John Sandford - Mind prey

Lucas heard the muffled shot, and waited.

"John?"

He listened, heard nothing. The frantic beating had stopped. He looked back up the road, where the cops were still standing on the tops of their cars, looking the wrong way, into the cornfield. The shots from inside the culvert had been almost inaudible on the outside. Lucas started pulling the clumps of muck out of the pipe.

A little flow of water came out.

And then some blood.

And a clump of bloody, pulped flesh, floating like a child's leaf-ship, on the thin stream of muddy water.

Lucas stood up, and with the toe of one ruined shoe, pushed the clumps of grass out of the mouth of the culvert, and climbed to the road.

"Hey." He yelled at the cop on the closest car. When the cop turned, he pointed into the ditch and people began to run toward him.

Sloan drove down to the farm, gunless, suspended, afraid he was missing the action. He found a dozen cops on their hands and knees next to a culvert, and Lucas sitting on the steps of the tumble-down farmhouse.

"Need a ride, sweetheart?"

"I need a cigarette," Lucas said. "I don't know why I ever quit."

Sloan told him about it as they headed back to town:

"Wolfe wouldn't have anything to do with me, so I went with Franklin and Helen Manette. I sort of bullshitted her, being nice, and Helen opened her mouth and everything came out."

"Won't do much good," Lucas said. "A court won't take anything after the first time she asked for a lawyer, and we didn't get one."

"I wasn't thinking about that," Sloan said. "I just wanted to know why she did it."

"Money," Lucas said. "Some way or another."

Sloan nodded. "She knew all about Tower and Wolfe. Tower is in a lot worse financial shape than anybody knows. Almost everything is gone. His salary at the foundation has been cut, and they took a big equity loan on the house five years ago, and they've had a hard time making payments. The only thing they had going for them was the money from the trust-and there's a provision in the deed of trust that if the trustees decided that there was no possibility of the last benefactor having children, then the trust would be dissolved and the last benefactor would get the whole thing. A lump sum. Right now, thirteen million dollars."

"Jesus," Lucas said. "That much?"

"Yep. The trust was in bonds. The trust company had to put aside enough income every year to cover inflation, and the rest of the income was divided up among the eligible people-Tower, Andi, and her two daughters. They were all getting about a hundred grand a year. If Andi and the two daughters were dead, and Tower pushed for it, the trust would be dissolved and he'd get the lump. And that's what Helen Manette was looking for. She figured Tower was about to dump her. She figured she'd get half."

"And she met Mail at the apartment?"

"Yeah. He asked about her name, said he'd had a doctor named Manette. He said some things that made her realize that he was the guy Andi had talked about a few times-the guy so crazy that he scared the life out of her. He gave her a name, Martin LaDoux. She found his phone number and started calling him."

"We could have seen it," Lucas said.

"We would have," Sloan said. "But man, it's only been five days. Not a whole five days, yet."

"Seems like a century," Lucas said.

A moment later, Sloan said, "You know what she asked me?"

"What?"

"If her helping us would qualify for Dunn's reward money…"

Halfway back, they got a call from the chiefs secretary, saying Roux was on the way to the hospital. She wanted Lucas and Sloan to stop by. When they arrived, the hospital's turnout was clogged with cars.

Sloan looked him over. "Maybe I oughta drop you at emergency," he said. "You look like shit."

"I'm all right," Lucas said, getting out of the car. His shoes were ruined, his suit pants, still wet, clung to his legs. His underwear and shirt, both soaked, felt like they were full of sand. His tie was a wet, twisted wreck; he hadn't shaved.

Sloan looked him over. "Your suit coat looks nice," he said.

Roux saw him first, hurried down the tile hallway, and caught him in her arms with a powerful hug. "Jesus, you got them back. I never would have believed it."

Dunn was there, pounding him on the back. "Jesus Christ, all of them." His face was luminous.

"Easy," Lucas said. "How's Genevieve?"

"Exposure," Dunn said, his face going dark. "She wouldn't have lasted the rest of the day. And she may have nerve damage in her legs. Maybe not too serious, it's too soon to tell. But the way she was caught up in the coat, the nerves were all pinched up…"

"Andi and Grace?"

Dunn looked at the floor, and then away. "Physically, they'll be okay; psychologically, they're in terrible shape. Andi is just… just rambling. God, I don't know…" And he turned and walked away without another word, back toward a cluster of doctors.

"You heard about Helen Manette?" Lucas asked Roux.

"From Franklin," she said. She shook her head. "I don't know what's gonna happen. We gotta talk with everybody from the state's attorney's office. We're gonna arrest her, but if we ever get her in court, I just don't know. But she's not our biggest problem."

Lucas nodded. "Wolfe?"

"Yeah. We're meeting with her and her lawyer." Roux looked at her watch. "In about forty-five minutes. You better be around, in case I need you."

"I'd hoped she'd go away, on her own," Lucas said.

"She hasn't," Roux said grimly.

There was a buzz of noise at the hospital, and Lucas looked down the hall. The mayor pushed through, and Roux said, "I gotta go. Stick close to your office."

"Sure," Lucas said.

Roux called an hour later, as Lucas sat in his office, talking with Sloan and Del. "You better come down."

The chiefs secretary waved him through, saying, "They're waiting," and "God, that was great this morning. You're my hero."

"Yeah, but for how long?" Lucas asked.

"Rest of the week," she promised.

Nancy Wolfe, a loose-fleshed man with freckles and shiny red hair, Lester, and Rose Marie Roux faced each other in a tense rectangle around Roux's desk. The red-haired man's hands were steepled, and he wore a careful gray suit with a gold lapel pin. A lawyer, Lucas thought.

Roux pointed at an empty chair next to Lester. "Sit down. We're trying to work out what happened this morning."

"You know what happened," Wolfe snapped. She looked across the desk at Lucas, her eyes on fire. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"

"What do you want?" Lucas asked.

"I want you out," she said. "I'll reserve the right to go to court no matter what happens, but I want you out now."

"We saved your partner's life," Lucas said.

"You should have found another way to do it…"

"There was no time."

"… without… violating me."

Lucas shook his head. "No time."

"You should have made some," Wolfe said.

Rose Marie cleared her throat. "Lucas will be staying. I won't fire him. In fact, I'm putting him in for a commendation. I'm sorry that you were inconvenienced."

"Inconvenienced?" Wolfe shrilled. "I was strip-searched and given these prison clothes and they made me sit there while they shouted at me"-her lip trembled-"and they wouldn't let me call anybody, a lawyer, or anybody."

"Rose Marie, we're talking about a lot of money," the lawyer said, dryly. "Guys have done a lot less than Davenport, to people who deserved it a lot more, and they've been hammered. People are tired of this department, the way it handles people. You lose a million, two million, five million-and that's possible, in this case-and you'll be out of here. If you fire Davenport, at least it'll be a sign that you disapprove."