Lucas muttered a short obscenity to himself. Folks were gonna be pissed about the delay. Even though itwas kinda funny.

But he wasn't thinking about Trick when he drifted off to sleep. He was thinking about what he should wear to lunch tomorrow. Lunch with Catrin.

Even later that night, not far from Lucas, but across the Mississippi in Minneapolis, Jael Corbeau heard a scratching 'round her door. Her eyes popped open, and she sat up. She was exhausted, but she hadn't been able to sleep. She'd taken a pill, but her body fought it. Alie'e: Amnon said she was infatuated, that Alie'e was nothing more than a willing reflection of Jael's own need for a special kind of pleasurefor a languid, wicked, fashionable lover. A beautiful lover. And Jael feared it was true, that she was shallow, dissolute. Trendy.

The scratching on the door popped her out of the depressive cycle. She recognized the sound as soon as she heard it. Somebody was trying to get in.

Jael lived in a small house on the south side of the loop, not far from the Metrodome. Her bedroom was on the second floor; the first was occupied by her workshopa throwing room, a glazing room, a kiln room with two big electric Skutts, and a wedging room where she stored clay and did the preliminary workups. The workups that'd built her arms and shoulders: The cops had asked her about that. One had taken her hand, told her to squeeze. She had, and he'd pretended to wince. Fucking with her. Trying to intimidate her. It hadn't worked.

She wasn't intimidated by the cops, and she wasn't intimidated by the scratching at the door. During the worst of the crack years, the scratching would come every week or two. But crack was fading, burning out: She hadn't had an attempt in a year or more.

Still.

She rolled out, knelt as if in prayer, and felt under the edge of the bed. Her fingers picked it up immediately: the cold steel of the barrel. She pulled it out, an old pump Winchester 12-gauge. Moving swiftly through the dark, she went into the bathroom to the barred, frosted-glass window over the tub. The window was double-hung, and the slides were waxed. She unlocked it, slipped it up.

Down below, a heavyset man in black crouched on the stoop, prying amateurishly at the lock. Bushes flanked the stoop, so he would be invisible from the street, unless somebody looked straight up the walk.

She spoke softly but clearly: "Hey, you, down there."

The figure froze, then half-turned. She could see a crescent of his face in the ambient light from the street, like a sliver of the moon seen through a thin cloud, pale, obscure.

"I have a shotgun." She pumped it, the old steel action cycling with the precisechick-chick sound effect heard in a thousand movies. "It's a twelve-gauge. I'm pointing it at your head."

The crescent of face disappeared. The man turned, quick as a thought, and bolted from the porch, down through the bushes, around the corner, and down the street, hands and heavy legs pumping frantically.

Watching him go, Jael allowed herself the first smile she'd enjoyed in twenty-four hours. But as she slid the window back down and locked it, a vagrant thought crossed her mind.

He hadn't looked like a crackhead. Not at all.

He looked like some kind of redneck.

Chapter 11

Sunday. The second day of the Maison case.

Lucas retrieved thePioneer Press from his front porch, looked at the large dark headline: "Alie'e Maison Murdered." And beneath that, the subhead "Strangled in Minneapolis."

The headline, he thought, was smaller than the moonwalk, and possibly even smaller than reproductions he'd seen of the Pearl Harbor news flash.

But not much.

And he thought: Trick.

County Attorney Randall Towson was not exactly a friend, but he was a decent guy. He took the phone call at his breakfast table and said, "Tell me we got everything we need."

"What?"

"On the Alie'e Maison killerwho you're calling to tell me you caught."

"I have something much better. Honest to God." Lucas tried to inject sincerity into his voice. "I've found a chance to serve justice."

The attorney betrayed a cautious curiosity. "You're bullshitting me. Sorry, darlin'."

"No, no, I've found an innocent guy in the prison system. You can get him out. And then you can take the credit, and the grateful taxpayers will undoubtedly return you to office for thewhat, fifth time?"

"Sixth," Towson said. "What the fuck sorry darlin'I'm eating breakfast with my granddaughter. What are you talking about?"

"Del Capslock was at the Alie'e party the other night. He wasn't there at the time of the murder, but he did meet an old friend of ours."

"Who?" Suspicious now.

"Trick Bentoin." Silence. Silence for so long that Lucas added, "Trick had gone to Panama to play gin rummy."

Then, his voice soft and unshaken, Towson said, "This is a problem."

"Yeah." Lucas nodded, though there was nobody to see it.

"I've clearly identified it as a problem. Tomorrow, when I get to work, I'll get my best people working on a solution."

"That would be good," Lucas said.

Another long silence. Then: "Great Jesus fuckin' Christ, Davenport," Towson screamed. And meekly added, "Sorry, darlin'."

Catrin.

What to wear to a Sunday lunch? She was married to a doctor, so she probably had some bucks. She'd be more comfortable with something neat, rather than something out on the edge: Boots and black-leather jackets were out. Lucas dug through his closet, through a stack of dry cleaning, and finally came up with what he hoped would be righttwill pants in a deep khaki, a crisp blue shirt, and a brown suede sport coat. He added dark brown loafers and his dress gun, a P7 in 9mm.

Checked himself in the mirror; smiled a couple of times. Nah.

Better to can the little smile, he thought. Go for sincerity and pleasure at seeing her

On Sundays, City Hall was dead quiet. Not today. Lucas went straight for Roux's office; the secretary's desk was empty, but Rose Marie, dressed in slacks and a sweater with fuzzy white sheep on it, was in her office with two visitors. Dick Milton, the department's media specialist, was a former newspaper reporter who'd once written an eight-part investigative seriesSunday through Sundayon oak wilt. Angela Harris, a departmental contract shrink, was perched on the windowsill.

"What do you think?" Lucas asked as he stuck his head in the door.

"Media-wise?" Roux looked up. "Just about what we expected."

"Been a little rough on George Shaw," Milton said.

"That's not rough," Lucas said. He'd never liked Milton, even when he was reporting. "Rough is sitting in the county jail, waiting to go to Stillwater for ten years, which is what George is gonna do."

"Its not gonna hold, the connection between Shaw and Alie'e," Milton said. He looked at Roux. "This whole lesbian business they stayed pretty delicate about it last night, on the news shows, but I was on the Net and I saw a scan of the first copies ofThe Star, and they got a big sexy picture of this Jael Corbeau. She's hotter than Alie'e, so it ain't gonna stay delicate very long."

"When'sThe Star gonna get here?" Lucas asked.

"This afternoon, I guess. They got stories on the Net about how theStar editors tore the ass off a whole issue as it was going out the door, and turned it around to do an Alie'e issue. The Journal says all them other rags are suckin' wind."

"So it's gonna pump everything up," Lucas said. He looked at Roux. "You're still working the press pretty hard?"

"We're doing another press conference at ten o'clock, and then the Olson family and friends are supposed to be back around noon. They want the body as soon as they can get it. The funeral's gonna be later in the week, up in Burnt River. Then we'll probably have another press briefing around three o'clock, and if we need another, around seven."