"… police looking for the artist who drew these sexually charged images…"

He stood unbelieving, aghast. He'd never let Aronson take home any of the images. He'd shown her this one-it was sexy, but not pornographic-to impress her with his skills. He remembered throwing it aside in his office. He didn't remember seeing it again.

"She took it," he said aloud, to the television. "She stole it from me. It wasn't hers! It was mine!"

He would go to prison, he thought. Nobody would ever understand. He watched until the drawings went away, and the reporter-a slender blonde, he thought, who might be interesting-moved on to politics.

"Prison," he said. An announcement. His career in ruins. They'd lead him out of the building in chains: He could see it in his mind's eye, long rows of mocking former colleagues and their harridan wives, in a gantlet, and he'd walk down between them enduring their smirks and superior smiles. They would put him in denim shirts and jeans, with a number on his shirt, and he would be locked in a cell with some redneck who'd rape him.

He thought of suicide-really, the only way out. Jumping, he thought. The feeling of flying, and then nothing at all. But he was afraid of heights. He didn't even like to stand too close to a window.

A gun. Tighten the finger, and nothing… But that'd be really messy, and would destroy the side of his head. Too much. Hanging himself, that was out: He'd suffer. He could imagine the pain, clawing at the rope at the last minute, trying to pull himself up… No.

Pills. Pills were a possibility if he had time to accumulate some. He could go to Randy. Randy could get as much as he needed, barbiturates. That'd be the way to go. Simply sleep, never to awake.

A tear rolled down his cheek as he thought about his mother's distress when his body was found. He dropped into the easy chair by the TV and closed his eyes, imagining it. And was suddenly touched by anger: The bitch wouldn't miss him. She'd sell all his furniture, and the wine, and the carpets. She'd cash his life insurance, pathetic as it was, and she'd keep it all. He could see it plainly, as a vision: the inventory of his belonging, the clothes going into the trash-into the trash!-the furniture carried away on trucks and even pickups.

Anger swelled in his heart, and he pushed himself out of the chair and paced back to the kitchen, sobbed. Pounded a fist into the other palm, then stuffed his knuckles into his mouth and bit until he felt the skin break. She'd take it as a victory: She'd outlasted him.

Well, fuck her. Fuck her. He shouted it at the walls: "FUCK HER."

So what to do? He sat down again, stared at the box of Froot Loops. He'd enjoyed making his drawings and he'd known right from the start that he'd be in trouble if he were found out. So he'd been secretive. He still had some of the images stored on the computer at school, but he could get rid of them.

He sighed, and calmed himself. Things weren't completely out of control. Not yet. He'd have to get busy, get cleaned up, just in case.

His mind skipped back to his mother: bitch. He couldn't believe her pleasure at his suicide. Couldn't believe it. There wasn't any doubt about it: The clarity of his vision carried the unmistakable scent of the truth. They hadn't had much to say to each other for five years, but she could show him enough loyalty to regret his passing.

More tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. Nobody loved him. Not even Barstad-she just wanted the sex.

"I'm alone," he said. His hand hurt, and he looked down at his knuckles. They were bleeding, badly; how had that happened? He was bewildered by the blood and pain, but he could also feel the anger gathering. "I'm all alone."

6

THE SKY WAS churning, but it was neither snowing nor raining when Lucas made it down to City Hall. He'd had too much coffee, and he stopped at the men's room; Lester, the deputy chief for investigations, was facing into a urinal when Lucas stepped inside and parked next to him. "What do you think about the mayor?" Lester asked.

"Gonna be some changes," Lucas said.

"Don't see any way that Rose Marie'll be reappointed," Lester said gloomily. "I'll probably get stuck out in the weeds somewhere."

"So quit, get a state job, and double-dip. Two pensions are better than one."

"I sort of like it here." Lester shook a couple of times, zipped up and walked over to a sink, and turned on the water. "What are you going to do? Stay on?"

"That'd be tough," Lucas said. "A little depends on who gets the top job."

"I'll tell you what, there's a lot of calculation going on today," Lester said. "People standing around talking. The bullshit machine is running overtime."

"Always happens," Lucas said, zipping up and moving to the next sink. "How many chiefs you been through?"

"Nine," Lester said. "Rose Marie was the ninth. But it was a lot easier to make the change on the first four or five, when I was sitting in a squad with a flashlight and a doughnut."

DEL AND MARCY were waiting in the new office. "Swanson and Lane are over at the Cheese-It, trying to find somebody who might have seen Aronson with Bruce Willis," Marcy said. She handed Lucas a photograph of the actor. "We downloaded a picture of Willis from the net, and we're gonna have it redrawn, and sort of generalized, with the long black coat. Put it out in the papers."

Lucas snapped the photo with his fingertip and said, "That's good. Get it going. How about the lists?"

"We got Anderson to set up a computerized sorting program. We type in lists for each woman and push a button and it finds matches. So far, we don't have any. But we do have something else."

"What?"

"We have nine women calling in-count 'em, nine-saying they got these drawings in the mail."

"Nine?"

"Over three years. Five of them saved the drawings. I've got a couple of squads running around right now, picking up the drawings, and four of the women are coming in this afternoon to talk to me and Black. We're probably gonna have to go out for the others. They can't get away from their jobs so easy."

"If we got nine, then there are probably twenty more," Lucas said.

"We're also getting a little more media space than we thought. There hasn't been much good crime news lately, so CNN and Fox picked up on the drawings from the local stations last night, and they're showing them every fifteen minutes all day."

"So I can go home and take a nap?"

"No. You and Del are going to six ad agencies. Gonna look in the art department for buzzcut guys with long dark coats. Also, you got a call from a Terry Marshall-he's a sheriff's deputy from over in Menomonie, in Wisconsin. Dunn County. He's hot to talk. And a guy named Gerry Haack who wants you to call back right away."

Del said, "I've got the list of ad agencies. We can walk to them."

"Let me make the calls, and we'll go," Lucas said.

HE CALLED HAACK first. "What?"

"You told those guys who I was," Haack screamed. The scream was followed by two rattling whack s, as though Haack had banged the receiver against a wooden wall. "They're gonna kill me. I'm gonna lose my job."

"I didn't tell them anything," Lucas said bluntly. "I asked if Aronson was on the corner, and they said no. Then they asked who told me that, and when I wouldn't say, they guessed. And guess who they thought of first?"

"Goddamnit, Davenport, you gotta tell them I wasn't the one. They're gonna pull my nuts off," Haack shouted.

"You've been hanging out with the wrong people," Lucas said. "Your speeder friends might pull your nuts off, but these guys, they're not bad guys. They might give you a little shit, but that's about all."

"Goddamnit, Davenport."

"And Gerry… if you call back, make sure you know what you're talking about, okay? This worked out, no problems. They even gave me a little help. But bad information is usually worse than no information, because we waste time chasing it. Think you can remember that?"