"I don't go to bed until two o'clock in the morning," Manette said irritably. "There's no point in going up now."

"But it's been exhausting," the woman said. She seemed to be talking about herself, and Lucas realized that she must be Manette's wife. She spoke to Roux: "Tower's under a lot of stress, and he's had health problems."

"We wanted him to know that we're doing everything we can," Roux said. She looked back at Manette. "I've assigned Lucas to oversee the investigation."

"Thank you," Manette said. And to Lucas: "Anything you need, anybody that I know, that you want to talk to, just call. And let me know about that reward, if it would be useful."

"George Dunn," Lucas said.

"Get him on the phone, will you, Helen?" Manette said to his wife. "I'll talk to him."

"And after that, Tower, I want you to kick back and close your eyes, even if it's just for half an hour," Wolfe said. She reached out and touched his hand. "Take some time to think."

Lucas dropped the chief at her house, promising to call back at midnight, or when anything broke.

"Lester's running the routine," Roux said as the car idled in her driveway. "I need you to pluck this thing out of the sky, so to speak."

"Doesn't have a plucking feel about it," Lucas said. "Something complicated is going on."

"If you don't, we're gonna get plucked," Roux said. Then: "You want fifteen seconds of politics?"

"Sure."

"This is one of those cases that people will talk about for a generation," Roux said. "If we find Manette and her kids, we're gold. We'll be untouchable. But if we fuck it up…" She let her voice trail away.

"Let me go pluck," Lucas said.

George Dunn's house was a modest white ranch, tucked away on a big tree-filled lot on a dead-end street in Edina. Lucas left the Porsche in the driveway and climbed the stone walk to the front door, pushed the doorbell. A thick-faced cop, usually in uniform, now in slacks and a golf shirt, pushed open the door.

"Chief Davenport…"

"Hey, Rick," Lucas said. "They've got you watching the phones?"

"Yeah." In a lower voice, "And Dunn."

"Where is he?"

"Back in his office-the light back there." The cop nodded to the left.

The house was stacked with brown cardboard moving boxes, a dozen of them in the front room, more visible in the kitchen and breakfast area. There was little furniture-a couch and chair in the living room, a round oak table in the breakfast nook. Lucas followed a hall back to the light and found Dunn sitting at a rectangular dining table in what had been meant as a family room. A large-screen TV sat against one wall, the picture on, the sound off. A stereo system was stacked on a pile of three cardboard boxes.

Dunn was huddled over a pile of paper, with a crooked-neck lamp pulled close to them, his face half-in and half-out of the light. To his left, a half-dozen two-drawer file cabinets were pushed against a wall. Half of them had open drawers. Another stack of cardboard boxes sat on the floor beside the file cabinets. On the far side of the room, three chairs faced each other across a glass coffee table.

Lucas stepped inside the room and said, "Mr. Dunn."

Dunn looked up. "Davenport," he said. He dropped his pen, pushed back from the table, and stood to shake hands.

Dunn was a fullback ten years off the playing field: broad shoulders, bullet head, beat-up face. His front teeth were so even, so white and perfect, that they had to be a bridge. He wore a gray cashmere sweater, with the sleeves pushed up, showing a gold Rolex; jeans, and loafers without socks. He shook hands, held the grip for a second, nodded, pointed at a chair, sat down, and said, "Ask."

"You want a lawyer?" Lucas asked.

"I had one. It was a waste of money," Dunn said.

Lucas sat down, leaned forward, an elbow on his thigh. "You say you were in your car when your wife was taken. But you don't have any witnesses and you made no calls that would confirm it."

"I made one call to her, while she was on her way over to the school. I told that to the other guys…"

"But that was an hour before she was taken. A prosecutor might say that the call tipped you off to exactly where she'd be, so you'd have time to get there. Or send somebody," Lucas said. "And after that call, you were out of your office, and out of everybody's sight."

"I know it. If I'd done… this thing… I'd have a better alibi," Dunn said. He made a sliding gesture with one hand. "I'd have been someplace besides my car. But the fact is, I spend maybe a quarter of my business day in my car. I've got a half-dozen developments going around the Cities, from west of Minnetonka to the St. Croix. I hit every one every day."

"And you use your car phone all the time," Lucas pointed out.

"Not after business hours," Dunn said, shaking his head. "I called the office from Yorkville-that's the job over in Woodbury-and after that, and after I talked to Andi, I just headed back in. When I got here, the cops were waiting for me."

"Who do you think took her?" Lucas asked.

Dunn shook his head. "It's gotta be one of the nuts she handles," he said. "She gets the worst. Sex criminals, pyromaniacs, killers. Nobody's too crazy for her."

Lucas gazed at him for a moment. The gooseneck lamp made a pool of light around his hands, but his pug's face was half in shadow; in an old black-and-white movie, he might have been the devil. "How much do you dislike her?" Lucas asked. "Your wife?"

"I don't dislike her," Dunn said, bouncing once in the chair. "I love her."

"That's not the word around town."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." He put his fingers to his forehead, scrubbed at it. "I screwed a woman from the office. Once." Lucas let the silence grow, and Dunn finally launched himself from his chair, walked to a box, opened it, took out a bottle of scotch. "Whiskey?"

"No, thanks." And he let the silence go.

"We're talking about a major-league cookie, this chick, in my face five days a week," Dunn said. He made a Coke-bottle tits-and-ass figure with his hands. "Andi and I had a few disagreements-not big ones, but we've got a lot going on. Careers, busy all the time, we don't see each other enough… like that. So this chick is there, in the office-she was my traffic manager-and finally I jump her. Right there on her desk, pencils and pens all over the place, Post-it notes stuck to her butt. The next thine I know, she gets her little handbag and her business suit and shows up at Audi's office to announce that she loves me and I love her." He ran his hands through his hair, then laughed, a short, half-humorous bark. "Christ, what a nightmare that must've been."

"Doesn't sound like one of your better days," Lucas admitted. He remembered days like that.

"Man, I wish I hadn't done it," Dunn said. He lipped the bottle of whiskey in his hand, caught it. "I lost my wife and a pretty goddamn good traffic manager on the same day."

Lucas watched him for a long beat. He wasn't acting.

"Is there any reason you might've killed your wife for her money?"

Dunn looked up, vaguely surprised: "Christ, you don't fuck around, do you?"

Lucas shook his head. "Could you have done that? Does it make sense?"

"No. Just between you and me-there isn't that much money."

"Um…"

"I know, Tower Manette and his millions, the Manette Trust, the Manette Foundation, all that shit," Dunn said. He flicked a hand as if batting away a cobweb, then walked across the room, stepped through a doorway and flicked on a light. He opened a refrigerator door, dropped a couple of ice cubes in his glass, and came back. "Andi gets a hundred thousand a year, more or less, from her share of the Manette Trust. When the kids turn eighteen, they'll get a piece of it. And they'll get bigger pieces when they turn twenty-five and forty. If they were… to die… I wouldn't see any of that. What I'd get is the house, and the stuff in it. Frankly, I don't need it."