They still had the outstanding warrant for the second house, but Del shook his head: "Everything's too heavy right how," he said. "If we need it, let's do it tomorrow. Let's go talk to Beemaybe he'll give us what we need."

"Let's stop at the hospital first."

"Yeah, wellI assumed that," Del said.

They weren't allowed to look into the operating room, and Sherrill was still on the table.

"Jesus, how long's it been?" Lucas asked Rose Marie.

Rose Marie bad taken an empty hospital room, and was working two separate patient telephones. She looked at her watch. "Four hours."

"How much more can they have to do?"

"I don't know what they've done, Lucas. Look go away. Go do something."

"Like what?" he asked.

"I don't care, but this isn't good for you." She looked at Del. "You either."

Del said, "So lets go talk to Bee."

Bee was with his lawyer. Lucas knocked on the door, poked his head in. "Wanted you to know we're looking for some information and we might be able to talk."

"I don't think so," the lawyer said. "Your search warrant is a piece of toilet paper."

"Au contraire," Del said. "That thing is a piece of gold. Your client here is going straight to jail, and he won't be passing Go."

Bee looked troubled. He said, "I don't think I've exactly got a problem. For one thing, it wasn't my cocaine, it was Connie's. But say I wanted to help Connie what would you need to know?"

"We're trying to find out who was running Sandy Lansing, the woman killed with Alie'e Maison. She was dealing, but she was retail. We're looking for the guy behind her."

Bee shrugged. "Let me talk to Ralph here. I don't know if I could help you even if I wanted to. But let me talk to Ralph."

"Talk to Ralph," Lucas said. And to Ralph: "I understand you've been shootin' beaver again."

Ralph grinned and said, "Shhh," and Bee said, "What?"

Ralph said, "I got a little beaver problem up at my cabin."

"Larry Connell said about once an hour he'd hear a high-powered rifle," Lucas said.

"Deer seasons coming up," the lawyer said. "I need the practice. And those fuckin' beaver, if they block up that creek, it's gonna flood my whole property. Goddamn rodents. I hate them almost as much as I hate the DNR."

"What beaver?" Bee asked.

"Talk to you later," Lucas said.

"You know what you dumb shits did?" Bee said. "You took the one guy who'd know about this for sureyou took and put him in prison. He hates your ass, and he ain't never gonna talk to you."

Del said, "What?" and he and Lucas looked at each other, then simultaneously said, "Rashid Al-Balah."

Outside, Lucas said, "We gotta nail down that poker game. If Tricks gonna be anywhere, that'd be it."

"Gimme two hours," Del said. "You going back to the hospital?"

"Yeah."

"Turn on your cell phone."

"Okay."

"No. I wanna see you do it," Del said.

Lucas took out the cell phone and turned it on. Del took out his, punched a speed-dial code, and Lucas's phone buzzed. "Satisfied?"

"Keep it on," Del said. "I don't want to be kicking down the door of a high-stakes game by myself."

Lucas walked through the tunnel to the government center and took an elevator up to the county attorney's office. Randall Towson was in conference. Lucas got him out, into a hallway.

"What's going on?" Towson asked. He was holding a printout of what looked like a financial spreadsheet.

"Have you talked to Al-Balah's attorney about Del bumping into Trick Bentoin?"

"Not yet, but I can't put it off much longer," Towson said.

"Could you call him now?" Lucas asked. "And tell him that we've lost Trick, and can't do anything yet, but we're looking. And that we might want to talk to Al-Balah tomorrow."

"Makes us look retarded," Towson said. "He'll be calling the papers two minutes after he hangs up."

"We really need to talk to Al-Balah," Lucas said. "It's the Maison case."

He gave Towson a quick explanation, and Towson said finally, "All right. I gotta call him anyway. I'll do it right now. You sure you'll find Bentoin?"

"No. But Del's heard that it's a big game, and that normally would be a magnet for the guy. Even if he's not there, somebody else at the game might know where he is."

"How's Marcy?"

"I'm going over there now. She was still on the table, the last I heard."

"Listen, she's gonna make it," Towson said. He knew that Lucas and Marcy had had a relationship. "She's in good shape, and once they get her on the table"

"Yeah, well. I hope."

"She's gonna make it, man."

At the hospital, Lucas nodded at a couple of loitering cops and headed straight for the desk. A nurse saw him coming, shook her head, and said, "She's still not out, but Dr. Gunderson came out for a Coke and said they've got almost everything hooked up again. It shouldn't be much longer."

"She's doing okay?"

The nurse equivocated. "She's doing as good as she could. I understand" She looked both ways, as though worried she might be caught giving out unauthorized information.

"Yeah, yeah?"

"I understand that the bullet hit her just below her breast and a couple of inches off the centerline, so there's a lung problem and they've got a problem with bone splinters from her ribs, but there's no spinal involvement. I think if they've got the bleeding under control and if she's strong enough, she should make it. That's whatI think, but I'm not in there."

"Bless you," Lucas said. "She's pretty strong."

He headed down to the room that Rose Marie had commandeered, and found her talking with Frank Lester.

"Anything new?" Lester asked.

"Maybe the edge of something," Lucas said. "How about you? And where's Jael?"

"You talk first."

Lucas gave them a quick account of the raid on Bee's house, Bee's suggestion that Al-Balah might come up with the name, and Del's search for Trick Bentoin. Rose Marie took it all in and said, finally, "You're still about three levels away from the killer."

"Or maybe four or five," Lucas said. "Where's Jael?"

"We had Franklin take her back to her place to get some clothes. We're gonna ditch her someplace safe, maybe over in Hudson, keep her covered. She wants to talk to you again. I think she blames herself for what happened to Marcy."

"Goodkeep her out of the way," Lucas said. "What'd you get?"

The police shrink, Angela Harris, had come in to talk with Lester an hour earlier, after she'd heard about the death of Alie'e's parents. "She doesn't think it's a murder-suicide," Lester said.

"She knows about the bullet hole in the car door?"

"Yeah, but she's predicting that we'll find the killings weren't murder-suicide. She thinks that they were killed in revenge for the murder of Alie'e. Along with Plain, and along with the attempt on Corbeau, if that's what it was. She thinks we need to take another very close look at Tom Olson. She's talked to some guys who know him, and he's apparently had some odd psychological episodes in the past that suggest he may have multiple personalities. Harris thinks one of the personalities is a psycho."

"Aw, man. That's too weird," Lucas said.

"Yeah, but she says it explains what happened with the parents. Olson gets in psycho mode, and starts eliminating people who he blames for killing Alie'epeople who led her into her lifestyle with dope and lesbians and all that. The tabloid pictures set him off: the rouged nipples and all of that, some kind of psychosexual trip with his sister.

"So he goes after Plain, then he goes for Corbeau because of this lesbian stuff that's been coming outhe hits Marcy instead, but he was going for Corbeau. Then he kills his parents, the people who are really responsible for putting her in this life and weknow he blames them for that. Then, having killed them, he wanders off in psychological exhaustion to the mall, changes personalities. This personality has no idea what the other personality did and then in that same personality comes back to the motel, runs into you, then goes up to his parents' room and finds the bodies. He comes running after you, but in the shock, he begins to disassociate."