John Sandford: Mind prey

"Pisses me off," Sherrill said. "He never thought his old lady needed to kill herself until he ran into his little tootsie. I know he fuckin' talked her into it…"

"Tootsie?" Lucas asked. He grinned and looked at Black.

"She's a wordsmith," Black said.

"Pisses me off," Sherrill said. Then: "So what's Tower Manette doing? Pulling all the political switches?"

"Exactly," Lucas said. "And Manette's husband and the kids' father, it turns out, is George Dunn. I didn't know that. North Light Development. The Republican Party. Lotsa bucks."

"And Manette's the Democrats," Black said gloomily. "Jesus Christ, they got us surrounded."

"I bet the chief is peeing her political underwear," Sherrill said.

Lucas nodded. "Yeah, exactly," he said. "Can this shrink give us a picture of the guy?"

Sherrill shook her head doubtfully. "Greave told me the guy didn't see much. Just the end of it. I didn't talk to him much, but he seems a little… hinky."

"Great. And Greave's doing the interview?"

"Yeah." There was a moment of silence. Nobody said it, but Greave's interrogations weren't the best. They weren't even very good. Lucas took a step toward the school, and Sherrill said to his back, "Dunn did it."

Ninety percent of the time, she'd be right. But Lucas stopped, turned, shook his head at her. "Don't say that, Marcy-'cause maybe he did." His fingers were still playing with whatever-it-was, turning it, twisting it. "I don't want people thinking we went after him without some evidence."

"Do we have any?" Black asked.

Lucas said, "Nobody's said anything about it, but Dunn and Andi Manette just separated. There's another woman, I guess. Still…"

Sherrill said, "Be polite."

"Yeah. With everybody. Stay on their asses, but be nice about it," Lucas said. "And… I don't know. If it's Dunn, he'd have to have somebody working with him."

Sherrill nodded. "Somebody to take care of them, while he was talking to the cops."

"Unless he just took them out and wasted them," Black suggested.

Nobody wanted to think about that. They all looked up at the same moment and got their faces rained on. Then Hendrix slid out from under the Lexus, with a ratcheting of metal wheels, and they all looked down at him. Hendrix was riding a lowboy, wore a white mechanic's jumpsuit and spectacles with lenses the size of nickels: he looked like an albino mole.

"There's a bloodstain on the shoe-I think it's blood. Don't disturb it," he said to Sherrill, passing her a transparent plastic bag.

Sherrill looked at the black high-heeled shoe, said, "She's got good taste."

Lucas flipped whatever-it-was between his middle and ring fingers, fumbled it, and then unconsciously slipped it over the end of his index finger. "Maybe the blood's from the asshole."

"Fat chance," Black said.

He pulled the mole to his feet and Lucas frowned and said, "What's that shit?"

He pointed at the leg of the mole's jumpsuit. In the headlights of the crime-scene truck, one of his pant legs was stained pink, as though he were bleeding from a calf wound.

"Jesus," Black said. He pulled on the seams of his own legs, lifting the cuffs above the shoes. "It's blood."

The mole dropped to his knees, pulled a paper napkin from a pocket, and laid it flat on the wet blacktop. When it was wet, he picked it up and held it in the truck lights. The handkerchief showed a pinkish tinge.

"They must've emptied her out," Sherrill said.

The mole shook his head. "Not blood," he said. He held the towel between himself and the truck lights and looked through it.

"Then what is it?"

The tech shrugged. "Paint. Maybe lawn chemicals. It's not blood, though."

"That's something," Sherrill said, her face pale in the headlights. She looked down at her shoes. "I hate wading around in it. If you don't clean it up right away, it stinks."

"But it's blood on the shoe," Lucas said.

"I believe it is," said the mole.

Sherrill had been watching Lucas fumble with the whatever-it-was and finally figured it out. A ring. "Is that a ring?" she asked.

Lucas quickly pushed his hand in his coat pocket; he might have blushed. "Yeah. I guess."

"You guess? Don't you know?" She handed the shoe bag to Black. "Engagement?"

"Yeah."

"Can I see it?" She stepped closer and consciously batted her eyes.

"What for?" He stepped back; there was no place to hide.

"So I can fuckin' steal the stone," Sherrill said impatiently. Then, wheedling again: " 'Cause I want to look at it, why do you think?"

"Better show it to her," Black said. "If you don't, she'll be whining about it the rest of the night…"

"Shut up," Sherrill snapped at Black. Black shut up and the mole stepped back. To Lucas, "Come on, let me see it. Please?"

Lucas reluctantly took his hand out of his pocket and dropped the ring into Sherrill's open palm. She half-turned, so she could see the stone in the headlights. "Holy cow," she said reverently. She looked at Black. "The diamond is bigger'n your dick."

"But not nearly as hard," Black said.

The mole sadly shook his head. This kind of talk between unmarried men and women was another sign that the world was going to heck in a handbasket; that the final days were here.

They all started through the drizzle toward the school, the mole looking into the sky, for signs of God or Lucifer; Black, carrying the bloody shoe; Lucas with his head down; and Sherrill marvelling at the three-carat, tear-shaped diamond sparkling in all the brilliant flashing cop lights.

The school cafeteria was decorated with hand-painted Looney Tunes characters, and was gloomy despite it: the place had the feel of a bunker, all concrete block and small windows too high to see out of.

Bob Greave sat at a too-short cafeteria table in a too-short chair, drinking a Diet Coke, taking notes on a secretarial pad. He wore a rust-colored Italian-cut suit and a lightweight, beige micro-fiber raincoat. A thin man in a trench coat sat next to him, in another too-short chair, his bony knees sticking up like Ichabod Crane's. He looked as though he might twitch.

Lucas walked through the double doors with Black, Sherrill, and the mole trailing like wet ducklings. "Hey, Bob," Lucas said.

"Is that the shoe?" Greave asked, looking at the bag Black was carrying.

"No, it's Tom's," Lucas said, a half-second before he remembered about Black and had to smother a nervous laugh. Black apparently didn't notice. The man with the incipient twitch said, "Are you Chief-Davenport?"

Lucas nodded. "Yeah."

"Mr, Greave"-the man nodded at the detective-"said I had to stay until you got here. But I don't have anything else to say. So can I go?"

"I want to hear the story," Lucas said.

Girdler ran through it quickly. He had come to the school to talk to the chairperson about the year's PTA agenda, and had encountered Mrs. Manette and her daughters just outside the door, in the shelter of the overhang. Mrs. Manette had asked his advice about a particular problem-he was a therapist, as was she-and they chatted for a few moments, and he went inside.

Halfway down the hall and around a corner, he recalled a magazine citation she'd asked for, and that he couldn't remember when she'd first asked. He started back, and when he turned the corner, fifty or sixty feet from the door, he saw a man struggling with Manette's daughter.

"He pushed her into the van and went around it and drove away," Girdler said.

"And you saw the kids in the van?"

"Mmmm, yes…" he said, his eyes sliding away, and Lucas thought, He's lying. "They were both on the floor. Mrs. Manette was sitting up, but she had blood on her face."

"What were you doing?" Lucas asked.

"I was running down the hall toward the doors. I thought maybe I could stop them," Girdler said, and again his eyes slid away. "I got there too late. He was already going out the drive. I'm sure he had a Minnesota license plate, though. Red truck, sliding doors. A younger man, big. Not fat, but muscular. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans."