Mind Prey

school after a parent-teacher conference. The mother and one kid were picked up in a red van. We don’t know exactly how—if they were tear-gassed, or strong-armed, or shot. We just don’t know. However it was done, it must have been a few seconds before the second daughter was taken off the porch over there.” Black pointed back toward the school. “We think what happened was, the mother and Genevieve ran out to the car in the rain, were grabbed. The older daughter was waiting to get picked up, and then she was snatched.”
    “Why didn’t she run?” Lucas asked.
    “We don’t know,” Sherrill said. “Maybe it was somebody she knew.”
    “Where were the witnesses?”
    “Inside the school. One of them is an adult, a shrink of some kind, one was a kid. A student. They only saw the last part of it, when Grace Manette was grabbed. But they say the mother was still alive, on her hands and knees in the van, but she had blood on her face. The younger daughter was facedown on the floor of the van, and there was apparently a lot of blood on her, too. Nobody heard any gun shots. Nobody saw a gun. Only one guy was seen, but there might have been another one in the van. We don’t see how one guy could have roped all three of them in, by himself. Unless he really messed them up.”
    “Huh. What else?”
    “White guy,” Sherrill said. “Van had a nose on it—it was an engine front, not a cab-over. We think it was probably an Econoline or a Chevy G10 or Dodge B150, like that. Nobody saw a tag.”
    “How long before we heard?” Lucas asked.
    “There was a 911 call,” Sherrill said. “There was some confusion, and it was probably three or four minutes after the snatch, before the call was made. Then the car took three or four more minutes to get here. The call was sort of unsure, like maybe nothing happened. Then it was maybe five more minutes before we put the truck on the air.”
    “So the guy was ten miles away before anybody started looking,” Lucas said.
    “That’s about it. Broad daylight and he’s gone,” Black said. They all stood around, thinking about that for a moment, listening to the hiss of rain on their hats, then Sherrill said, “What’re you doing here, anyway?”
    Lucas’s right hand came out of his pocket, and he made an odd gesture with it. Sherrill realized he was twisting something between his fingers. “This could be…difficult,” Lucas said. He looked at the school. “Where’re the witnesses?”
    “The shrink is over there, in the cafeteria,” Sherrill said. “I don’t know where the kid is. Greave is talking to them. Why is it difficult?”
    “Because everybody’s rich,” Lucas said, looking at her. “The Manette woman is Tower Manette’s daughter.”
    “I’d heard that,” Sherrill said. She looked up at Lucas, her forehead wrinkled. “Black and I are gonna lead on this one, and we really don’t need the attention. We’ve still got that assisted-suicide bullshit going on…”
    “You might as well give up on that,” Lucas said. “You’re never gonna get him.”
    “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