"And she met Mail at the apartment?"
"Yeah. He asked about her name, said he'd had a doctor named Manette. He said some things that made her realize that he was the guy Andi had talked about a few times-the guy so crazy that he scared the life out of her. He gave her a name, Martin LaDoux. She found his phone number and started calling him."
"We could have seen it," Lucas said.
"We would have," Sloan said. "But man, it's only been five days. Not a whole five days, yet."
"Seems like a century," Lucas said.
A moment later, Sloan said, "You know what she asked me?"
"What?"
"If her helping us would qualify for Dunn's reward money…"
Halfway back, they got a call from the chiefs secretary, saying Roux was on the way to the hospital. She wanted Lucas and Sloan to stop by. When they arrived, the hospital's turnout was clogged with cars.
Sloan looked him over. "Maybe I oughta drop you at emergency," he said. "You look like shit."
"I'm all right," Lucas said, getting out of the car. His shoes were ruined, his suit pants, still wet, clung to his legs. His underwear and shirt, both soaked, felt like they were full of sand. His tie was a wet, twisted wreck; he hadn't shaved.
Sloan looked him over. "Your suit coat looks nice," he said.
Roux saw him first, hurried down the tile hallway, and caught him in her arms with a powerful hug. "Jesus, you got them back. I never would have believed it."
Dunn was there, pounding him on the back. "Jesus Christ, all of them." His face was luminous.
"Easy," Lucas said. "How's Genevieve?"
"Exposure," Dunn said, his face going dark. "She wouldn't have lasted the rest of the day. And she may have nerve damage in her legs. Maybe not too serious, it's too soon to tell. But the way she was caught up in the coat, the nerves were all pinched up…"
"Andi and Grace?"
Dunn looked at the floor, and then away. "Physically, they'll be okay; psychologically, they're in terrible shape. Andi is just… just rambling. God, I don't know…" And he turned and walked away without another word, back toward a cluster of doctors.
"You heard about Helen Manette?" Lucas asked Roux.
"From Franklin," she said. She shook her head. "I don't know what's gonna happen. We gotta talk with everybody from the state's attorney's office. We're gonna arrest her, but if we ever get her in court, I just don't know. But she's not our biggest problem."
Lucas nodded. "Wolfe?"
"Yeah. We're meeting with her and her lawyer." Roux looked at her watch. "In about forty-five minutes. You better be around, in case I need you."
"I'd hoped she'd go away, on her own," Lucas said.
"She hasn't," Roux said grimly.
There was a buzz of noise at the hospital, and Lucas looked down the hall. The mayor pushed through, and Roux said, "I gotta go. Stick close to your office."
"Sure," Lucas said.
Roux called an hour later, as Lucas sat in his office, talking with Sloan and Del. "You better come down."
The chiefs secretary waved him through, saying, "They're waiting," and "God, that was great this morning. You're my hero."
"Yeah, but for how long?" Lucas asked.
"Rest of the week," she promised.
Nancy Wolfe, a loose-fleshed man with freckles and shiny red hair, Lester, and Rose Marie Roux faced each other in a tense rectangle around Roux's desk. The red-haired man's hands were steepled, and he wore a careful gray suit with a gold lapel pin. A lawyer, Lucas thought.
Roux pointed at an empty chair next to Lester. "Sit down. We're trying to work out what happened this morning."
"You know what happened," Wolfe snapped. She looked across the desk at Lucas, her eyes on fire. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
"What do you want?" Lucas asked.
"I want you out," she said. "I'll reserve the right to go to court no matter what happens, but I want you out now."
"We saved your partner's life," Lucas said.
"You should have found another way to do it…"
"There was no time."
"… without… violating me."
Lucas shook his head. "No time."
"You should have made some," Wolfe said.
Rose Marie cleared her throat. "Lucas will be staying. I won't fire him. In fact, I'm putting him in for a commendation. I'm sorry that you were inconvenienced."
"Inconvenienced?" Wolfe shrilled. "I was strip-searched and given these prison clothes and they made me sit there while they shouted at me"-her lip trembled-"and they wouldn't let me call anybody, a lawyer, or anybody."
"Rose Marie, we're talking about a lot of money," the lawyer said, dryly. "Guys have done a lot less than Davenport, to people who deserved it a lot more, and they've been hammered. People are tired of this department, the way it handles people. You lose a million, two million, five million-and that's possible, in this case-and you'll be out of here. If you fire Davenport, at least it'll be a sign that you disapprove."
Rose Marie was shaking her head, and said, "Won't do it."
The lawyer nodded at Wolfe and said, "Well, that's it, then."
Wolfe gathered up her purse. "We're definitely going ahead."
Lester said, out of nowhere, "You can go to court, but I don't think we'll lose. We had some good reasons to interview Dr. Wolfe."
Lucas glanced at Lester, uncertainly, then looked at Roux, who raised her eyebrows. She didn't know what Lester was talking about, either.
The lawyer, who had dropped his hands to his lap when he was talking about the five million, resteepled his fingers, then peeked at Lester from behind them. "I know what you're thinking. And if the jury was deciding right this minute, you might get away with it. Ms. Manette and her daughters are in the hospital, the TV people are going crazy, there'd be a lot of sympathy for what Chief Davenport did. But when we get to court, six months from now, or a year from now? You'll lose. And Ms. Wolfe has expressed a determination to follow up on this."
Lester tried to break in during the speech, and finally got in with, "That's not what I'm thinking. I'm not talking about the Manette case at all."
The lawyer stopped and asked, "Then what are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about William Charles Aakers and Carlos Neroda Sonches," Lester said. "Two of Dr. Wolfe's patients… and Andi Manette's. We were planning to ask Dr. Wolfe about these cases when Chief Davenport found out where the suspect Mail was hiding, and he had to leave. But we will come back to Dr. Wolfe on these…"
He had two manila folders in his hands. They were empty, but a cursive feminine handwriting on the tabs said, Aakers and Sonches. He passed the folders to the lawyer.
"What are these?" the redhead asked, looking at Wolfe.
"Two patients," she hissed. "This man is trying to blackmail me."
"I'm not trying to do anything of the sort," Lester said. "The eon-tents of these two files have been temporarily misplaced, due to some bureaucratic confusion with the other files in the case, but we'll find them and continue our evaluation. We feel that there might well be cause for prosecution."
"What?" the attorney asked. He was looking at Lucas.
Lucas shrugged, and Lester said, "Your client has been treating child molesters without informing the required law enforcement officials. It's all in the records. And we'll find these records. I'm gonna tear the department to pieces if I have to."
Roux leaned back in her chair; Lester looked intent, and Lucas looked away.
After a moment, Wolfe said, "You fuckers."
"Blackmail," Weather said that night. She was eating the back end of a lobster.
"I suppose," Lucas said. "She reserved the right to do whatever she wanted, but she won't do anything. She'll let it go."
"I don't think I approve," Weather said.