Mind Prey

want her frightened any more than she is,” Clarice Bernet said. She hissed it, like a snake. She was a bony woman with tight blonde hair and a thin nose. Her front teeth were angled like a rodent’s, and she was in Lucas’s face.
    “I’m not here to frighten her,” Lucas said.
    “You better not,” Bernet said. She shook a finger at him: “There’s been enough trouble from this already. The first officer questioned her without allowing us time to get there.”
    “We were hoping to stop the kidnapper’s van,” Lucas said mildly, but he was getting angry.
    Thomas Bernet waggled his jowls: “We appreciate that, but you have to understand that this has been a trauma.”
    They were standing in the quarry-tiled entry of the Bernets’ house, a closet to one side, a framed poster on the opposite wall, a souvenir from a Rembrandt show at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam in 1992. A sad, middle-aged Rembrandt peered out at Lucas. “ You have to understand that this is a kidnapping investigation and it could become a murder investigation,” Lucas snapped, his voice developing an edge. “One way or another, we’ll talk to your daughter and get answers from her. We can do it pleasantly, here, or unpleasantly down at Homicide, with a court order.” He paused for a half-beat. “I’d rather not get the court order.”
    “ We don’t need threats,” Thomas Bernet said. He was a division manager at General Mills and knew a threat when he heard one.
    “I’m not threatening you; I’m laying out the legal realities,” Lucas said. “Three people’s lives are in jeopardy and if your daughter has a bad night’s sleep over it, or two bad nights, that’s tough. I’ve got to think about the victims and what they’re going through. Now, do I talk to, uh, Mercedes, or do I get the court order?”
     
    M ERCEDES B ERNET WAS a small girl with a pointed chin, a hundred-dollar haircut, and eyes that were five years too old. She wore a pink silk kimono and sat on the living room couch, next to a Yamaha grand piano, with her ankles crossed. She had recently developed breasts, Lucas thought, and sat with her back coyly arched, making the best of what was not yet too much. With her mother sitting beside her, and her father hovering behind the chair, she told Lucas what she’d seen.
    “Grace was standing there, looking back and forth, like she didn’t know what was going on. She even walked back toward the door for a minute, then she went back out. Then this van pulled around in front, going that way.” She pointed to her left. “And this guy jumps out, and he runs up to her and she started to back up and the guy just grabbed her by her blouse and by her hair and he jerked her right off the porch-thing…”
    “The portico,” Clarice Bernet said.
    “Yeah, whatever,” said Mercedes, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, he pulled her toward the van and slid the door back and threw her inside. I mean, he was this huge dude. He just threw her. And before he closed the door, I saw two other people in there. Mrs. Dunn…”
    “Mrs. Manette,” her mother said.
    “Yeah, whatever, and she had blood on her face. She was, like, crawling. Then there was another kid in there that I thought was Genevieve, but I couldn’t see her face. She was, like, lying down on the floor, and then the guy closed the door.”
    “Where was Mr. Girdler during all of this?”
    “I didn’t see him until afterwards. He was behind me somewhere. I told him to call 911, but he was like, Duh. ” She rolled her eyes again and Lucas smiled.
    Then: “Think about this,” Lucas said. “Tell me exactly what the kidnapper looked like.”
    Mercedes leaned back, closed her eyes, and a minute later, eyes still closed, said, “Big. Yellow hair, but it looked kinda weird, like it was peroxided or something. ’Cause his skin looked dark, not like a black dude, but you know…dark.” She opened her eyes and studied Lucas’s face. “Like you, kinda. His face didn’t look like yours—he had, like, a real narrow face—but he was about your color and big like you.”
    “What was he wearing? Anything special?”
    She closed her eyes again and lived through the scene, then opened her eyes, looking surprised, and said, “Oh, shit.”
    “Young lady!” Clarice Bernet was shocked.
    Lucas wagged his head once and asked, “What?”
    “He was wearing a GenCon shirt. I knew there was something…”
    He said, “GenCon? Are you sure? Did you see what year?”
    “You