“Well-college successfully,” Virgil said. “Never got laid, but we got some to talk to us.”

She asked him how he felt about shooting people. He’d shot two people in his life, and had shot around a couple more. Of the people he’d shot, one man and one woman, he’d killed the man and had shot the woman in the foot. The same woman, as she lay wounded on the sidewalk, had been shot and killed seconds later by a second woman.

“Does it make you feel bad? Shooting people?” She was genuinely curious; the question wasn’t a hidden accusation.

“Yes. Of course. People, you know… Neither of those people I shot had children, and here they are, at the end of millions of years of evolution, ancestors lived through the ice ages, hunted bison and mammoths, and here it all ends in a puddle of blood on some street, or out in a weed field. Their whole line, whatever potential they may have had in the centuries ahead of us…”

“That sounds pretty dry and intellectual.”

“Because I’ve thought about it a lot. Intellectualized it. At the time, I felt pretty bad. I find you feel less bad the further you get away from it-but I dunno, it could come back on you later.”

She said, “It’d be a pretty big load, killing people,” she said.

“Yeah, well, you are what you do,” Virgil said. “That’s my take on it. I’m officially a killer. I think about it.”

He asked why her father, big shot that he was, a leading antiwar critic, environmental activist, full professor at the University of Wisconsin, deigned to take a year to teach at Metro State.

“Burnout. Pressure to perform all the time,” she said. “Always had to be out front on every issue. Maybe just getting old-things didn’t work out the way he thought they would. Also, maybe, he didn’t impress anybody at Wisconsin anymore. His big days are gone. He still impresses people at Metro State.”

“Why didn’t he get one of those fellowships or foundation grants and go live in New York or Paris or something? Go for long walks.”

She shrugged. “Some people are teachers and take it seriously. He does. That’s what he is-a teacher. So he looked for a job where he could stay in touch with things at Wisconsin.”

“And you came with him,” Virgil said.

“I’m trying to break the Madison spell-I’ve gotta get out of there. If I’m going to do anything with my life, I’ve got to start figuring out what it is. I can’t take dance lessons forever. I’ve pretty much figured out that my answer isn’t to dance with small repertory companies-and I’m not dedicated enough to make it with a big New York company. So I’m trying to figure out what to do.”

“And what have you figured out?” Virgil asked.

“I’m thinking… Don’t laugh…”

“I won’t.”

“Medicine,” Mai said.

“Oooh. That could be tough. But my boss’s wife is a surgeon, and she is really fascinated by it, really into it.”

“I could handle the academics,” she said confidently. “It’s just sometimes… you think, I’ll do all that work, years in school, and then… that’s it? That’s my life?”

Shrake called: “These guys around Warren -we’ve been watching them all day. These guys are heavy hitters. They’re all wired up, they’re talking to each other-there’s a whole net around him. And he was down talking to John Crumb, who’s like some big deal with the Republicans, and Crumb’s got his own net, and they all knew each other. Man, this is tough stuff. Who are all these guys? I’ve never seen them before.”

“He’s piping them in from someplace,” Virgil said. “Borrowing people, I guess-maybe all these security guys know each other or something.”

“We can’t stay too close to him,” Shrake said. “I don’t know what good we’re gonna be able to do, Virgil. He’s just got too many guys.”

“WHO WAS THAT?” Mai asked.

“We’re watching a guy-a suspect. I really… can’t talk to you about it. I mean, I really can’t.”

“All right,” she said. “Gives me a little tingle, mysterious cop stuff.”

DAVENPORT DID MOST things well, Virgil thought, and among the things he’d done well was his lake cabin. The place was built of planks and cedar shingles and native stone, with a big fireplace and a comfortable living room and efficient kitchen, and two small comfortable bedrooms, all on one level.

The place was surrounded by a patch of overgrown fescue; off to one side, a giant white pine loomed over the water’s edge; and Davenport had paid a deer-stand builder to build him a treehouse up in the pine, a deck with a few chairs and a roof, all up above the mosquitoes. A stone walk led to a forty-foot floating dock. A Tuffy fishing boat with a ninety-horse Yamaha outboard sat on a boatlift next to the dock.

Virgil recovered the guest key from a fake rock next to a stone wall along the driveway, and they went inside, into the dimly lit living room, and Virgil pulled the drapes and let the sunlight flood in.

“I don’t know much about fishing,” Mai said. “I’ve been fishing, but only with a bamboo pole.”

“You’re a jock. You’ve got reflexes. It’ll take you two minutes to get a good start,” Virgil said. “Lucas keeps his stuff in the storeroom.”

He took out two seven-foot light-action musky rods and a box of baits, humming to himself, and sat her down and showed her how to rig them, did it himself, then took it apart and made her do it. They were still doing it when his phone rang again. He dug it out, looked at it, said, “Huh,” and answered.

The voice actually sounded far away and satellite-fed: “This is Harold Chen with the Hong Kong Police Force. Is this Virgil Flowers?”

“Yes, it is… Hang on just one second.”

Virgil said to Mai, “I gotta take this, it’s from China… I’m gonna run outside, sometimes you can drop the calls inside here.”

He went back to the phone as he walked toward the door. “Yes, Mr. Chen, thank you for calling me back. I’m looking for information about Chester Utecht, a man who died there a year or so ago. I’ve got the details in my notebook-”

“I’m quite familiar with Mr. Utecht’s case.” Chen sounded like he’d just left Oxford. “Could I ask why you’re inquiring after him?”

“We’ve had a series of murders here…” Virgil told Chen about the murders in detail, and about the possible tie to Vietnam.

When he was done, Chen said, “Well. Vietnam. I should tell you that Mr. Utecht was something of a character. One of the last of the old-time soldiers of fortune, so his death was… noticed. He had been suffering from a series of debilitating diseases in his final days. Both his liver and kidneys were failing. However, his death hadn’t appeared imminent when he saw his internist a few days before he died. The pathology suggests that he may have taken his own life, or perhaps accidentally overdosed, on pain pills and alcohol.”

“Ah. A suicide,” Virgil said. “Nobody told me that on this end.”

“There was no official finding of suicide,” Chen said. “The cause was recorded as ‘unknown.’ However, the pathologist, who is quite competent, told me privately that Mr. Utecht had some bruises on his arms above his elbows, and around his ankles, that would be consistent with restraint.”

“Restraint.”

“Yes. But restraint by who, or what-or even if there was any restraint-is unknown. We looked for something, but couldn’t find anything at all. The fact is, he was elderly, alone, sick, probably dying, and running out of money. The easiest answer is suicide or accident; however, I wasn’t entirely satisfied by that. I looked for anyone who might have had any animus toward him. Anyone who could have carried out such a sophisticated murder, or would have any reason to. I found nothing; and frankly, Utecht was not important enough to be the object of such a murder. Now you say there was a murder in Vietnam, that he was involved, and that others who were involved are also being killed.”