Mind Prey

sequence of single words in the first three verses, with that ‘blank verse’ coming first.”
    “Elle, damnit…”
    “Each verse has one of these words, in order: Blank, Gnash, still, young.”
    Lucas closed his eyes and then grinned. “God, I like this kid. It’s the group: Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young. I think the order is wrong, but…”
    “I think that’s it.”
    Lucas’s smile faded. “Then he’s got her. Crosby.”
    “That would be my interpretation. After that verse, he says, ‘long line.’ That breaks the meaning of the top three verses from the next three. For the first two of those three, I have no clue. Well, I have some clue, but it’s pretty general.”
    Lucas read the two verses, under the long line she’d drawn across the paper. The first was Psalm 23:2: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.
    “She’s dead,” Lucas said. “That’s the verse you read at a funeral.”
    “Unless he’s hinting that he’s taken her to Stillwater.”
    “Yeah.” He scanned the fifth verse, Psalm 32:9: Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.
    After a long moment of silence, Lucas said, “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
    “Me either. But I’ll think about it.”
    “How about the last one?”
    “That’s the one that worries me: 69:22: Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. ”
    “Huh,” Lucas said.
    “Be careful,” Elle said. “He’s warning you.”
    “I will. And Elle: thanks.”
    “I’m praying for Dr. Manette and the children,” Elle said. “But you’ve got to hurry, Lucas.”
     
    B EFORE L UCAS LEFT, he called Anderson and said, “Check and see if there are any horse farms—or mule farms, for that matter—out near Stillwater.”
    “There are,” Anderson said. “Lots of them. It’s sorta St. Paul’s horsey country.”
    “Better start running the owners,” Lucas said. “Make a list.”

20
    W EATHER WAS SLEEPING soundly when Lucas finally got home. He slipped out of his clothes to the light from the hall, coming through a crack in the door, and dropped his jacket, pants, and shirt over a chair. After tiptoeing to the bathroom, and then back out, he took off his watch, put it on the bed table, and slipped in beside her.
    She was warm, comfortable, but Lucas was unable to sleep. After a few minutes, he got up and tiptoed out to the study, sat in the old leather chair, and tried to think.
    There were too many things going on at once. Too much to think about. And he was messing around with facts, rather than looking for patterns, or for revealing holes. He put his feet up, steepled his fingers, closed his eyes, and let his mind roam.
    And in ten minutes concluded that the case would break when they identified the probable killer through hospital records, or when they cracked the kidnapper’s source of information. Two solid angles, but not enough pressure on them.
    So: Dunn, Tower and Helen Manette, Wolfe.
    Of course, there was a small chance that the leak was not from the family. It could be an investigation insider—a cop. But Lucas thought not. The kidnapper was clearly crazy. A cop would be unlikely to stick his neck out for a nut, even a family nut. They were simply too unreliable.
    No. Somebody had to benefit.
    Wolfe. Wolfe was sleeping with Manette. Manette didn’t have much left, in the way of money. Dog food…
    Lucas frowned, glanced at his watch. Dunn was up late every night. Lucas got Anderson’s daily log, looked up Dunn’s home phone, and dialed. Dunn picked it up, a little breathless, on the second ring: “Hello?”
    “Mr. Dunn, Lucas Davenport.”
    “Davenport—you scared me. I thought it might be the guy, this time of night.” In an aside to somebody, he said, Lucas Davenport. Then: “What can I do for you?”
    Lucas said, “When I talked to you the night of the kidnapping, you told me that Tower and Andi Manette shared money from a trust.”
    “That’s right.”
    “If your wife was gone, and the kids were gone, what would happen to the trust?”
    After a long moment of silence, Dunn said, “I don’t know. That would be up to the terms of the trust, and the trustees. The only beneficiaries are Tower and his descendants. If he didn’t have any descendants…I suppose it’d go to Tower.”
    “If Tower