"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 Acvira 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 Joveseat 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 any more," 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 Hermes 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 head. "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 Hermes 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 crab-grass 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-drolls, 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."