"We were hoping to stop the kidnapper's van," Lucas said mildly, but he was getting angry.
Thomas Bernet waggled his jowls: "We appreciate that, but you have to understand that this has been a trauma."
They were standing in the quarry-tiled entry of the Bernets' house, a closet to one side, a framed poster on the opposite wall, a souvenir from a Rembrandt show at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam in 1992. A sad, middle-aged Rembrandt peered out at Lucas. "You have to understand that this is a kidnapping investigation and it could become a murder investigation," Lucas snapped, his voice developing an edge. "One way or another, we'll talk to your daughter and get answers from her. We can do it pleasantly, here, or unpleasantly down at Homicide, with a court order." He paused for a half-beat. "I'd rather not get the court order."
"We don't need threats," Thomas Bernet said. He was a division manager at General Mills and knew a threat when he heard one.
"I'm not threatening you; I'm laying out the legal realities," Lucas said. "Three people's lives are in jeopardy and if your daughter has a bad night's sleep over it, or two bad nights, that's tough. I've got to think about the victims and what they're going through. Now, do I talk to, uh, Mercedes, or do I get the court order?"
Mercedes Bernet was a small girl with a pointed chin, a hundred-dollar haircut, and eyes that were five years too old. She wore a pink silk kimono and sat on the living room couch, next to a Yamaha grand piano, with her ankles crossed. She had recently developed breasts, Lucas thought, and sat with her back coyly arched, making the best of what was not yet too much. With her mother sitting beside her, and her father hovering behind the chair, she told Lucas what she'd seen.
"Grace was standing there, looking back and forth, like she didn't know what was going on. She even walked back toward the door for a minute, then she went back out. Then this van pulled around in front, going that way." She pointed to her left. "And this guy jumps out, and he runs up to her and she started to back up and the guy just grabbed her by her blouse and by her hair and he jerked her right off the porch-thing…"
"The portico," Clarice Bernet said.
"Yeah, whatever," said Mercedes, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, he pulled her toward the van and slid the door back and threw her inside. I mean, he was this huge dude. He just threw her. And before he closed the door, I saw two other people in there. Mrs. Dunn…"
"Mrs. Manette," her mother said.
"Yeah, whatever, and she had blood on her face. She was, like, crawling. Then there was another kid in there that I thought was Genevieve, but I couldn't see her face. She was, like, lying down on the floor, and then the guy closed the door."
"Where was Mr. Girdler during all of this?"
"I didn't see him until afterwards. He was behind me somewhere. I told him to call 911, but he was like, Duh." She rolled her eyes again and Lucas smiled.
Then: "Think about this," Lucas said. "Tell me exactly what the kidnapper looked like."
Mercedes leaned back, closed her eyes, and a minute later, eyes still closed, said, "Big. Yellow hair, but it looked kinda weird, like it was peroxided or something. 'Cause his skin looked dark, not like a black dude, but you know… dark." She opened her eyes, and studied Lucas's face. "like you, kinda. His face didn't look like yours-he had, like, a real narrow face-but he was about your color and big like you."
"What was he wearing? Anything special?"
She closed her eyes again and lived through the scene, then opened her eyes, looking surprised, and said, "Oh, shit."
"Young lady!" Clarice Bernet was shocked,
Lucas wagged his head once and asked, "What?"
"He was wearing a GenCon shirt. I knew there was something…"
He said, "GenCon? Are you sure? Did you see what year?"
"You know what it is?" A skeptical eyebrow went up.
"Sure. I write role-playing games…"
"Really? My boyfriend…"
"Mercedes!" Her mother's voice took a warning tone and Mercedes swerved into safer territory.
"A friend at school has one. I recognized it right away-the shirt isn't the same as my friend's, but it was a GenCon. Great big Gen-Con right on the front, and one of those weird dice. Everything black and white, kinda cheap…"
"What's a GenCon?" asked Thomas Bernet, looking suspiciously from his daughter to Lucas, as though GenCon might somehow be linked to ConDom.
"It's a gamer's convention, over in Lake Geneva," Lucas said. To Mercedes: "Why didn't you tell the other officer?"
"I could barely get his attention," she said. "And that asshole Girdler…"
"Mercedes!" Her mother was on the word like a wolf on a lamb.
"Well, he is," she said, barely defensive. "He kept talking all over me-I don't think he saw hardly any of it. He was mostly hiding down the hall."
"Okay," Lucas said. "What about the truck? Anything unusual about it?"
She nodded. "Yeah, there was, and I told the other cop. They'd painted over the sign on the truck. I don't know what it said, but there were letters on the door and they were painted right over."
"What letters?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. It was just something I sorta noticed when I went up closer to the windows and he was driving away. It wasn't a good paint job, you know? They just slopped right over the old letters."
Lucas used the Bernets' phone to call back to the office, and dropped the't-shirt and truck information with Anderson.
"Heading home?" Anderson asked.
"Not much more to do tonight, unless we get a call. Are we still doing the door-to-door?"
"Yeah, up in Manette's neighborhood now. Asking for suspicious activities. Haven't heard anything back."
"Let me know."
"Yeah, I'll be putting together a book on it… Have you asked Weather yet?"
"Jesus Christ…" Lucas laughed.
"Hey, it's primo gossip."
"I'll let you know," Lucas said. He could feel the engagement ring in his pants pocket. Maybe ask her, he thought.
"I got a feeling about this," Anderson said.
"About Weather?"
"No. About the Manettes. There's something going on here. So they're not dead yet. They're out there waiting for us."
Weather Karkinnen made a bump on the left side of the bed, near the window. The window was open an inch or two, so she could get the fresh cold air.
"Bad?" she asked, sleepily.
"Yes." He slipped in beside her, rolled close, kissed her on the neck behind the ear.
"Tell me," she said. She rolled onto her back.
"It's late," he said. She was a surgeon. She operated almost every day, usually starting at seven o'clock.
"I'm okay; I've got a late starting time tomorrow."
"It's Tower Manette's daughter and her two children, her daughters." He outlined the kidnapping, told her about the blood on the shoe.
"I hate it when there are kids involved," she said.
"I know."
Weather was a surgeon, but she looked like a jock-a fighter, actually, somebody who'd gone a few rounds too many. She had wide shoulders and she tended to carry her hands in front of her, fists clenched, like a punch-drunk boxer. Her nose was a little too large and bent slightly to the left; her hair was cut short, a soft brown touched with white. She had the high Slavic cheekbones of a full-blooded Finn, and dark blue eyes. For all of her jockiness, she was a small woman. Lucas could pick her up like a parcel and carry her around the house. Which he had done, on occasion; but never fully clothed.
Weather was not pretty, but she reached him with a power he hadn't experienced before: His attraction had grown so strong that it scared him at times. He'd lie awake at night, watching her sleep, inventing nightmares in which she left him.
They'd met in northern Wisconsin, where Weather had been working as a surgeon in a local hospital. Lucas had run down a child-sex ring, and the killer at the heart of it. In the final moments of a chase through the woods, he'd been shot in the throat by a young girl, and Weather had saved his life, opening his throat with a jack knife.