He looked at her and said, "It's only about sixty-forty that Qatar's dead. If he's not, it's about sixty-forty that I know where they're going."

Weather said, "The graveyard."

"That would fit with the way Terry's mind works, I think."

"Lucas, you've got to call somebody," she said. "Lucas, you can't let this happen."

Lucas put his hands to his head, sitting on the bed, frozen. Then, suddenly, looking up: "All right. I'm going. I can beat them down there. The alarm went off fifteen minutes ago. Maybe I can work something, maybe I can, if there's time, maybe…"

He was out of bed, pulling on his pants, boots. "Gimme my sweatshirt, give me my sweatshirt…"

They stumbled all the way through the house, Lucas pulling on clothes, out to the garage. He climbed into the Porsche as the garage door rolled up, and she shouted, "Go! Go!"

29

LUCAS FUMBLED HIS flasher up on the dash and plugged it in, and with the harsh red light cutting holes through the night, he followed it down along the Mississippi, across the river by the airport, across the Minnesota River at the Mendota Bridge, and then south on Highway 55, all the time running the numbers. Marshall wouldn't be driving more than a mile or two over the speed limit, to avoid any possible traffic cops-it was early for traffic cops, but the first trickle of the rush was beginning, and Marshall wouldn't want to take any chances.

And that gave Lucas a chance. Giving Marshall a twenty- or twenty-five-minute head start-Marshall was starting farther into town than Lucas was, and facing more traffic-he and Lucas should arrive at the graveyard about the same time. What would happen there, Lucas didn't know; and if Marshall wasn't there, if he'd just decided to drop Qatar out in the woods somewhere, in some predug hole, then it was over.

Cell phone, he thought. Maybe he should call the Goodhue County sheriff, get them to send a car. But then, if Marshall wasn't there, they'd know that Lucas knew who had taken Qatar… He touched his jacket pocket for the phone, still thinking about it. The pocket was empty. The phone was back on the charger on his desk.

One option gone.

He touched his belt: The. 45 was there. He'd taken it without thinking. But what for?

THREE PEOPLE WOULD know about all of this-he and Weather, and Marshall-and Del would probably figure it out if he ever sat down to think about it. There would never be any proof. Marshall would be too careful for that. What to do if he got there too late, with Qatar already dead? Just keep going?

He had to run…

He went through the suburbs, through the red lights and around shying cars, watching for movement along the sides of the roads, of people unaware. If he hit another car at this speed, the Porsche would be flattened into a hubcap; if he hit a wandering human, he would instantly convert that human to hamburger.

All the way, calculating, wondering: He hadn't told Weather or anyone else about the laptop. If he'd taken the laptop downtown after he found it, had processed it, they could have rearrested Qatar on the Aronson charge and he probably wouldn't have made bail. Marshall's whole concept would have been short-circuited.

But then what happens to justice? Ten or fifteen years in jail, with Qatar coming out all clear, even more careful, to kill again? Some of them, some of the Qatars, never stopped. Lucas was still uncertain of the equities. If it weren't for Weather, he might have let it go…

HE HIT THE blacktop north of the Pine Creek crossing with enough daylight to see it clearly. He slid through the turn and jumped back on the gas, then cut out on the gravel road. Close now; more light. He saw the DNR parking area coming, and sitting in it…

"Goddamnit." Marshall's red Jeep Cherokee.

Lucas screamed into the lot, braked down beside the Cherokee, and hopped out.

Looked around…

Marshall and Qatar were up on the hillside. They had stopped walking, and both were looking down at him. Qatar was dressed in pajamas, and his feet were bare. He had been gagged for a while, Lucas thought: Several coils of duct tape were looped around his neck, as though they'd been pulled down from his face. He was shivering, either from fear or simply from the cold.

Marshall was wearing jeans and a tan barn coat. He had one hand on Qatar's jacket, and in his other, the big-frame. 357.

Qatar shouted down, "Help me, please. He's crazy, he's going to kill me." There was a catch in his voice. His hands had been cuffed, and he held them out toward Lucas as though he were praying.

"Terry, goddamnit," Lucas called. "Don't do this, man."

Marshall called back, "I was about half afraid you'd show up here. I didn't think you'd be this quick. Ten minutes later and we'd have all been fine."

"Terry, we got him," Lucas shouted, moving closer. "I found his laptop computer. It was in the ceiling in the museum. Me and the janitor found it. It's got pictures of the women on it, it's gotta have prints-we got him for everything, man."

"Little too late for that," Marshall said. "This is better anyway. Takes care of a couple of problems: his and mine."

"Shoot him," Qatar screamed at Lucas. "Shoot him."

Marshall jerked him another step across the hill, dragging him by the loops of duct tape.

"Terry, goddamnit, stop it. Stop it." Lucas was walking up the hill toward them.

"You gonna shoot me and save this asshole?"

"No. But you gotta listen. We can still smooth this out: You turn him in, we tell everybody you freaked, you talk to a shrink for a couple of weeks…"

He was fifty feet away. Marshall had gotten Qatar to the dug-over area where the graves were.

"Oh, horseshit, Lucas, you know better'n that," Marshall drawled. He might have been smiling. "Minnesota's the same as Wisconsin: They'd hang me by my nuts. They'd make an example out of me. Cops can't do this shit."

Forty feet. Qatar's eyes were wide, his shoulders twisting away from Marshall. "Don't let him… You can't just shoot me," he shouted at Marshall. "I can't die today. I can't… I have classes today. I have responsibilities. The college is expecting me."

"I don't think so, pal."

Thirty feet. Lucas could see that Qatar's bare feet were bleeding, apparently from dragging over the rocks and roots of the hillside. Marshall lifted his pistol so that it pointed directly into the back of Qatar's head. "Stop right there," he said to Lucas.

"Terry, please, man, you're a good guy. And listen to this-one last thing." Lucas was begging for time. "There's not much chance, but what if he is innocent? What if we've screwed this up somehow?"

"That's right," Qatar said. "This is completely illegal. My lawyer-"

"Shut up." Marshall snapped the pistol barrel against the back of his head, and Qatar stopped, his mouth open in midsentence. Marshall said to Lucas, "There's a tape recorder on the front seat of the car. When I got him in the car, I pulled the duct tape off his mouth and told him what I was gonna do, but I told him that maybe I wouldn't if he'd tell me about the women. You listen to that tape, you'll get all the names, and pretty close to the dates, and the places he picked them up. He even says there are two more down in Missouri, some godforsaken place down there."

"You promised me," Qatar said. He tried to twist out of Marshall's grasp, but Marshall played him like a fish. "You promised."

"I lied," Marshall said.

"All right, I'll go to trial, I'll confess," Qatar said. "You got me. All right? All right? Just stop this, stop this now. You win. Okay ?"

"On the other hand, I could always shoot you, too," Marshall said to Lucas, but he was showing a grin again. "How'd they ever prove it was me?"

Lucas shrugged. "They would. Tire tracks, the slugs, nitrites when they picked you up. There's probably a parade on the way here now."