Stolen Prey

run.”
    “Bad?”
    “Yeah. Feels bad. Like, really bad.”

6
    L ucas called everybody on the way back to the office, and once there, got a quick rinse in the men’s room, dried off with paper towels, and changed back into his suit. As he went out the door, Weather phoned and asked if he was interested in going to dinner.
    “Probably, if it’s like routine. I don’t want to do a big deal.”
    “I’ll call the Lex.”
    “Fine. I’ve gotta go over and talk to T-Bone. I’ll probably be six o’clock.” He told her, briefly, what had happened.
    “I hope Jim doesn’t get hurt,” Weather said.
    “If his bank’s been laundering, he’s probably gonna get hurt,” Lucas said.
    “I can’t believe that he’d know about it.”
    “Neither can I,” Lucas said. “But it’s open season on bankers right now. Maybe … He’s a smart guy. He’ll figure a way to handle it.”
    O N THE WAY over to the bank, Bone called again and asked how long he’d be.
    “Ten more minutes,” Lucas said. “Something happen?”
    “Yeah. Your guy Shaffer is here and he’s pissed because I won’t talk until you get here. And ’cause I got a lawyer to sit in.”
    “Nine minutes,” Lucas said.
    P OLARIS N ATIONAL B ANK was in downtown Minneapolis, a skyscraper of pale yellow stone and blue glass. Bone’s corner office was on the fiftieth floor, from where he could look crosstown at the slightly higher IDS Center. Lucas had been in Bone’s office probably fifty times, after men’s league basketball games, to drink a glass of bourbon or a G&T, if it was hot, and talk about money.
    Lucas pushed through the revolving door into the lobby a little after five o’clock and found Rivera and Martínez talking to the security guards. Lucas walked over, showed his BCA identification, and they went up together.
    In the privacy of the elevator, Rivera said, a question in his voice,
“Mrs. Brooks?”
    “Could be a false alarm,” Lucas said.
    “Do you
think
it’s a false alarm?” Martínez asked.
    “No, I don’t,” Lucas said. “But I’ve been wrong before.”
    “She was the first to die.”
    Lucas said, “We assumed they’d torture the main target last—let him see the others suffer. They didn’t. They went right after her, and when she died, they tried to get what they wanted out of the husband, by torturing the daughter, and then the husband himself. He had nothing to give them.”
    “Again, this is a guess,” Rivera said.
    “Yes. Absolutely. A guess,” Lucas said. “Except that we haven’t found anything at Sunnie so far. We’re really having someproblems nailing down anything that looks like a laundry. So maybe it isn’t.”
    “You know the president of this bank?” Martínez asked.
    “Yeah. Good guy. I really believe that,” Lucas said. “If there’s a money laundry here, he didn’t know about it.”
    “We’ll see,” Martínez said. “If this vice president is missing, and if he worked with Mrs. Brooks, there must be a connection.”
    “Or the Criminales think there is,” said Rivera.
    “There must be,” Martínez said to her boss. “For somebody so high up to be involved.”
    Lucas said, “He wasn’t that high up. Americans … banks especially … sometimes give titles instead of money. You could ask Bone, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were dozens of vice presidents. It impresses the clients, to be dealing with somebody … so high up.”
    S HAFFER AND O’B RIEN , the DEA agent, were sitting on a narrow red designer couch in Bone’s office. Bone and a tough-looking woman, who Lucas thought must be the lawyer, were facing each other across a cocktail table, on separate red chairs that matched the couch.
    Two other men, who Lucas didn’t know, one short and bald, the other tall and long-haired, both in good suits and ties, sat on the third side of the table, while three empty non-matching chairs were at the fourth side. Lucas, Rivera, and Martínez took the empty chairs and Lucas said, “Thanks for waiting.”
    Shaffer, who already looked unhappy, registered another fewdegrees of unhappiness when he saw Rivera and Martínez, but he didn’t say anything.
    Bone, a thin athletic man with a strong nose and thick black hair, introduced the unknowns—the woman was the lawyer, the two men worked as an account manager and a systems director—and then said to Lucas, “We’ve already been over a few of the ground rules here. Kate will jump in if you ask any questions that would