The rain was cold, but more of an irritant than a hazard. If it had come two months later, it would've been a killer blizzard, and they'd be wading shin-deep in snow and ice. Marcy Sherrill had done that often enough and didn't like it: you got weird, ugly phenomena like blood-bergs, or worse. Rain, no matter how cold, tended to clean things up. Sherrill looked up at the night sky and thought, small blessings.
Sherrill stood in the headlights of the crime-scene truck, her hands in her raincoat pockets, looking at the feet of the man on the ground. The feet were sticking out from under the rear door of a creme-colored Lexus with real leather seats. Every few seconds, the feet gave a convulsive jerk.
"What're you doing, Hendrix?" she asked.
The man under the car said something unintelligible.
Sherrill's partner bent over so the man under the car could hear him. "I think he said, 'Chokin' the chicken.' " The rain dribbled off his hat, just past the tip of a perfectly dry cigarette. He waited for a reaction from the guy on the ground-a born-again Christian-but got none. "Fuckin' dweeb," he muttered, straightening up.
"I wish this shit'd stop," Sherrill said. She looked up at the sky again. The National Enquirer would like it, she thought. This was a sky that might produce an image of Satan. The ragged storm clouds churned through the lights from the loop, picking up the ugly scarlet flicker from the cop cars.
Down the street, past the line of cop cars, TV trucks squatted patiently in the rain, and reporters stood in the street around them, looking down at Sherrill and the cops by the Lexus. Those would be the cameramen and the pencil press. The talent would be sitting in the trucks, keeping their makeup straight.
Sherrill shivered and turned her head down and wiped the water from her eyebrows. She'd had a rain cap, once, but she'd lost it at some other crime scene with drizzle or sleet or snow or hail or… Everything dripped on her sooner or later.
"Shoulda brought a hat," her partner said. His name was Tom Black, and he was not quite openly gay. "Or an umbrella."
They'd once had an umbrella, too, but they'd lost it. Or, more likely, it had been stolen by another cop who knew a nice umbrella when he saw it. So now Sherrill had the icy rain dripping down her neck, and she was pissed because it was six-thirty and she was still working while her goddamn husband was down at Applebee's entertaining the barmaid with his rapierlike wit.
And more pissed because Black was dry and snug, and she was wet, and he hadn't offered her the hat, even though she was a woman.
And even more pissed knowing that if he had offered, she'd have had to turn it down, because she was one of only two women in the Homicide Unit and she still felt like she had to prove that she could handle herself, even though she'd been handling herself for a dozen years now, in uniform and plainclothes, doing decoy work, undercover drugs, sex, and now Homicide.
"Hendrix," she said, "I wanna get out of this fuckin' rain, man…"
From the street, a car decelerated with a deepening groan, and Sherrill looked over Black's shoulder and said, "Uh-oh." A black Porsche 911 paused at the curb, where the uniforms had set up their line. Two of the TV cameras lit up to film the car, and one of the cops pointed at the crime van. The Porsche snapped down the drive toward the parking lot, quick, like a weasel or a rubber band.
"Davenport," Black said, turning to look. Black was short, slightly round, and carried a bulbous nose over a brush mustache. He was exceedingly calm at all times, except when he was talking about the President of the United States, whom he referred to as that socialist shithead, or, occasionally, that fascist motherfucker, depending on his mood.
"Bad news," Sherrill said. A little stream of water ran off her hair and unerringly down her spine. She straightened and shivered. She was a tall, slender woman with a long nose, kinky black hair, soft breasts, and a secret, satisfying knowledge of her high desirability rating around the department.
"Mmmm," Black said. Then, "You ever get in his shorts? Davenport's?"
"Of course not," Sherrill said. Black had an exaggerated idea of her sexual history. "I never tried."
"If you're gonna try, you better do it," Black said laconically. "He's getting married."
"Yeah?"
The Porsche parked sideways on some clearly painted parking-space lines and the door popped open as its lights died.
"That's what I heard," Black said. He flicked the butt of his cigarette into the grass bank just off the parking lot.
"He'd be nine miles of bad road," Sherrill said.
"Mike's a fuckin' freeway, huh?" Mike was Sherrill's husband.
"I can handle Mike," Sherrill said. "I wonder what Davenport…"
There was a sudden brilliant flash of light, and the feet sticking out from under the car convulsed. Hendrix said, "Goldarnit."
Sherrill looked down. "What? Hendrix?"
"I almost electrocuted myself," said the man under the car. "This rain is a… pain in the behind."
"Yeah, well, watch your language," Black said. "There's a lady present."
"I'm sorry." The voice was sincere, in a muffled way.
"Get out of there, and give us the fuckin' shoe," Sherrill said. She kicked a foot.
"Darn it. Don't do that. I'm trying to get a picture."
Sherrill looked back across the parking lot. Davenport was walking down toward them, long smooth strides, like a professional jock, his hands in his coat pockets, the coat flapping around his legs. He looked like a big broad-shouldered mobster, a Mafia guy with an expensive mohair suit and bullet scars, she thought, like in a New York movie.
Or maybe he was an Indian or a Spaniard. Then you saw those pale blue eyes and the mean smile. She shivered again. "He does give off a certain"-Sherrill groped for a word-"pulse."
"You got that," Black said calmly.
Sherrill had a sudden image of Black and Davenport in bed together, lots of shoulder hair and rude parts. She smiled, just a crinkle. Black, who could read her mind, said, "Fuck you, honey."
Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport's trench coat had a roll-out hood like a parka, and he'd rolled it out, and as he crossed the lot, he pulled it over his head like a monk; he was as dry and snug as Black. Sherrill was about to say something when he handed her a khaki tennis hat. "Put this on," he said gruffly. "What're we doing?"
"There's a shoe under the car," Sherrill said as she pulled the cap on. With the rain out of her face, she instantly felt better. "There was another one in the lot. She must've got hit pretty hard to get knocked out of her shoes."
"Real hard," Black agreed.
Lucas was a tall man with heavy shoulders and a boxer's hands, large, square, and battered. His face reflected his hands: a fighter's face, with those startling blue eyes. A white scar, thin like a razor rip, slashed down his forehead and across his right eye socket, showing up against his dark complexion. Another scar, round, puckered, hung on his throat like a flattened wad of bubble gum-a bullet hole and jack-knife tracheotomy scar, just now going white. He crouched next to the feet under the car and said, "Get out of there, Hendrix."
"Yes, yes, another minute. You can't have the shoe, though. There's blood on it."
"Well, hurry it up," Lucas said. He stood up.
"You talk to Girdler?" Sherrill asked.
"Who's that?"
"A witness," she said. She was wearing the good perfume, the Obsession, and suddenly thought of it with a tinkle of pleasure.
Lucas shook his head. "I was out in Stillwater. At dinner. People called me every five minutes on the way in, to tell me about the politics. That's all I know-I don't know anything about what you guys got."
Black said, "The woman…"
"… Manette," said Lucas.
"Yeah, Manette and her daughters, Grace and Genevieve, were leaving the 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 that, Marcy-'cause maybe he did." His fingers were still playing with whatever-it-was, turning it, twisting it. "I don't want people thinking we went after him without some evidence."
"Do we have any?" Black asked.
Lucas said, "Nobody's said anything about it, but Dunn and Andi Manette just separated. There's another woman, I guess. Still…"
Sherrill said, "Be polite."
"Yeah. With everybody. Stay on their asses, but be nice about it," Lucas said. "And… I don't know. If it's Dunn, he'd have to have somebody working with him."
Sherrill nodded. "Somebody to take care of them, while he was talking to the cops."
"Unless he just took them out and wasted them," Black suggested.
Nobody wanted to think about that. They all looked up at the same moment and got their faces rained on. Then Hendrix slid out from under the Lexus, with a ratcheting of metal wheels, and they all looked down at him. Hendrix was riding a lowboy, wore a white mechanic's jumpsuit and spectacles with lenses the size of nickels: he looked like an albino mole.
"There's a bloodstain on the shoe-I think it's blood. Don't disturb it," he said to Sherrill, passing her a transparent plastic bag.
Sherrill looked at the black high-heeled shoe, said, "She's got good taste."
Lucas flipped whatever-it-was between his middle and ring fingers, fumbled it, and then unconsciously slipped it over the end of his index finger. "Maybe the blood's from the asshole."
"Fat chance," Black said.
He pulled the mole to his feet and Lucas frowned and said, "What's that shit?"
He pointed at the leg of the mole's jumpsuit. In the headlights of the crime-scene truck, one of his pant legs was stained pink, as though he were bleeding from a calf wound.
"Jesus," Black said. He pulled on the seams of his own legs, lifting the cuffs above the shoes. "It's blood."
The mole dropped to his knees, pulled a paper napkin from a pocket, and laid it flat on the wet blacktop. When it was wet, he picked it up and held it in the truck lights. The handkerchief showed a pinkish tinge.
"They must've emptied her out," Sherrill said.
The mole shook his head. "Not blood," he said. He held the towel between himself and the truck lights and looked through it.
"Then what is it?"
The tech shrugged. "Paint. Maybe lawn chemicals. It's not blood, though."
"That's something," Sherrill said, her face pale in the headlights. She looked down at her shoes. "I hate wading around in it. If you don't clean it up right away, it stinks."
"But it's blood on the shoe," Lucas said.
"I believe it is," said the mole.
Sherrill had been watching Lucas fumble with the whatever-it-was and finally figured it out. A ring. "Is that a ring?" she asked.
Lucas quickly pushed his hand in his coat pocket; he might have blushed. "Yeah. I guess."
"You guess? Don't you know?" She handed the shoe bag to Black. "Engagement?"
"Yeah."
"Can I see it?" She stepped closer and consciously batted her eyes.
"What for?" He stepped back; there was no place to hide.
"So I can fuckin' steal the stone," Sherrill said impatiently. Then, wheedling again: " 'Cause I want to look at it, why do you think?"
"Better show it to her," Black said. "If you don't, she'll be whining about it the rest of the night…"
"Shut up," Sherrill snapped at Black. Black shut up and the mole stepped back. To Lucas, "Come on, let me see it. Please?"
Lucas reluctantly took his hand out of his pocket and dropped the ring into Sherrill's open palm. She half-turned, so she could see the stone in the headlights. "Holy cow," she said reverently. She looked at Black. "The diamond is bigger'n your dick."
"But not nearly as hard," Black said.
The mole sadly shook his head. This kind of talk between unmarried men and women was another sign that the world was going to heck in a handbasket; that the final days were here.
They all started through the drizzle toward the school, the mole looking into the sky, for signs of God or Lucifer; Black, carrying the bloody shoe; Lucas with his head down; and Sherrill marvelling at the three-carat, tear-shaped diamond sparkling in all the brilliant flashing cop lights.
The school cafeteria was decorated with hand-painted Looney Tunes characters, and was gloomy despite it: the place had the feel of a bunker, all concrete block and small windows too high to see out of.
Bob Greave sat at a too-short cafeteria table in a too-short chair, drinking a Diet Coke, taking notes on a secretarial pad. He wore a rust-colored Italian-cut suit and a lightweight, beige micro-fiber raincoat. A thin man in a trench coat sat next to him, in another too-short chair, his bony knees sticking up like Ichabod Crane's. He looked as though he might twitch.
Lucas walked through the double doors with Black, Sherrill, and the mole trailing like wet ducklings. "Hey, Bob," Lucas said.
"Is that the shoe?" Greave asked, looking at the bag Black was carrying.
"No, it's Tom's," Lucas said, a half-second before he remembered about Black and had to smother a nervous laugh. Black apparently didn't notice. The man with the incipient twitch said, "Are you Chief-Davenport?"
Lucas nodded. "Yeah."
"Mr, Greave"-the man nodded at the detective-"said I had to stay until you got here. But I don't have anything else to say. So can I go?"
"I want to hear the story," Lucas said.
Girdler ran through it quickly. He had come to the school to talk to the chairperson about the year's PTA agenda, and had encountered Mrs. Manette and her daughters just outside the door, in the shelter of the overhang. Mrs. Manette had asked his advice about a particular problem-he was a therapist, as was she-and they chatted for a few moments, and he went inside.
Halfway down the hall and around a corner, he recalled a magazine citation she'd asked for, and that he couldn't remember when she'd first asked. He started back, and when he turned the corner, fifty or sixty feet from the door, he saw a man struggling with Manette's daughter.
"He pushed her into the van and went around it and drove away," Girdler said.
"And you saw the kids in the van?"
"Mmmm, yes…" he said, his eyes sliding away, and Lucas thought, He's lying. "They were both on the floor. Mrs. Manette was sitting up, but she had blood on her face."
"What were you doing?" Lucas asked.
"I was running down the hall toward the doors. I thought maybe I could stop them," Girdler said, and again his eyes slid away. "I got there too late. He was already going out the drive. I'm sure he had a Minnesota license plate, though. Red truck, sliding doors. A younger man, big. Not fat, but muscular. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans."
"You didn't see his face."
"Not at all. But he was blond and had long hair, like a rock 'n' roll person. Hair down to his shoulders."
"Huh. And that's it?"
Girdler was offended: "I thought it was quite a bit. I mean, I chased after him, but he was gone. Then I ran back and got the women in the office to dial 911. If you didn't catch him, it's not my fault."
Lucas smiled and said, "I understand there was a kid here. A girl, who saw some of it."
Girdler shrugged. "I doubt she saw much. She seemed confused. Maybe not too bright."
Lucas turned to Greave, who said, "I got what I could from her. It's about the same as Mr. Girdler. The kid's mother was pretty upset."
"Great," Lucas said.
He hung around for another ten minutes, finishing with Girdler, talking to Greave and the other cops. "Not much, is there?"
"Just the blood," Sherrill said. "I guess we already knew there was blood, from Girdler and the kid."
"And the red stuff in the parking lot," said the mole, looking at the napkin he'd used to soak it up. "I bet it's some kind of semi-water-soluble paint, and he painted the van to disguise it."
"Think so?"
"Everybody says it was red, and this is red. I think it's a possibility. But I just don't see…"
"What?"
The mole scratched his head. "Why did he do it this way? Why right in the middle of the day, and three-to-one? I wonder if it could be a mistake or some spur-of-the-moment thing by a guy on drugs? But if it was spur-of-the-moment, how would he know to take Mrs. Manette? He must've known who she was… unless he just came here because it's a rich kid's school and he'd take anybody, and he saw the Lexus."
"Then why not just snatch a kid? You don't want the folks if you're looking for ransom. You want the parents getting the money for you," Black said.
"Sounds goofier'n shit," Sherrill said, and they all nodded.
"That could be an answer-she's a shrink, and maybe the guy used to be a patient. A nut," Black said.
"Whatever, I hope it was planned and done for the money," Lucas said,
"Yeah?" The mole looked at him with interest. "Why?"
" 'Cause if it was some doper or a goddamn gang-banger doing a spur-of-the-moment thing, and they haven't dropped them off by now…"
"Then they're dead," Sherrill finished.
"Yeah." Lucas looked around the little circle of cops. "If it wasn't planned, Andi Manette and her kids are outa here."