Mind Prey

about, in a safety-deposit box in Prescott, Wisconsin. Okay? You’ve got a Rolex worth $8,000 that you never wear anyway. Andi has $25,000 in diamond jewelry and a ruby from her mother, all in your joint safety-deposit box at First Bank. And you’ve got several thousand dollars in cash hidden in the two houses…get that.”
    “You sonofabitch.”
    “Hey. Let’s try to keep this businesslike, okay?” Mail’s voice was wry, but not quite taunting.
    “How do I get it to you? I’ve got cops staying with me, waiting for you to call.”
    “Take I-94 east all the way to the St. Croix, get off on Highway 95, get back on going west, and pull off at the Minnesota Welcome station. You know where that is?”
    “Yeah.”
    “There’s a phone by the Coke machine. Get on it just before seven o’clock, but keep your finger on the hook. I’ll call right at seven o’clock. If it’s busy, I’ll try again at five after seven. If it’s still busy, I’ll try at ten after, but that’s it: after that, I’m gone. Don’t even think about telling the cops. I’ll be driving around, and they can’t track me when I’m moving. They’ve been trying. When I get you on the phone, I’ll give you some instructions.”
    “Okay.”
    “If I see any cops, I’m gone.”
     
    T HE PHONE WENT dead.
    “That’s it,” Greave said.
    “Jesus.” Lucas walked in a quick circle, stopped to look out the window at the lights of the city, then said, “We talk to Lester and the chief. Nobody else. Nobody. We’ve got to get a team going.”
    Roux brought the FBI in. Lucas argued against it, but she insisted: “For christ sakes, Lucas, this is the thing they do. This is their big specialty. We can’t leave them out—if we do, and if we blow it, it’ll be all our asses. And it should be.”
    “We can handle it.”
    “I’m sure we can, if it’s real. But if it’s anything else, we’d be in deep shit, my friend. No, they’ve got to come in.”
    Lucas looked at Lester, who nodded, agreeing with Roux.
    “So. I’ll call them, and you two can brief them. We’ll want representatives on the team that tracks Dunn. You, Lucas, somebody else.”
    “Sloan or Capslock.”
    “Whichever, or both,” Roux said. She turned away from them, flicked her lighter, and touched off another cigarette. “Christ, I hope this is the end of it.”
     
    L UCAS, UP ALL night, arguing with Roux or briefing the feebs, stopped home at five-thirty and ate breakfast with Weather.
    “Do you think it’s real?” she asked. She was running a seminar for post-docs that morning, and was dressed in a pale linen suit with a silk scarf.
    “It sure sounded good,” Lucas said. “Dunn was absolutely spontaneous. We didn’t have that phone monitored until yesterday, and we didn’t tell him about it…so, yeah, I believe the call. I don’t think this asshole is gonna hand over his wife and kids, though.”
    “Then the call was good for one thing,” Weather said.
    Lucas nodded. “If it’s real, it eliminates Dunn from the list.”
    “Unless…” Weather said.
    “What?”
    “Unless he’s talking to somebody in his office, and that person is passing the word along.”
    Lucas waved her off. “That’s too complicated to think about. Possible, but we’d never get to them.”
    They heard the Pioneer-Press paper-delivery car slow outside the house, and the paper hit the walk. Lucas ran out to get it, and as he did, the Star-Tribune car came by, and he got that, too. Both papers had photos of Crosby above the fold.
    “For all the good it does us,” Lucas said, scanning the stories. “He’s got her.”
    “Aren’t you planning to talk to the papers today?”
    Lucas slapped his forehead. “Yes. Damnit. Noon.”
    “Get some sleep,” she said.
    “Yeah.” He glanced at his watch. Almost six. “A few hours, anyway.”
    Weather took her coffee cup and the plate on which she’d had her toast, carried them to the sink, then laughed as she walked back to the table and ruffled his hair.
    “What?” he asked.
    “You look like you’re fifteen and going on your first date. You always do when you get something going. And the more awful it is, and the more tired you get, the happier you look. This whole thing is terrible: and you’re getting high on it.”
    “It’s interesting,” Lucas admitted. “This kid we’re talking to, he’s an interesting kid.” He looked out the window, where the neighbor from across the street was walking his elderly cocker