"John, please," Andi begged.

Mail snarled at Genevieve, "Get out of here, kid, or I'll beat the shit out of you and drag your ass out."

Andi got to her knees and then to her feet, reached toward him. "John…"

He stepped back and his hand came up and caught her throat, and for a half-instant she thought she was dead: he squeezed for a second, then threw her back. "Get the fuck away." And to Genevieve: "Get out of here, kid, out the door."

"Wait, wait," Andi said. "Gen, take your coat, it's cold…" Genevieve had rolled her coat into a pillow, and Andi got it off the mattress, unrolled it, and fitted it around the child and buttoned it, kneeling, looking into Gen's eyes.

"Just be good," she said. "John won't hurt you…"

Genevieve went like her feet were stuck in glue, and Andi called, "Genevieve, honey, ask for a policeman. When you get to the mall, ask for a policeman and tell them who you are. They'll take you home to Daddy."

The door slammed in her face. Faintly, faintly, she could hear footsteps outside in the basement, but nothing else behind the muffled steel door.

"She'll be okay," Grace said. But she was beginning to cry, and the words came hard through the tears: "She's been in lots of malls. She'll just find a policeman and she'll go home. Dad'll take care of her."

"Yes." Andi dropped to the mattress, her hands covering her face: "Oh my God, Grace. Oh my God."

"I hate rich people," Sherrill muttered. She was wearing the same coat as the night before, but she'd added her own hat, a green baseball cap with a pale blue bill. Her hair was tucked underneath. She finished the outfit with pale blue sneaks, a torn-boy-with-great-breasts look. With her rosy cheeks and easy smile, Black thought she looked good enough to eat.

They'd dumped the city car in the parking lot outside Andi Manette's office building. The building, Sherrill thought, had been designed by a seriously snotty architect: black windows, red bricks, and copper flashing, snuggled into the side of a cattail-ringed pond, with a twisted chunk of rusty Corten steel out front. Black paused by the sculpture: the plaque said, Ray-Tracing Wrigley.

"You know what that's supposed to be?" he asked, looking up at it.

"Looks like a big stick of rusty steel chewing gum that somebody twisted," Sherrill said.

Black said, "Jesus, you're an art critic. That's what it must be."

Sherrill led the way across a bridge over a moatlike finger from the pond. Somebody had thrown a half-bucket of corn into the water, and a cluster of mallards and two Canada geese rooted through the shallow water weeds for the kernels. A half-dozen koi circled slowly among the ducks, their golden bodies just under the surface. The rain had stopped, and a thin sunshine, broken up by the yellow branches of weeping willows, dappled the pond.

"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."