Mind Prey

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.”
     
    W OLFE’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’d review 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.”
     
    “T HERE’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.
    “Does she 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