at First Bank. And you've got several thousand dollars in cash hidden in the two houses... get that."

"You sonofabitch."