Another agent said, "We got two days to figure it out."

Del gave up on the interrogation and gave one of the Secret Service guys a shot at it. "We can hold him, but there's not much-he had no idea about those.50-cal shells up on the hill. I got Nancy to run a quick comparo on the shells, and she says they came from the same gun, the extractor marks are right there. He says that when he was sighting the gun in, he always collected all his brass and keeps it in the back of the truck, in an army ammo can. I called Dick out at the motel, he looked in the can and says there were fourteen loose used shells, and Shafer says there should be twenty. He thinks this chick must have stolen them."

"Doesn't he keep his truck locked?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah, but with somebody like Shafer, dealing with somebody like this what's-her-name…"

"Elena Diaz."

"Yeah. I mean, she got the key, somewhere along the way," Del said. "That's all we could come up with." "You're okay with that story?"

"Yup. Lucas-this kid is no planner. He's gonna wind up eating out of garbage cans, if he doesn't wind up facedown dead before that," Del said. "He's being set up. I keep thinking about that Kennedy assassination movie, Lee Harvey Oswald. Some people think he was set up."

"He wasn't; he did it."

"The point is, that idea could be floating around in some nut-cake's head," Del said. "Like Cohn's. Shoot McCain, shoot somebody, and blame Shafer. I mean, Justice is defenseless. He's a goof."

When Lucas got home, the house was asleep-Weather always went to bed early on nights before she was operating, and she operated on most days. The baby and the housekeeper went to bed almost as early. But as he turned in the drive, he saw a glow from under the blind in Letty's room. A night owl like Lucas, she was sneaking a read.

Lucas went inside, checked all the doors, took his shoes off before he tiptoed upstairs, left his shoes on his bedroom floor, listened to Weather's even breathing for a couple of seconds, then tiptoed down to Letty's door and tapped a couple of times.

"Yes. Come in," she said.

She was finishing To Kill a Mockingbird in the light of a bedside lamp. He asked, "You almost done?"

"Almost; but I can sleep in tomorrow. I'm going back downtown with Jen."

"Your mom says you're getting some serious airtime," Lucas said. "I wish I'd been here to see it."

"Ah-it's kid stuff. They won't let me get near the better stories," Letty said. "Too young."

"Just' be patient." He perched on the end of the bed. "Beverly called this morning, before I caught the plane. I was going to call and tell you, but I got really busy. Anyway, we're set for Monday."

"Monday."

"Yup. We go see the judge on Monday afternoon, three-thirty. The last decision you've got to make is what to do about your name. You can be Letty Jean West, or Letty Jean West Davenport, or Letty Jean Davenport, or Letty West Davenport-however you want to do it."

"Huh." She made a moue. "The thing is, I never knew my father, hardly. He wasn't really my father, he ditched us, but Mom kept his name. Her maiden name was Martin. I wonder if they'd go for Letty Jean Martin Davenport. Or Letty Martin Davenport. I'd like to, you know, keep my first mom a little bit."

"We can do that," Lucas said. "You gotta let me know by tomorrow night, exactly so they can fill out the paper. Then, we're done."

"That's…" She teared up a little and wiped her eyes with a corner of the sheet.

"You're still all right with it?" Lucas asked.

"I'm perfect with it," she said, with a choked-off laugh. "I can't wait."

Lucas patted her foot, under the light blanket, and said, "If I don't see you tomorrow before I leave, call me on my cell, let me know about the name."

"All right. Night, Dad."

When Lucas was out of the room, Letty dug her cell phone out from under her pillow, poked redial, and Briar picked up. "I'm back," Letty said. "So he gets out tomorrow-then what?"

"I don't know. He's really freaked out. Maybe it's the medicine they're giving him, it's something to stop blood clots in his legs. But it's making him crazy."

"Has he talked about my dad or me again?"

"Well' yeah, a couple of times. He was talking to Ranch, and they're going to try to do something, but Ranch is so crazy' I don't know. If you see the van coming, you should run."

"But you'll be driving it," Letty said. "He makes me…"

"But you don't have to," Letty said.

"You don't know…"

"All right. All right. Stay calm," Letty said. "I'll think of something."

Chapter 17

Lucas woke up tired but clear-eyed, and looked at the clock: 9 a.m. Perfect. He always felt better when he slept past 8:59. The eight o'clock hour was, in his opinion, when farmers get up, and God bless them, they were critical to the economy, and so on and so forth, but he was not a farmer.

Not only that, he had ideas when he slept late, and now he turned over on his stomach and got another fifteen minutes. When he popped open his left eye and looked at the clock, and then realized that he'd been sleeping on a crooked wrist and that his hand had fallen asleep, he straightened out on the bed and stretched and shook out the hand and yawned and picked up the bedside phone and dialed Del.

Del, panicked, snatched up the phone and said, "Jesus Christ, her water broke," and Lucas said, "Ah, shit. Well, talk to you in a couple of days, buddy."

So then he called up Jenkins, who asked, "You know what time it is?"

Lucas said, "Nine twenty-one. Get Shrake, meet me downtown in an hour. By the way, Del's old lady's water broke."

"That whole concept, Del having a child, is a little frightening," Jenkins said. "See you in an hour."

Lucas rolled out of bed, headed for the bathroom, turned around when the phone rang. The caller ID said it was Jenkins again. "Yeah?"

"You know, we gotta think about a baby present. Or a whole bunch of them, or whatever you do."

"I'll get Carol to organize it," Lucas said. "See you in fifty-nine minutes."

Lucas made calls from his car, the first to the Minneapolis FBI office, the next to the Ramsey County attorney, and then to the Ramsey County public defender. He made a stop at the Ramsey County jail and spoke to Justice Shafer for one minute; got up and said, "You might be able to help us, Justice, and get your ass out of this crack. I'll get back to you. Talk to your lawyer. Do what she says."

"I didn't do nothing," Shafer said.

Lucas's office was on the second floor of the BCA building, which had cost a bit more than eighty million bucks and was only six years old, so even the government-gray carpet was still in good shape. He had one of the larger offices, overlooking a parking lot and the evidence collection garage on the ground floor. It had come with the standard new-building desk, but it was a desk that positioned him with his back to the door, which he disliked, with a conference table so stark in its design that it would have shocked a Scandinavian architect.

On the grounds that he had a bad back, he'd brought in a personal business chair, and then, the soil having been prepared, a simple dark-maple desk and conference table, with comfortable chairs, that allowed him to face the door; and an old, but not antique, coat-rack, and a few metal file cabinets so he'd have a place to put his feet. He had pictures of Weather, Sam, and Letty on the wall, along with framed shots of the University of Minnesota hockey team, where he'd been a defenseman who wasn't quite good enough to turn pro. A hockey stick was mounted above the hockey photos. Also, stuck casually to the exposed side of one of the metal file cabinets, a shooting range target with five.45-caliber bullet holes in the ten-ring. Like he did it every day '