“Fuck that,” Mail said. “Now get out here, goddamnit.”
He took a step toward her, his eyes dark and angry, and she could smell the beer.
“All right. Don’t hurt us, just don’t hurt us. Come on, girls…”
“Not them,” Mail said. “Just you.”
“Just me?” Her stomach clutched.
“That’s right.” He smiled at her and put his free hand on the doorsill, as though he needed help staying upright. Or maybe he was being cool. He’d teased his hair into bangs, and now she realized that in addition to the beer, she could smell aftershave or cologne.
Andi glanced at the girls, then at Mail, and at the girls again. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “John won’t hurt me.”
Neither of the girls said a word. Neither of them believed her.
Andi walked around him, as far away as she could. In the outer basement, the air was cooler and fresher, but the first thing she noticed was that he’d dragged another mattress down the stairs. She stepped toward the stairs as the steel door clanged shut behind her and Mail said, “Don’t move.”
She stopped, afraid to move, and he walked around her, until he was between her and the door. He stared at her for a moment, a little out of balance, she thought. He was seriously drunk, and his eyes looked closed in, heavy-lidded, and his lips curled in an ugly, contemptuous smile.
“They don’t have any idea where you’re at or who took you,” he said. He nearly laughed, but somewhere, under there, he was a bit unsure of himself, she thought. “They been talking about it on the radio all night. They’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”
“John, they’ll come sooner or later,” Andi said. “Your best option, I believe…” She automatically fell into her academic voice, the slightly dry observational tone that she used when dealing with patients on a sensitive point. A tone that seemed educated and aristocratic at the same time, and often sold her viewpoint on its own.
Not this time.
Mail moved very quickly, shockingly quickly, like a middleweight boxer, and slapped her face hard, nearly knocking her down. An instant before, she’d been a Ph.D. applying psychology; now she was a wounded animal, trying to find its balance before it became simply meat.
Mail stepped close to her, close enough to smell, close enough to see the texture in his jeans, and he snarled, “Don’t you ever talk that way. And they’re never gonna find us. Never in this world. Now stand up straight. Stand the fuck up.”
She had her hand to her face, nothing coherent in her head: her thoughts were like Scrabble pieces on a dropped board. There was a crunching sound and she looked toward Mail, who was watching her, still angry. He’d crushed the beer can in his hand, and now he threw it into a corner, where it clattered off the wall and then bounced back toward them.
“Let’s see ’em,” he said.
“What?” She had no idea.
“Let’s see ’em,” he said.
“What?” Stupidly, shaking her head.
“Your tits, let’s see your tits.”
She tried to back away, one step, two, but there was no place to go. Behind her, an old coal-burning furnace stood like an old, close-cropped oak, the coal door open and leaning to the left; and behind it, a dark space, a place she really didn’t want to go. “John, you don’t want to hurt me. John,” she said. “I took care of you.”
He thrust a finger at her. “You don’t want to talk about that. You don’t want to talk about that. You took care of me, all right, you sent me down to the fuckin’ hospital. You took care of me, all right.” He looked around wildly, then saw the beer can on the floor. He’d forgotten that he’d finished it. He came back at her. “Come on, let’s see ’em.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “John, I can’t…”
And as quickly as he had before, he hit her again, open-handed, not quite as hard. When she put her hands up, he hit her again, and then again. She couldn’t block the blows, she couldn’t stop them, she couldn’t even see them coming.
Then he was on her, slamming her back against the stone wall, ripping at her jacket, at her blouse. She screamed at him, “No, don’t, John…”
And he swatted her again, knocked her down, pulling her hair, guiding her to the mattress, and landed on top of her, straddling her waist. She struck at him, flailed uselessly. He caught her hands, brought them together, took them in one of his, held them. She couldn’t see him very well, realized that she was bleeding, that she had blood in one eye.
“John…” She began to weep, not believing that he could go on.
But he did.
WHEN HE WAS done, he was angrier than when he had started.
He made her dress, as best she could—her blouse was ripped nearly in half, and he took her bra away from her—and then thrust her back in the cell.
Both of the girls, even the small Genevieve, knew what had happened. When Andi dropped onto the mattress, they automatically curled around her and held her head, while the steel door clanged shut.
Andi couldn’t cry.
Her eyes had dried, or something. When she thought of Mail—not his face, not his voice, but the smell of him—she wanted to gag, and sometimes did, a reflexive clutching of her throat and stomach.
But she couldn’t cry.
She hurt, though. She was bruised, and felt small muscle pulls and tears, when she’d struggled and twisted against his strength. There wasn’t any blood: she checked herself, and though she felt raw, he hadn’t ripped anything.
She was dry-eyed, stunned, when Mail came back.
They felt something, a muffled part of the sound, vibrations from the floor above, and knew he was coming. They were all facing the door, sitting on the mattress, when the door opened. Andi tucked her skirt beneath her.
Mail was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and wrap-around sunglasses, and held a pistol. He stood in the open door for a moment, then said, “I can’t keep all of you.” He pointed at Genevieve. “Come on, I’m taking you out.”
“No, no,” Andi blurted. She caught Genevieve’s arm, and the girl pulled into her side. “No, John, please, no, don’t take her, I’ll take care of her here, she won’t be a problem, John…”
Mail looked away. “I’ll take her out to the Wal-Mart and drop her off. She’s smart enough to call the cops and get back home.”
Andi stood up, pleading. “John, I’ll take care of her, honest to God, she won’t be a problem.”
“She is a problem. Just thinking about her in my head, she’s a problem.” He pointed the pistol at Grace, who flinched away. “I gotta keep her, because she’s too old and she could bring the cops back. But the kid, here—I’ll put a bag on her head and take her out to the van and drop her at Wal-Mart.”
“John, please,” Andi begged.
Mail snarled at Genevieve, “Get out of here, kid, or I’ll beat the shit out of you and drag your ass out.”
Andi got to her knees and then to her feet, reached toward him. “John…”
He stepped back and his hand came up and caught her throat, and for a half-instant she thought she was dead: he squeezed for a second, then threw her back. “Get the fuck away.” And to Genevieve: “Get out of here, kid, out the door.”
“Wait, wait,” Andi said. “Gen, take your coat, it’s cold…” Genevieve had rolled her coat into a pillow, and Andi got it off the mattress, unrolled it, and fitted it around the child and buttoned it, kneeling, looking into Gen’s eyes.
“Just be good,” she said. “John won’t hurt you…”
Genevieve went like her feet were stuck in glue, and Andi called, “Genevieve, honey, ask for a policeman. When you get to the mall, ask for a policeman and tell them who you are. They’ll take you home to Daddy.”
The door slammed in her face. Faintly, faintly, she could hear footsteps outside in the basement, but nothing else behind the muffled steel door.
“She’ll be okay,” Grace said. But she was beginning to cry, and the words
came hard through the tears: “She’s been in lots of malls. She’ll just find a policeman and she’ll go home. Dad’ll take care of her.”
“Yes.” Andi dropped to the mattress, her hands covering her face: “Oh my God, Grace. Oh my God.”
6
“I HATE RICH people,” Sherrill muttered. She was wearing the same coat as the night before, but she’d added her own hat, a green baseball cap with a pale blue bill. Her hair was tucked underneath. She finished the outfit with pale blue sneaks, a tomboy-with-great-breasts look. With her rosy cheeks and easy smile, Black thought she looked good enough to eat.
They’d dumped the city car in the parking lot outside Andi Manette’s office building. The building, Sherrill thought, had been designed by a seriously snotty architect: black windows, red bricks, and copper flashing, snuggled into the side of a cattail-ringed pond, with a twisted chunk of rusty Cor-Ten steel out front. Black paused by the sculpture: the plaque said, Ray-Tracing Wrigley.
“You know what that’s supposed to be?” he asked, looking up at it.
“Looks like a big stick of rusty steel chewing gum that somebody twisted,” Sherrill said.
Black said, “Jesus, you’re an art critic. That’s what it must be.”
Sherrill led the way across a bridge over a moatlike finger from the pond. Somebody had thrown a half-bucket of corn into the water, and a cluster of mallards and two Canada geese rooted through the shallow water weeds for the kernels. A half-dozen koi circled slowly among the ducks, their golden bodies just under the surface. The rain had stopped, and a thin sunshine, broken up by the yellow branches of weeping willows, dappled the pond.
“There’s Davenport,” Black said, and Sherrill looked back at the parking lot. Lucas was just getting out of his Porsche. The lot around him was sprinkled with 700-series BMWs and S-Class Mercedeses, a few Lexuses and Cadillacs, and the odd Jaguar, among the usual Chevys and Fords. Lucas circled a black Acura NSX that had been carefully parked away from other cars, stopped to look in the driver’s side window.
“Speaking of rich,” Sherrill said.
They waited and, after a second, Lucas broke away from the NSX and came up the walk, nodded at Black, grinned at Sherrill, and she felt a little thump. “If I was gonna steal cars, this would be the place,” he said. “Gotta have money to get your head shrunk.”
“Or get the county to pay for it,” Black said.
“Did you ask her?” Sherrill asked.
“Not yet,” Lucas said.
They checked the building directory, an arty rectangle decorated with a blue bird. Manette’s office was at the back of the building, a multiroom suite with quiet, gray carpets and Scandinavian furnishings. A matronly Scandinavian receptionist sat behind a blonde oak desk, writing into a computer. She looked up when Lucas, Black, and Sherrill walked in, turned away from the computer. “Can I…?”
“We’re Minneapolis police officers. I’m Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport and we have a subpoena for Dr. Manette’s records and a search warrant for her office,” Lucas said. “Could you show us her office?”
“I’ll get Mrs. Carney and Dr. Wolfe…”
“No. Show us the office, then get whomever you wish,” Lucas said politely. “Who is Mrs. Carney?”
“The office manager,” the woman said. “I’ll get…”
“No. Show us Dr. Manette’s office.”
Manette’s office was large, informal, with a comfortable couch and a loveseat at right angles to each other, and a glass coffee table in the angle. Two Kirk Lyttle ceramic sculptures stood in the middle of the table; they looked like crippled birds, straining for the sky.
“Where are her files?”
“In, um, there.” The receptionist was ready to panic, but she poked a finger at a line of wood folding doors. Sherrill crossed to the doors and pulled them back. A half-dozen four-drawer file cabinets were lined up in an alcove, along with a short table that held an automatic espresso maker and a small refrigerator.
“Thank you,” Lucas said, nodding at the receptionist. The woman stepped backwards through the door, then turned and ran. “Gonna be some noise,” he said.
“Tough shit,” said Sherrill.
Lucas took off his coat, tossed it on a chair, went to the first of the file cabinets, and pulled open a drawer.
“Get out of there,” Nancy Wolfe shouted at him. She steamed through the door, her hands out to grab him, push him, or hit him. Lucas set his feet, and when she grabbed him and pushed, he didn’t move. Wolfe went backward with a little hop.
“If you push me again, I’ll arrest you and send you downtown in handcuffs,” Lucas said quietly. “Assault on a police officer has a mandatory jail sentence.”
Wolfe’s black eyes were blazing with anger: “You’re in my files, you’ve got no right…”
“I’ve got a subpoena, a search warrant, and the written approval of Dr. Manette’s next of kin,” Lucas said. “We’re gonna look at the files.”
She stepped toward him again, her hands moving, and Lucas turned just a half an inch and tucked his chin even less, but he saw the flinch in her eyes. She believed he’d hit her back, and she stopped, stepped sideways, and crossed her arms. “You’re referring to George Dunn?”
“Yes.”
“George Dunn is hardly close to Andi, not anymore,” Wolfe said. Her face had been white with anger, but now it was reddening, with heat. She was an attractive woman, in a professorial way—slender, salt-and-pepper hair, just a boarding-school touch of makeup. But her red face clashed with her cool, mint-green suit and the Hermès scarf at her neck. “I don’t believe…”
“Mr. Dunn is her husband,” Sherrill said. “Andi Manette and her children have been kidnapped, and even though nobody has said it, they may already be dead somewhere.”
“If they’re not, they may be, soon,” Lucas added. “If you try to fuck us around on the records, you’ll lose. But the delay could kill your partner and her daughters.”
Lucas said fuck deliberately, to harden the statement, to shock, to keep her on the defensive. Wolfe talked right through it: “I want to call my attorney.”
“Call him,” Lucas said.
Wolfe looked at him, then spun on a heel and stormed out.
When Wolfe was gone, Black asked, “How solid are we?”
“Solid, but they might find a friendly judge and slow us down,” Lucas said. Sherrill nodded and pulled open another file cabinet. “Skim everything, get all the names and addresses—read them into your tape recorders, transcribe later. We need speed. If there’s a problem, we’ll have that much, anyway. And if there is a problem, refer it to Tyler down at the County Attorney’s office and just keep working. When you get all the names on the recorder, go back through the records and look for anything likely. References to violence, to threats. Sexual deviation. Males only, to start.”
“Where’re you going?” Sherrill asked.
“To see some guys about some games,” Lucas said.
Nancy Wolfe met him in the hallway as he was going out. “My attorney is on the way. He said for you to leave the files alone until he gets here.”
“Yeah, well, as soon as your attorney is elevated to the district court, I’ll follow his instructions,” Lucas said. Then he let some air into his voice: “Look, we’re not gonna persecute your patients—we won’t even look at most of them. But we’ve got to move fast. We’ve got to.”
“You’ll set us back years with some of these people. You’ll destroy the trust they’ve built up with us—the only people they can trust, for most of them. And the people who need treatment for sexual deviation, or other possibly criminal behavior, they won’t be back at all. Not after they hear what you’ve done.”
“Why do they have to hear?” Lucas asked. “If you don’t make a big deal out of it, nobody’ll know except the few people we actually talk to. And with them, we can make it seem like we got the information from someplace else—not deal with the records.”
She was shaking her h
ead. “If you go through those records, I’ll feel it incumbent upon me to inform the patients.”
Lucas tightened up and his voice dropped, got a little gravel. “You don’t tell them before we look at them. If you do, by God, and one of them turns out to be the kidnapper, I’ll charge you as an accomplice to the kidnapping.”
Wolfe’s hand went to the Hermès scarf at her throat: “That’s ludicrous.”
“Is it true that you’ll get a half-million dollars if Andi Manette is dead?”
Wolfe’s mouth tightened in a line that might have indicated disgust. “Get away from me,” she said. She brushed at him with one hand and started down the hall toward Manette’s office. “Just get away.”
But as he was going out the door, she shouted down the hall, “Who told you that? George? Did George tell you that?”
LUCAS HIT A game store in Dinkytown, near the campus of the University of Minnesota, another on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, then dropped down to South Minneapolis.
Erewhon was run by Marcus Paloma, a refugee from the days of LSD and peyote tea. The shop was just off Chicago, a few blocks below Lake, surrounded by small stucco houses painted in postwar pastels, all crumbling into their crabgrass lawns.
Lucas parked and ambled toward the shop. The cool, rain-washed air felt alive around him, the streets clear of their usual dust, the leaves of the trees burning like neon.
The shop was exactly the opposite: dim, musty, a little dusty. Bins of comics in plastic sleeves pressed against boxes of used role-playing and war games. Lucite racks of metallic miniatures—trolls, wizards, thieves, fighters, clerics, and goblins—guarded the cash register counter.
Marcus Paloma was gaunt, with a goatee and heavy glasses. His thinning gray hair was worn bouffant; he was dressed in a gray sweatsuit with Nike cross-training shoes. He’d once finished eighth in the St. Paul Marathon. “I got a concept,” he shouted down the store, past the bins of comics, when he saw Lucas. “I’m gonna make a million bucks.”
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