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from her. It's about the same as Mr. Girdler. The kid's mother was pretty upset."
    "Great," Lucas said.
    He hung around for another ten minutes, finishing with Girdler, talking to Greave and the other cops. "Not much, is there?"
    "Just the blood," Sherrill said. "I guess we already knew there was blood, from Girdler and the kid."
    "And the red stuff in the parking lot," said the mole, looking at the napkin he'd used to soak it up. "I bet it's some kind of semi-water-soluble paint, and he painted the van to disguise it."
    "Think so?"
    "Everybody says it was red, and this is red. I think it's a possibility. But I just don't see..."
    "What?"
    The mole scratched his head. "Why did he do it this way? Why right in the middle of the day, and three-to-one? I wonder if it could be a mistake or some spur-of-the-moment thing by a guy on drugs? But if it was spur-of-the-moment, how would he know to take Mrs. Manette? He must've known who she was... unless he just came here because it's a rich kid's school and he'd take anybody, and he saw the Lexus."
    "Then why not just snatch a kid? You don't want the folks if you're looking for ransom. You want the parents getting the money for you," Black said.
    "Sounds goofier'n shit," Sherrill said, and they all nodded.
    "That could be an answer--she's a shrink, and maybe the guy used to be a patient. A nut," Black said.
    "Whatever, I hope it was planned and done for the money," Lucas said, "Yeah?" The mole looked at him with interest. "Why?"
    " 'Cause if it was some doper or a goddamn gang-banger doing a spur-of-the-moment thing, and they haven't dropped them off by now..."
    "Then they're dead," Sherrill finished.
    "Yeah." Lucas looked around the little circle of cops. "If it wasn't planned, Andi Manette and her kids are outa here."

    Chapter 3
    >
    The chief lived in a 1920's brown-brick bungalow in a wooded neighborhood east of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, cheek-by-jowl with half the other smart politicians in the city; a house you had to be the right age to buy in 1978.
    The gabble of a televised football game was audible through the front door, and a moment after Lucas pushed the doorbell, the chief's husband opened it and peered out nearsightedly; his glasses were up on his forehead. "Come on in," he said, pushing open the door. "Rose Marie's in the study."
    "How is she?" Lucas asked.
    "Unhappy." He was a tall, balding lawyer, who wore a button vest and smelled vaguely of pipe tobacco. He reminded Lucas of Adlai Stevenson. Lucas followed him down through the house, a comfortable accumulation of overstuffed couches and chairs, mixed with turn-of-the-century oak, furnishings they might have inherited from prosperous farmer-parents.
    Rose Marie Roux, the Minneapolis Chief of Police, was sitting in the den, in a La-Z-Boy, with her feet up. She was wearing a sober blue business suit with white sweat socks. She was smoking.
    "Tell me you found them," she said, curling her toes at Lucas.
    "Yeah, they were shopping at the Mall of America," Lucas said. He dropped into the La-Z-Boy facing the chief. "They're all okay, and Tower Manette's talking about running you for the U. S. Senate."
    "Yeah, yeah," Roux said sourly. Her husband shook his head. "Tell me," she said.
    "She was hit so hard she was knocked out of her shoes and there's blood on one of them," Lucas said. "We've got some eyewitness who says that Andi Manette and the younger of the daughters were covered with blood, although there's a possibility it was something else, like paint. And we've got a description of the guy who did it..."
    "The perp," said Roux's husband.
    They both looked at him. He hadn't seen the inside of a courtroom since he was twenty-five. He got his cop talk from the television. "Yeah, the perp," Lucas said. And to Rose Marie, "The description is pretty general: big, tough, dirty-blond."
    "Damnit." Roux took a drag on her cigarette, blew it at the ceiling, then said, "The FBI will be in tomorrow..."
    "I know. The Minneapolis