Lucas Davenport Novels 6-10

by John Sandford

  “Christ.” Lester scratched his nose, then his head. Then, “We gotta tell Roux. That’s what she’s paid for.”

  ROUX SAID, “I wish you hadn’t told me.”

  “That’s what you’re paid for,” Lucas said, straight-faced.

  Roux sighed and said, “Right. So. Anything critical, we keep to ourselves, though I don’t see how we could keep Manette’s message to ourselves. We wouldn’t have known what it meant.”

  Lester explained Lucas’s idea about feeding false information through the family: Roux grudgingly approved but rolled her eyes to the ceiling and said, “Please, God, don’t let it be Tower.”

  “One other thing,” Lucas said. “We’ve got recorders on everybody’s listed numbers, because we were only looking for incoming calls from a stranger. We should start looking at the private phones, too, the unlisted numbers, the outgoing calls. And we need to be quiet about it.”

  Roux looked at Lester, who nodded and said, “I agree,” and then closed her eyes and said, “They’ll be pissed when they find out.”

  “When they find out, we can explain it,” Lucas said. “But we need to get on this right now. I mean, right now. We’re running out of time.”

  “But I really don’t think whoever it is would call from his own phone.”

  “They might, if they think they know what’s being monitored,” Lucas said. “And when the asshole needs to get in touch with them, he’s got to call. We need to know about anything anomalous—odd rings, cryptic phone calls, funny-sounding wrong numbers, anything.”

  Roux sighed, spread her hands on her desk, looked at them. “I knew there’d be days like this,” she said.

  “You gotta do it,” Lucas said.

  “All right,” Roux said. “I’ll call Larry Baxter—he’d sign a warrant on the Little Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe.”

  “Tonight,” Lucas said. “Get Anderson to call the phone company and get a list of all their numbers, on every single one of the family members. Then get a guy over to the phone company and have him sit there and listen.”

  “We’re running out of guys,” Lester said.

  “Pull some uniforms,” Lucas said. “We don’t need Einstein over there.”

  ONE HUNDRED AND forty-four vans were stopped along I-694 after Mail’s call to Lucas. Two men were held briefly while checks were run on them, and then they were released.

  “You know what he was doing?” Lucas said, looking up at a wall map in the Homicide office. He pointed at the top of the map, at the belt highway. “I bet he’s on a secondary road driving parallel to the highway. I bet he was on County Road C, knowing that if we’re tracking him, we’d be looking on 694.”

  “So…that’s gonna be tough,” Lester said, looking at the map. “We’ll have to try to flood a whole area, instead of just a road, or a street.”

  “We won’t get him that way,” Lucas said. “He’ll keep changing up on us.”

  Lucas was just ready to leave again when Elle called back. “I’m pushing the button on my fax. You should have a fax coming in.”

  A second later, Lucas heard the fax phone ring once, and then the fax machine started buzzing at the other end of the office: “It’s coming now.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Now. If it’s the Bible, it’s Psalms, of course.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Psalms is the only book that has chapter numbers as high as the ones he cited,” she said. “If they’re not from Psalms, then it’s just a bunch of gibberish. It could be anything.”

  “But what if they’re all from Psalms?” Lucas asked.

  “This is what he said,” Elle intoned. “He said, ‘A little blank verse’ and then the numbers. And here are the first three verses. These are from the King James Version, by the way—I think he’d probably be using one, since I doubt that he’s religious, and if he’s not, he’s probably got a James.”

  “All right. But the pope’ll be pissed.” There was silence on the other end and Lucas said, “Sorry.”

  She said, “Why don’t you go get that fax?”

  “Just a minute.” He put the phone down, got the fax, and walked back. “Ready.”

  “Psalm 112:10,” she said. Lucas followed along on the fax as she read, “The wicked shall see it, and be grieved; he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away: the desire of the wicked shall perish.

  “Psalm 4:4: Stand in awe and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.

  “Psalm 147:9: He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.”

  There was a rustling of paper and Elle said, “Got that?”

  “Yeah. But what is it?” He studied the Psalms but found no pattern at all.

  “I couldn’t see anything at first. I kept thinking that the verses must relate to his condition, or the condition of the women. I thought he must’ve made a psychotic connection between them. These are powerful images—gnashing teeth, ravens and beasts, the wicked and the grieved. The problem is, I couldn’t relate them to anything. There was no thread.”

  “Elle? What are you leading up to?” Lucas asked.

  “A silly question,” the nun said. “It’s so silly that I don’t want to explain it unless the answer is yes.”

  “So ask.”

  “Is there anybody named Crosby involved with this whole thing?”

  After a moment of silence, Lucas said, “Elle, we’re getting ready to plaster the papers and the TV newscasts with pictures of a woman named Gloria Crosby. She knows our man. How did you know?”

  Elle laughed softly and said, “I thought it was so stupid.”

  “What?”

  “The 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.”

  BEFORE LUCAS 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

  WEATHER WAS SLEEPING soundly when Lucas finally got home. He slipped out of his clothes t
o 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 croaked…excuse me…”

  “Yeah, yeah, if Tower croaked, what?”

  “Would his wife get it?”

  “No. I mean, not if Andi and the kids were still around. Jesus, listen to the way I’m talking, for christ sakes.” And the phone went dead. Lucas looked at the receiver, unsure about what had happened. He redialed.

  A cop picked up on the first ring, and without preamble said, “Chief Davenport?”

  “Yeah, I was talking to Dunn.”

  “Well, Jesus, sir, I don’t know what you said, but he cracked up. He’s back in his bedroom.”

  “Ah.”

  “Do you want me to get him?”

  “No, no, let him go. Tell him I’m sorry, okay?”

  “Sure, I will…”

  “And after he’s got back together, ask him if I could get a copy of the Manette Trust document. They must have one around.”

  LUCAS, STILL WIDE awake, crawled back into bed and lay looking at the ceiling for a moment, then rolled over and gripped Weather’s shoulder and whispered in her ear, “Can you wake up?”

  “Hmmm?” she asked sleepily.

  “Are you operating in the morning?”

  “At ten,” she said.

  “Oh…”

  “What?” She rolled more on her back and reached up and touched his face.

  “I need to talk to you about the case. I need an opinion from a woman. But if you’re working…”

  “I’m fine,” she said, more awake now. “Tell me.”

  He told her, and finished with, “Tower could die anytime. If Andi and the kids are gone, his wife is gonna get a load. Whatever he’s got, plus—maybe—whatever’s in the trust. Probably four million, plus a million-dollar house. So the question is, could Nancy Wolfe do that? How about Helen?”

  Weather had been listening intently. “I can’t say—it could be either one. Normally, I’d say no to Wolfe. Even if she’s having an affair with Tower, she can’t be so sure that he’ll marry her, that she’d already be maneuvering for the money. Not to the extent of killing three people. Helen, well, Helen doesn’t have anything invested in Andi and the children. She was having an affair with Tower before Andi’s mother was gone—so she and Andi probably dislike each other. And if Helen knows about the affair with Nancy Wolfe, maybe…”

  “Yeah. If Andi and the kids are gone, she gets more from a divorce, if there is one. If Andi and the kids are gone, and Manette croaked from the stress, or from the stress before a divorce, or both…well, all the better. So Helen looks good.”

  “Except.”

  “Except,” Lucas repeated.

  “Except that we don’t know much about Wolfe’s relationship with Andi Manette. They are partners and old friends, we’re told—but that’s exactly where you’ll find some really deep, rich, suppressed hatreds. Things that go back decades. My best friend in high school got married when she was nineteen, had a bunch of kids, and wound up flipping burgers in a motel. The last time I saw her, I realized…I think she hates me. Andi was always rich, Wolfe didn’t have money; Andi married a man who Wolfe met first, and who went on to become a multimillionaire. Andi has good-looking kids, Wolfe is at the time of life when she’s got to face the possibility that she won’t get married and have children at all. And maybe Andi would interfere with this affair. I wonder if she knows about it. Anyway—that’s all pretty emotional stuff and pretty tangled up.”

  “Yeah. And there’s something else,” Lucas said. “If somebody sicced a fruitcake killer on Andi Manette, who’d know more about picking a fruitcake killer than Wolfe?”

  “Maybe you’re looking at the wrong files,” Weather said. “Maybe you should be looking at Nancy Wolfe’s.” After a moment, “And there’s always George Dunn.”

  “He doesn’t feel right to me, anymore,” Lucas said. “He’d have to be a great liar, a great actor.”

  “In other words, a sociopath,” Weather said.

  “Glad you said that,” Lucas said.

  “A lot of very successful businessmen are—at least, that’s what I’ve heard anecdotally. Like surgeons…”

  “Nancy Wolfe once called him a sociopath,” Lucas said.

  “…and if he were facing a divorce that would cut his business in half…How much did you say he was worth?” Weather asked.

  “If he wasn’t lying, could be anything up to thirty million.”

  “So Andi Manette’s death could be worth fifteen million dollars to him,” Weather said. “I’ll tell you something. Rich people get very attached to their money. It’s like one of their organs, or more than that. If you asked most people who have two million dollars whether they’d rather lose one million, or lose a foot, I think most of them would rather lose the foot.”

  “But that only holds if Andi Manette really wants a divorce,” Lucas said. “Dunn says he was trying to put it back together.”

  “What else would he say? That he hates her and he’s glad they were kidnapped?”

  “Yeah.” The problem wasn’t a lack of motive. The problem was picking one.

  “Don’t forget the last possibility,” Weather said. “Tower. Her father.”

  “You’ve got a sick mind, Karkinnen.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time that a father went after his daughter. If he’s desperate…”

  Lucas lay flat on his back, his fingers laced across his stomach, and he said, “When I had my little bout of depression, whenever that was, one of the worst things was lying awake at night with everything running through my head, in circles, and not being able to stop it. This isn’t quite the same, but it’s related. Jesus. I keep going around and around: Dunn, Wolfe, the Manettes; Dunn, Wolfe, the Manettes. The answer is there.”

>   Weather patted his leg. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Something else is bothering me. I saw something in Gloria Crosby’s apartment, but I can’t remember what it was. But it’s important.”

  She pushed herself up: “You forgot?”

  “Not exactly forgot. It was there, but it’s like I never really recognized it. It’s like when you see a face in the street, and an hour later you realize it was an old classmate. Like that. I saw something…”

  “Sleep on it,” she said. “Maybe your subconscious will kick it out.”

  After a while in the dark, after Weather had rolled back to her own pillow, he said, “You know, those two Bible verses have me whipped, too. Must be Stillwater. That would be too much of a coincidence—or a trick, or something—not to be right. But what’s he talking about?”

  And Weather said something that sounded like “ZZZzzttug.”

  WHEN HE WOKE, before he opened his eyes, he thought of the Bible verses. Maybe the not was the key. 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. But even if the not was the key word, he thought wryly, ye had no understanding. And who was coming near unto whom?

  He thought about it through shaving, through the shower, and came up with nothing brilliant, and began dressing. The day was gorgeous: sunlight slanted in through the wooden blinds in the living room, and the whole feel was that of a perfect fall day. As he put on a shirt and tie, he watched the Openers morning show. The weatherman said that the low pressure system responsible for all the rain had rambled off to the east and was presently peeing on Ohio; additional micturatory activity could be expected in New York by evening, if you were going there. The weatherman said neither peeing nor micturatory, but should have, Lucas thought. He found himself whistling, stopped to wonder why, and decided a nice day was a nice day. The kidnapping wasn’t the day’s fault, but he stopped whistling.