The City Hall was quiet; there were fewer TV trucks at the curb, and the Homicide office was mostly empty. Del called on the cell phone and said, "Hot damn, you've turned it on."

"Yeah. What's going on?"

"Nothing. I was just calling to ask."

"All right. I'm turning this fucking thing off."

"Nodon't do that. Listen, I'm gonna take off with the old lady this afternoon. Go see an aunt of hers, and then maybe go look at some carpet."

"You're doing carpet?"

"Yeah, maybe for the family room."

"All right. Well. See you later."

He wound up in his office with all the paper on the case; he found nothing new, but strengthened his sense that Spooner was at the bottom of it. Then Lester called, and said that the gay friend of John Dukeljin, who had identified Spooner as being at the party, and carrying a shoulder bag, remembered seeing a man with a bag but couldn't pick Spooner out of a photo spread.

"Par for the course," Lucas said. "You find anybody else?"

"Two other people think they saw him. But the guy is sort of a nebbish, and the light was bad, they had those strobe things you dance to So that's what we sot."

Rose Marie called and said, "Here's a mystery for you. Why would the head of the state highway patrol call me up at home and say, 'Tell that fuckin' Davenport to knock it the fuck off?"

Lucas thought for a moment. "Must be political," he said. "He's a Republican."

"I thought it might be something like that," she said.

"Is Olson coming in this afternoon?" Lucas asked.

"No. I told him we'd call if there were any serious developments."

"All right. I'm outa here."

"See you Monday And Lucas, knock it the fuck off, whatever it is."

He called Catrin at her home, ready to hang up at a man's voice. "What are you doing?"

She didn't need to ask who it wasa good sign, "Well. I'm moving out."

"When?"

"I'm staying with a friend tonight. Jack seems to be mostly amused," she said. "Maybe he thinks I'm going through some kind of phase. It's making me really angry."

"If you'd like to get a bite and talk, I'll meet you halfway."

"God, Lucas, could we tomorrow?" she asked. "I'm just really jammed today. I mean, I packed away my daughters First Communion pictures."

"Okay, okay Don't tell me. You've got my cell phone?"

"You never answer."

"It's now permanently onat least for the duration of the Alie'e thing."

"I'll call you."

He had wicked designs on three women, was worried sick about how he could possibly juggle them and he couldn't get a date. "They'll always take you at Saks," he said to his office walls.

They took him at Saks. For a lot. "Lucas, how are you" the custom-shop salesman said. "We havegot something for you. I've been saving it. Two new fabrics from Italy you won't believe that they're wool."

He killed two hours at Saks and wrote a check for three thousand dollars. He took a call halfway through the fitting from the cops who were tailing Olson.

"We got a concept," the cop said.

"I'm interested."

"We just took Olson back to his motel. He's preaching tonight down in West St. Paul you know where the Southview Country Club is?"

"Yeah."

"He'll be at a church right around there. He actually got off this tour he was doing, and drove into the church parking lot, like he was just figuring out where it was. Then he went back to driving, and finally wound up here at the motel. And what we got to thinking was, what if he's timing something?"

"Huh."

"Yeah. When you think about it, West St. Paul and Spooner's place in Highland Park, you don't connect them, but if you look at a map, it ain't farabout six miles, and most of that is Interstate. He could do a round-trip in less than fifteen minutes. What if he does his weird preaching thing, then tells the pastor or whoever that he needs to be alone for a bit, to recoveror thinks of some shit like thatgoes out to his car, runs over to Highland Park, wastes Spooner, runs back, and there he is: all those witnesses who say he was at the church."

"Sounds Hollywood."

"Yeah, well that's our concept."

"Could be his concept, too. How many guys we got on Spooner tonight?"

"Two or four."

"I'll make sure it's four. You need any more help on Olson?" Lucas asked.

"If he goes to the church, we could use one more car, for awhile, anyway."

"All right, get me a radio, and I'll come out and sit with you. I'm not doing anything."

He spent the rest of the afternoon walking around towngot his hair cut, visited a game store, three bars, and a gun shop, where a dealer tried to sell him a $2,600 Scout rifle by Steyr.

"I'd have to shoot a deer that dressed out at thirteen hundred pounds to get my money back," Lucas said, looking at the rifle. "On the hoof, that's a two-thousand-pound whitetail. That's a whitetail the size of a Chevy pickup."

"It's not the deer, it's the aesthetics of the machinery," the dealer said. The dealer had quit his job as an English teacher to take up gun sales. "Look at this piece"

"The bolt handle's weird," Lucas said.

"Its German."

"It's weird."

"Forget the bolt for a minute, look"

"Why's the scope way out there on the end?"

"I'll tell you why." The dealer pointed out the window. "Swing it at something across the street. Keep both eyes open and then let your right eye just look through the scope."

Lucas swung. "Whoa that's nice. You shoot where you're looking."

"They didn't mean it to be, but this is the perfect North Woods deer rifle. There's never been anything better."

"Caliber's too small."

"A. 308's too small? Have you been smokin' something strange? A. 308 is absolutely"

"Not for a two-thousand-pound deer. And the bolt handle's weird."

"You aren't the artist I thought you were, Davenport," the dealer said. "I can barely contain my disappointment."

At six o'clock, he drifted down toward West St. Paul, located the church, then got dinner at a steak house and made it back to the church a little before seven-thirty. He hooked up with one of the surveillance cops, a guy from Intelligence, and got a radio and a pair of binoculars. "I'm getting pretty tired of this," the cop said.

"Maybe something will pop," Lucas said. "Where do you want me?"

"See that hill? If you go up there, there are a row of houses where the backyards look right down on the parking lot. If you could go up there, find somebody at home and hustle them a little"

"How will I know which car is Olson's?"

"Call us when you're set, and when Olson rolls in, and he's inside, I'll walk over to his car and point a flashlight up at you. We'll have somebody inside the church watching Olson. We're most concerned that he might find a way to sneak out and get rolling before we know it. Or maybe have another car ditched here by one of his Burnt River pals."

"All right. I'll set up."

Lucas found a house with lights, showed his ID, and got permission to sit out on the patio. The owner dug a webbed folding chair out of a lawn shed and gave it to him.

Olson was already moving, a little early. He arrived twenty minutes before he was to preach; the Intelligence cop spotted the car for him, and Lucas settled down to wait. The radio burped every few minutes: when Olson started preaching; when other cars came or went; and an occasional observation on life.

Four people in two cars were at Spooner's, watching front and back, and they weighed in from time to time. Spooner was at home, but the front drapes were drawn. Then Spooner's garage lights came on, and a minute later Spooner backed out in his car. The people watching him scrambled. Spooner drove five blocks to a SuperAmerica, bought something, walked half a block to a Blockbuster Video, rented a movie, and drove back home. The garage door went down. The watchers settled in.