"Gotta be this guy," Lane said. "Nothing else fits."

"What'd he say when we talked to him?"

"Says he got to the party late, never saw Alie'e, didn't know Lansing. Got bored, and left around two o'clock," Lane said.

"So he admits he was there pretty late."

"Yeah."

"Let's talk to Sallance Hanson about this," Lucas said. To Del: "Lets go see Marcy, and then go see Hanson. See what she knows about Rodriguez."

"Okay."

And to Lane: "Find this Rodriguez. Don't approach him, just spot him for us. Stay with him. Start tracking him."

When Lucas and Del walked into the hospital, a nurse saw them coming and cut them off. "There's been a problem. They've had to take Officer Sherrill back into the operating room."

"What?"

She looked at her watch. "About fifteen minutes ago, they decided they had to go back in."

"Ah, Jesus," Lucas said. "How bad?"

The nurse shook her head. "I don't know. I know they were watching her blood pressure, and they were worried about it. Dr. Hirschfeld made the call about a half hour ago. She was pretty strong when she went in, though."

"Was she awake?"

"No."

"How long will they be in there?" He looked down the hall toward the emergency operating theater.

"There's no way to tell. Until she's fixed."

Lucas looked at Del. "I told you man, I got a bad feeling."

Del asked the nurse, "Have you seen Dr. Weather Karkinnen around?"

"Yes. She was down asking about Officer Sherrill just a few minutes ago. I think she's doing her morning rounds."

"Let's go," Lucas said.

They tracked her down in the surgery wards, talking to the parents of a child who'd had some reconstruction work after a car accident. Lucas stuck his head in the room, and Weather saw him and said, "I'll be just a minute."

They waited in the hall, listening to the murmur of voices, Lucas pacing, until Weather came out. "I don't think it's too bad," she said. "I think it's that one leak."

"They said she was pretty strong," Del said.

"Well" Weather's eyes slid away from Lucas. "She was in a lot better physical condition than most people who come in."

"Aw, man, you're saying she wasn't that strong."

"Lucas, this had to be done. If they'd waited, she would have gotten weaker, and that would have been worse. Hirschfeld thought he had to go in now."

"Is she gonna make it?"

Weather nodded once, quickly. "Yes." This time her eyes held on to his.

Sallance Hanson knew Rodriguez only slightly. "He's quite a respected real estate investor, but he's not part of the usual group. The group that comes to my parties. Do you think he's the one? Who killed Alie'e?"

"We're just doing a second round on everybody," Lucas lied. He went back to Rodriguez. "I'm curious about the investor part. Our preliminary workup showed him as an employee an apartment manager, not an investor."

"Well, like I said, I don't know him that well, but that's not the way he talks. That's not the way he dresses, either. He's a coarse man, but he has a nice taste in clothes. So do you, by the way." She reached out, folded back the lapel on Lucas's jacket, read the label, and asked, "Where'd you get this?"

"Barneys."

"Really. Nice material. You went to New York?"

"I have a friend there. I visit sometimes," Lucas said. He pushed the topic back to Rodriguez. "Why is he coarse? What makes you think that?"

"He's just Every once in a while, something slips out. He'll say, 'twat,' or something. A lot of guys say 'twat,' you know, when they're looking for an effect, or they're trying to shock you or piss you off. I even know one guy who tried to tell me it was a variation of twit."

Lucas grinned. "He had to be a moron."

"Yes, well yes. But with Richie I've heardoverheardRichard say it sort of casually. Like that was the word he'd normally use in that place, and if he said 'woman,' it was because he was trying to be polite. He's a coarse man, with a layer of politeness that he learned somewhere. Maybe a book or something."

"Do you know anything about his financial dealings?"

"No, no. Nothing. Although every time I talked to him, that's what he wanted to talk about. He was always complaining about his tenantslate with the rent, or skipping out, or whatever."

Del chipped in. "You never saw him with Sandy Lansing?"

"I just don't remember."

"You know Lansing was dealing drugs."

She looked at Del for a moment, then at Lucas, then back to Del. "Look, I know I've talked to my lawyer, and he says telling you this is no crime I know some people at the party were using drugs. And I'd heard that you could sometimes get something from Sandy. But I didn't want to slander a dead woman."

Del leaned back on the couch. He was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and a ragged thirty-year-old political T-shirt on which the words "Lick Dick in '72" were barely legible. He grinned, showing his yellow teeth. "You oughta tell that to Derrick Deal."

"Derrick?" She was puzzled.

"A guy we know," Del said. "He's in the icebox down at the morgue."

"Right up to that point, I was trying to make nice with her," Lucas said when they were out on the sidewalk.

"Fuck the bitch. She's one of those people who'll drive you to communism," Del said. He scratched the side of his face; he hadn't shaved in a couple of days. "'After we see about Marcy, maybe you oughta talk to your friend Bone."

"Not a bad idea," Lucas said. "But first" He took out his cell phone, turned it on, and punched in a number.

Lane answered. "Yo."

"This is Lucas. You find him?"

"I'veseen him. I took Hendrix along, Hendrix interviewed him after the party. He's got an office in St. Paul, on the street level down from a Skyway, and we can see him in his office."

"You can see him now?"

"No, but I can see the door he's gotta come out. I'm with him."

"Let's get some pictures of himwe might want to take them around."

"Okay."

"And if he gets closer to Minneapolis, call me. I'll leave the phone on. I'm probably gonna want to look at him this afternoon, wherever he is."

Marcy was out of the operating room and back in the recovery room. Tom Black was standing in the corridor outside the operating suite with a nurse; when Lucas and Del walked in, Black stepped toward them. "She came through it okay. They had a pretty good leak, but they stopped it, and everything else seems to be holding."

"But she's not awake."

"They're keeping her asleep. They want everything tying together before she wakes up and starts moving around."

They talked about that for a minute: the way Lucas had been tied down once when he got shot in the throat, and hadn't been able to move his head for three days; and about the pinking-shears incident, when Del's hips had been immobilized for two days. Then Del said, "I'm gonna go see this gal over at the BCA. See if the state's got anything on Rodriguez. What're you gonna do?"

Lucas looked at his watch. "I've got a date, God help me."

Catrin was sitting; in a back booth, facing the door, when Lucas arrived. He smiled when he saw her, and she nodded and then paid a lot of attention to picking up a cup of coffee and taking a sip.

"Hey." He slid into the booth on the opposite side and waved at a waitress.

"I hope I'm not tearing your day apart," she said. She'd dressed down this time, in jeans and a cornflower blue shirt that didn't seem to have a buttona subtle, outdoorsy peek-a-boo blouse. "I was watching the Alie'e thing on television, and it seems like people are going crazy."

Lucas nodded and tried to keep his eyes on her face. "It's worse than I've ever seen it. We've had some bad ones before, but this is nuts."

"Are you making any progress? Or can't you tell me?"

"If we were making progress, I might not be able to tell you, but since we aren't, I can tell you. We aren't."