If he had kept those things, they could find a way to get a warrant and take him. But there was none of it. Standing arms akimbo, Lucas looked around the unnaturally neat living room, and then realized: it was unnaturally neat.

"We scared the cocksucker and he cleaned the place out," Lucas said aloud. If they had talked to Nester the previous week, before the incident at McGowan's… No point in thinking about it. He started to turn out of the living room, when the videocassette recorder caught his eye. There were no tapes in evidence, but an empty tape carton sat beside the television. He reached down, turned the machine on, and punched the eject button. After a minute's churning, the VCR produced a tape.

"Where is he?"

"Leaving the shoe store."

Lucas turned on the television and started the tape. It was blank. He stopped it, backed it up, ran it again, and was startled when his own face popped up on the screen.

"God damn, the interview," Lucas muttered to himself. The camera cut to Carla. He watched the interview through to the end, waited until the screen went blank, and turned off the recorder and the television.

What little doubt he had had disappeared with the video recording. He walked back to the bedroom, lifted the bedspread, and pushed his arm between the mattress and box springs. Nothing.

He dipped back in his jacket pocket and took out an envelope and shook out the pictures. Lewis, Brown, Wheatcroft, the others. Handling the photos by their edges, he pushed them under the mattress as far as he could reach. A thorough search would find them.

When it was done, he straightened the bedspread and began moving out of the apartment, working as methodically on his way out as he had on the way in. Everything in place. Everything checked. All lights out. He peered out at the sidewalk. Nobody there. He put the chain back on the front door and went into the garage. He took ten minutes to check the newspapers. None were shredded. He restacked the bundles as he'd found them, and let himself out through the garage door.

Back on the sidewalk, he walked briskly away. He had almost reached the Ford Escort when the monitor beeped.

"He's out of the mall, headed toward his car. Three and five stay on the ground, lead cars saddle up now…"

Lucas and Daniel sat alone in Daniel's dimly lit office, looking at each other through a yellow pool of light cast by a desk lamp. "So even if we got in, we wouldn't find anything," Daniel concluded.

"I couldn't swear to that, but it looks to me like he cleaned the place out. He may have hidden something-I didn't have enough time to really tear the place apart," Lucas said. "But I didn't find anything conclusive. The Nikes are right, the rubbers are right, his size is right, the car is right. But you know and I know that we could find that combination in fifty people out there."

"Fifty people who are also lawyers and hang around the courthouse and have a Texas accent and would get a gun from Rice?"

"But we've got no direct evidence that he got the gun from Rice. And all the other stuff is real thin. You've got to believe that he'd get the best attorney around, and a good attorney would cut us to pieces."

"How about voice analysis on the tapes?"

"You know what the courts think of that."

"But it's another thing."

"Yeah. I know. It's tempting…"

"But?"

"But if we keep watching him, we should get him. He didn't get his kill. He's scared now, but if he's compelled to kill, he'll be going back out. Sooner or later. I'd bet in the next week. This time, we won't lose him. We'll get him entering some place and he'll have all that shit with him, the Kotex and the potato and the gloves. We'll have him cold."

"I'll talk to the county attorney. I'll tell him what we have now and what we might get. See what he says. But basically, I think you're right. It's too thin to risk."

Surveillance posts were set up in an apartment across the street from the maddog's and one house down; and behind and two houses down.

"It was the best we could do, and it ain't bad," the surveillance chief said. "We can see both doors and all windows. With the freeway on the south, he can only get out of the neighborhood to the north, and we're north of him. And he ain't going to see us anyway."

"What's that glow? Is he reading in bed?"

"Night-light, we think," the surveillance chief said.

Lucas nodded. He recalled seeing one in the bedroom but couldn't say so. "He's trying to keep away the nightmares," he said instead.

"He'd have them if anybody did," said the surveillance chief. "Are you going to work a regular schedule with us?"

"I'll be here every night," Lucas said. "If he breaks off his regular work pattern during the day, I want you to beep me. I'll come running. He hasn't ever hit anybody in the early morning, so I'll head home after he goes to bed. Get some sleep. I'll check with the surveillance team first thing in the morning."

"Stay close. When it goes down, it could go fast."

"Yeah. I was at the Fuckup, remember?"

Lucas looked out the window at the maddog's apartment, at the steady dim glow from the second floor. This time there wouldn't be a fuckup.

CHAPTER 28

The maddog should never have spotted the surveillance. It was purely an accident.

He left a late-afternoon real-estate closing at a bank in the Mississippi River town of Hastings, twenty-odd miles south of the Twin Cities. It was dark. He crossed the Mississippi at the Hastings bridge and drove north on Highway 61, through the suburban towns of Cottage Grove, St. Paul Park, and Newport. As he passed through St. Paul Park he found himself behind an uncovered gravel truck. Pieces of gravel bounced out of the back of the truck and along the highway. A big one could star a windshield.

The maddog, thinking of the shiny finish on his new Thunderbird, moved into the left lane and accelerated around the truck. The close-surveillance car behind him caught the truck a moment later. Since the maddog appeared to be in no particular hurry, intent only on staying ahead of the truck, the surveillance car fell in behind it.

Gravel bounced around the surveillance car, but the cops inside didn't care. The car was mechanically sound, but, like most surveillance cars, was not much to look at, just a plain vanilla Dodge. A few dings more or less wouldn't make any difference. And the gravel truck made excellent cover.

None of it would have mattered if one particularly large rock hadn't bounced off the highway and knocked half the plastic lens off the amber left-turn light. The cops inside heard the thump, but couldn't see the broken lens.

"We oughta give this asshole a ticket," one of the surveillance cops said as the rock bounced off.

"Right," the driver answered. "Go ahead and stick the light on the roof."

"Could you see Daniel's face? We say, 'Well, we was following him when we ran into this incredible asshole with a truck full of rocks… '"

"He'd put us in prison," the first cop said. "He'd find a way."

The maddog decided to stop at a fast-food restaurant off the Interstate loop highway, I-494. The loop intersected with Highway 61 just north of the town of Newport. When the maddog pulled onto the circular entrance ramp for I-494, he glanced into the rearview mirror and noted, with no particular interest, the unusual turn signal on a car a hundred yards back. The signal flashed a peculiar combination of amber and unshielded white..

The close-surveillance car was tighter on the maddog's tail than it normally would have been. The lead car had continued up Highway 61 through the I-494 interchange and would now have to find a place to turn around and catch up from behind. In the meantime, until one of the trailing surveillance cars could move up into the lead position, the cops in the close-surveillance car couldn't take chances. They stuck close.