Mind Prey (13 page)

Lucas let the irritation show. "Hey, Sloan..."

But Sloan put up a warning hand. "We're really just looking for facts. Not trying to put pressure on you. We're trying to find out if anyone would benefit from Andi Manette's death or disappearance, and we don't mean you. At least, I don't."

Wolfe was shaking her head. "I don't see how anybody would benefit. I would get some key-person insurance if Andi died, but that wouldn't make up for the loss, financially or emotionally. I would imagine that George Dunn would get quite a bit--you know, she started out with all the money in her family. George would be a carpenter some place if he hadn't married Andi."

"Can we do this down in your office? We should be someplace a little more private, huh?" Sloan asked winningly.

On the way to Wolfe's office, with Wolfe several steps ahead, Sloan leaned to Lucas and muttered: "You know that Sherrill? She makes my dick hard, too. I think something's going on with my dick."

"That's not what you'd call abig change," Lucas said. He flipped the ring in the air and caught it. Sherrill. Sherrill was nice; so was Jan Reed, and he most certainly would have bundled Reed off to his cabin if it hadn't been for Weather. Lucas liked women, liked them a lot. Maybe too much. And that was another item on the long list of mental questions he had about marriage.

He was always shocked when a married friend went after another woman. That never seemed right. If you hadn't made the commitment, all right--do anything you wanted. But now, with the possibility of marriage looming... would he miss the hunt? Would he miss it enough to betray Weather? Would he even be considering this question if he should ask her to marry him? On the other hand, he really didn't want Reed. He didn't want Sherrill. He only wanted Weather.

"What's wrong?" Sloan asked quietly.

"Huh?" Lucas started.

"You looked like you'd had a stroke or something," Sloan said. They were just outside Wolfe's office, and Sloan was staring at him curiously.

"Ah, nothing. Lot of stuff going on," Lucas said.

Sloan grinned. "Yeah."

Wolfe's office was a mirror of Manette's, with furniture of the same style, and the same files-and-coffee niche in one wall. Sloan was charming and got Wolfe talking.

She did not like George Dunn. Dunn was facing imminent divorce, Wolfe said. If Andi died, not only would he inherit and collect any life insurance, he would also save half of his own fortune. "That's what she'd get--when they got married, he had the shirt on his back, and that was all. He made all of his money since they were married, and you know Minnesota divorce law."

Tower Manette wouldn't get anything from his daughter's death, Wolfe said, except at the end of a long string of unlikely circumstances. Andi and both the children would have to die, and George Dunn would have to be convicted of the crime.

"All you would get is the key-man insurance?" Lucas asked.

"That's right."

"Who'd take Dr. Manette's patients?"

Wolfe looked exasperated. "I would, Mr. Davenport. And I would make a little money on them. And as quickly as I could, I would bring somebody else in to handle them, I have a full slate right now. I simply couldn't handle her patient load, not by myself."

"So there's the insurance and the patients..."

"Goddamnit," Wolfe said. "I hate these insinuations."

"They're not insinuations. We're talking serious money and you're not being very forthcoming," Lucas rasped.

"All right, all right," said Sloan. "Take it easy, Lucas."

They talked for half an hour, but got very little more. As they were leaving, Wolfe said to Lucas, "I'm sure you've heard about the lawsuit."

"No."

"We've gone to court to repossess our records," she said.

Lucas shrugged: "That's not my problem. The lawyers can sort it out."

"What you're doing is shameful," she said.

"Tell that to Andi Manette and her kids--if we get them back."

"I'm sure Andi would agree with our position," Wolfe said. "We'dreview the records and pass on anything that might be significant."

"You aren't cops," Lucas snapped. "What's significant to cops might not be significant to shrinks."

"You aren't doing much good," Wolfe snapped back. "As far as I know, you haven't detected a thing."

Lucas took the composite drawing from his pocket; the accumulated memories of two eyewitnesses and Marcus Paloma, the game store owner. "Do you know this man?"

Wolfe took the picture, frowned, shook her head. "No, I don't think so. But he does look sort of... generic. Who is he?"

"The kidnapper," Lucas said. "That's what we've detected so far."

"There's a woman who doesn't think the sun shines out of your ass," Sloan said as they walked down the hall.

"Yeah, that's what?" Lucas didn't mind being disliked, but sometimes the taste was sour. "Six thousand that we know of?"

"I think it's eight thousand," Sloan said.

"Doesshe make your dick hard?" Lucas asked.

"No-no," Sloan said. He pushed through the door outside. "She's the one with the hard-on, and it ain't for me." After a moment, Sloan said, "Where now? Manette's?"

"Yeah. Jesus, I can feel the time passing." Lucas stopped to look at the koi, hovering in the pond, their gill flaps slowly opening and closing. Mellow, the koi: and he felt like somebody had stacked another brick on his chest. "Manette and the kids... Jesus."

Tower Manette again said that Dunn would get everything unless he was convicted of a part in the crime.

"Do you think he could do it?" Sloan asked.

"I don't know about the kids," Tower said. He took a turn around the carpet, nibbling at a thumbnail. "He always acted like he loved the kids, but basically, George Dunn could do anything. Suppose he hired some cretin who was supposed to... take Andi. And instead, the guy takes all of them because they're witnesses in this screwed-up kidnapping. George would hardly be in a position to tell you about it."

"I don't think so," said Helen Manette. Her face was lined with worry, her eyes confused. "I always liked George. More than Tower did, anyway. I think if he was in on this, he'd make sure that the kids weren't hurt."

Manette stopped, turned on a heel, poked a finger at Lucas. "I really think you're barking up the wrong tree--you should be out looking for crazy people, not trying to figure out who'd benefit."

"We're working every angle we can find," Lucas said. "We're working everything."

"Are you getting anything? Anything at all?"

"Some things: we've got a picture of the kidnapper," Lucas said.

"What? Can I see it?"

Lucas took the picture out of his pocket. The Manettes looked at it, and both shook their heads at the same time. "Don't know him," Tower said.

"And nobody benefits from her death, except George Dunn..."

"Well," Helen Manette said hesitantly. "I hate to..."

"What?" Sloan asked. "We'll take anything."

"Well... Nancy Wolfe. The key-man insurance isn't the only thing she'd get. They have a partnership and six associates. If Andi disappeared, she'd get the business, along with the insurance money."

"That's ridiculous," Tower Manette said. "Nancy's an old friend of the family. She's Andi's oldest friend..."

"Who dated George Dunn before Andi took him away," Helen said. "And their business--they've done very well."

"But Dr. Wolfe says that if Andi was gone, she'd just have to hire another associate," Sloan said.

"Sure, she would," Helen said. "But instead of a partnership, she'd be a sole owner and she'd get a piece of everybody's action." The wordaction tripped easily from Helen Manette's mouth, out-of-place for a woman in this house; too close to the street. "Nancy Wolfe would... make out."

"Another happy couple," Sloan said on the way to the car. "Helen is a tarantula disguised as Betty Crocker, And Tower looked like somebody was pulling a trotline out of his ass."

"Yeah--but that partnership business. Wolfe didn't exactly tell us everything, did she?"

George Dunn had two offices.

One was furnished in contemporary cherry furniture, with leather chairs, a deep wine carpet, and original duck-stamp art on the walls.

The desk was clear of everything but an appointment pad and a large dark wooden box for cigars.

The other office, in the back of the building, had a commercial carpet on the floor, fluorescent lighting, a dozen desks and drafting tables with computer terminals, and two women and two men working in shirtsleeves. Dunn sat at a U-shaped desk littered with paper, a telephone to his ear. When he saw Lucas and Sloan, he said a few last words into the phone and dropped it on the hook.

"Okay, everybody, everybody knows what to do? Tom will run things, Clarice will handle traffic; I'll be back as soon as we find Andi and the kids."

He took Lucas and Sloan down to the green-leather office, where they could talk. "I've turned everything over to the guys until this is done with," he said. "Have you heard anything at all?"

"We've had a couple of odd incidents. We think we have a picture of the kidnapper, but we don't know his name."

Lucas showed the picture to Dunn, who studied it, scratched his forehead. "There was a guy, a carpenter. Goddamn, he looks something like this. He's got those lips."

"What's his name? Any reason to think... ?"

"Dick, Dick, Dick..." Dunn scratched his forehead again. "Saddle? Seddle. Dick Seddle. He thought he ought to be a foreman, and when he didn't get a job that opened up, he got pissed and quit. He was mad--but that was last winter. He went around saying he was gonna clean my clock, but nothing ever came of it."

"You know where we could find him?"

"Payroll would have an address. He's married, he lives over in South St. Paul somewhere. But I don't know. He's an older guy than what you were talking about. He's maybe thirty-five, forty."

"Where's payroll?" Sloan asked.

"Down the hall on your left..."

"I'll get it," Sloan said to Lucas.

As Sloan left, Dunn picked up his phone, poked a button, and said, "A cop is on his way down. Give him whatever he needs on Dick Seddle. He's a carpenter, worked on the Woodbury project until last winter, January, I think. Yeah. Yeah."

When he hung up, Lucas said, "We're talking to everybody, all over again. We're asking who'd win if Andi Manette's dead. Your name keeps coming up."

"Fuck those people," Dunn snarled. He banged a large fist in the middle of the leather appointment pad. "Fuck 'em."

Lucas said, "They say that Andi was going after a divorce..."

"That's bullshit. We'd have worked it out."

"... and if you were divorced, you'd lose at least half of everything. They say you started this company with some of her money, and having to pay out half could be pretty troublesome."

"Yeah, it would," Dunn said, nodding. "But there's not a dime of her money in this place. Not a goddamn dime. That was part of the deal when I married her: I wasn't gonna owe her. And it would take a fucking lunatic to suggest I'd do anything to Andi and the kids. A fuckin' lunatic."

"Then we got a bunch of fuckin' lunatics, 'cause everybody we talked to suggested it," Lucas said.

"Yeah, well..."

"I know, fuck 'em," Lucas said. "So: who else would benefit?"

"Nobody else," Dunn said.

"Helen Manette suggested that Nancy Wolfe would pick up a pretty thriving business."

Dunn thought for a moment, then said, "I suppose she would, but she's never been that interested in business... or money. Andi's always been the leader and the businesswoman. Nancy was the intellectual. She publishes papers and that. She's still connectedto the university and she's a bigwig in the psychiatric society. That's why they're good partners--Andi takes care of business, Nancy builds their reputation in the field."

"You don't think Wolfe's a candidate?"

"No, I don't."

"I understand you dated her."

"Jesus, they really did dump it on you, didn't they," Dunn said, his voice softening. "I took Nancy out twice. Neither one of us was much interested in a third try. So when we were saying good-bye that second time, the last time, she said, 'You know, I've got somebody who'd be perfect for you.' And she was right. I called up Andi and we got married a year later."

Lucas hesitated, then said, "Does your wife have any distinguishing marks on her body? Scars?"

Dunn froze: "You've got a body somewhere?"

"No, no. But if we should contact the people who have her, if there's a question..."

Dunn wasn't buying it. "What's going on?"

"We got a call from a guy," Lucas said.

"He said she's got a scar?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of scar?"

Lucas said, "He said it looked like a rocketship..."

"Oh, no," Dunn groaned. "Oh no..."

Sloan came in, looked at the two men facing each other. "What's going on?"