The second bedroom had two beds and no chests. All the clothing was stacked inside boxes, some plastic and made for storage, some cardboard and made for moving. Personal papers were scattered across a windowsill next to one of the beds. He picked up a letter, glanced at the address: Billy Hood. The return address was in Bemidji and the handwriting was feminine. His wife, probably. Lucas looked through the letter, but it was mostly a litany of complaints followed by a request for money for the wife and a daughter.

He quickly went through the boxes stacked beside the bed. One was half full of underwear and socks, a second was stacked with several pairs of worn jeans and a couple of belts. A third held winter-weight shirts and sweaters, with a couple sets of thermal underwear.

The bedroom had one closet. The door was standing open and Lucas patted down the shirts and jackets hanging inside. Nothing. He dropped to his knees and pushed the clothing out of the way and checked the bottom. A lever-action Sears.30-.30. He cranked the lever down. Unloaded. A box of shells sat on the floor beside the butt. He got up, looked around, found a torn pair of underpants.

"What're you doing?" Lily was in the doorway.

"Found a gun. I'm going to jam it. What'd you get in the kitchen?" He ripped a square of material out of the underpants.

"There were some phone numbers on papers around the phone. I got them."

"Look in all the drawers."

"I did. Paged through the calendar, looked through a kind of general catchall basket and drawer full of junk. Went through the phone book. There was a number written in the back with a red pen and there was a red pen right next to the book, so it might be recent…" She glanced at a piece of paper in her hand. "It has a six-one-four area code. That's the Twin Cities, right? Maybe…"

"No, we're six-one-two," Lucas said. "I don't know where six-one-four is. Sure it was six-one-four?"

"Yeah…" She disappeared and Lucas made a tight little ball of the underpants material and pushed it down the muzzle with a ballpoint. The material was tightly packed, and after two or three inches, he couldn't force it down any farther. Satisfied, he put the rifle back in the closet and closed the door.

"That six-one-four code is southwestern Ohio," Lily said from the doorway. She was looking at a phone book.

"He could be coming back that way," Lucas said.

"I'll get somebody to run down the number," Lily said. She closed the phone book. "What else?"

"Check the front-room closets. I gotta finish here."

There was a box under Hood's bed. Lucas pulled it out. A photo album, apparently some years old, covered with dust. He glanced through it, then pushed it back under the bed. A moment later, Lily called, "Shotgun." Lucas stepped into the living room just as she cracked open an old single-shot twelve-gauge.

"Shit," Lucas said. "No point in trying to jam that. He'll be looking right through the barrel when he puts a shell in."

"Don't see any shells," Lily said. "Should we take it?"

"Better not. If his roommates are involved, we don't want anything missing…"

Lucas went back to the bedroom and looked through the other man's boxes. There was nothing of interest, no letters or notes that might tie the others more intimately to Hood. He went back into the living room. "Lily?"

"I'm in the bathroom," she called. "Find anything else?"

"No. How about you?" He poked his head into the bathroom and found her carefully going through the medicine cabinet.

"Nothing serious." She took a prescription-drug bottle out of the cabinet and looked at it, her forehead wrinkling. "There's a prescription here for Hood. Strong stuff, but I don't see how you could abuse it."

"What is it?"

"An antihistamine. The label says it's for bee stings. My father used it. He was allergic to bees and fire ants. If he got stung, his whole body would swell up. It used to scare the shit out of him; he'd think he was smothering. And he might have too, if he didn't have his medicine around. The swelling can pinch off your windpipe…"

Lucas shrugged. "No use to us."

Lily put the plastic bottle of pills back in the cabinet, closed it and followed him into the living room. "Anything else?"

"I guess not," Lucas said. "We fucked up a gun; I hope there aren't any shells for the shotgun."

"Didn't see any. Are you going to do any pictures?"

"Yeah. Just a few views." Lucas took a half-dozen Polaroid photos of the rooms and paced off the main room's dimensions, which he dictated into the tape recorder.

"You know, we really could spend more time going through the place," Lily suggested.

"Better not. What you get quick is probably all you're going to get," Lucas said. "Never push when you're inside somebody else's house. All kinds of shit can happen. Friends stop by unexpectedly. Relatives. Get in and get out."

"You sound more and more experienced…"

Lucas shrugged. "You got the warrant?"

"Oh, yeah." Lily took it out of her purse and stuck it in the sleeve of a winter coat in the living room closet. "We'll tell the court we put it one place he'd find it for sure. Of course, he's got to put on the coat."

"Which he probably wouldn't do Until winter…"

"Which is not that far away," Lily said.

"So all right," Lucas said. "Did we change anything?"

"Nothing I can see," Lily said.

"Let me take a last look in the bedroom." He stepped into the bedroom, looked around and finally opened the closet door an inch. "I'm slipping," he said. "The damn door was open when I came in and I closed it."

Lily was looking at him curiously. Lucas said, "What?"

"I'm really kind of impressed," she conceded. "You're pretty good at this."

"That's the nicest thing you ever said to me."

She grinned and shrugged. "So I'm a little competitive."

"I'm sorry about ragging you this morning," Lucas said, the words tumbling out. "I'm not a responsible human being before noon. I don't daylight; I really don't."

"I shouldn't have picked on you," she said. "I just want to get this job done."

"Are we making up?"

She turned away toward the door, her back to him.

"It's all right with me," she said. "Let's get out of here." She opened the door and peered down the hallway.

"Clear," she said.

Lucas was just behind her. "If we're going to make up, we ought to do it right," he said.

She turned and looked at him. "What?"

He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, and the kiss came back for just the barest fraction of a second, a returned pressure with a hint of heat. Then she pulled away and stepped out into the hall, flustered.

"Enough of that shit," she said.

It was a five-minute walk down the block, around the corner, up the alley and into the surveillance apartment. Lily kept her head turned, apparently interested in watching the apartment buildings go by. Once or twice, Lucas felt her glance at him, and then quickly away. He could still feel the pressure of her lips on his.

"How'd we do?" Del asked when they got back to the apartment. Sloan stood up and wandered over. A third detective had arrived and was sitting on an aluminum lawn chair, reading a book and watching the street. A man in a gray suit sat on a folding canvas camp stool next to the window. He was reading a hardcover book and smoking a pipe.

"Found a couple of guns, fucked one of them up," Lucas said. Under his breath he asked, "Feeb?"

Del nodded, and they glanced at the FBI man in the gray suit. "Observing," Del muttered. In a louder voice he said, "Get anything else?"

"A phone number," Lily said. "I'll call Anderson and see how quick he can run down that Ohio phone."

Anderson called Kieffer and Kieffer called Washington. Washington made three calls. Ten minutes after Lily talked to Anderson, Kieffer got a call from the agent-in-charge in Columbus, Ohio. The number was for a motel off Interstate near Columbus. An hour later, an FBI agent showed a motel desk clerk a wire photograph of Hood. The clerk nodded, remembering the face, and said Hood had stayed at the motel the night before. The clerk found the registration, signed as Bill Harris. There was a license-plate number, but a check showed that the number had never been issued in Minnesota.