"Did you know any of her friends?" Lucas asked.

"I don't think-" Then he stopped and looked from Lucas to Andreno. "You know about Patsy Hill, right?"

Lucas and Andreno shook their heads, and Lucas said, "Haven't seen the name."

"Jeezus."Baker looked at McCoy. "You know about Patsy Hill?"

McCoy shook his head.

Baker said, "Great fuckin' police work, huh? All you runnin' around like maniacs and you haven't heard of Patsy Hill?"

"Well, who is she?" Lucas asked.

"Patsy lived over by Clendenon, over toward Springfield. That's where Carl Paltry came from."

Andreno said, "Who?"

Lucas remembered the FBI report. "Rinker's stepfather."

Baker nodded. "That's right. I think he was fuckin' her, too. Clara. Anyway, he come from over there, and I think maybe they even lived there for a little while, or off and on, if you know what I mean. That's where Rinker met Patsy Hill."

"So who in the fuck is Patsy Hill?" McCoy asked.

"Another goddamned killer," Baker said, with a wide green smile. "I always thought it was amazin'. Two small-town girls, get to be best friends, and they both grow up to be killers. Cops was all over the place here, about ten years ago, must be, maybe longer, because Patsy was living down in Memphis with her husband, and she killed him with an ax or something like that. Maybe it was a hammer. Whacked the shit out of him. Then she ran, and they never caught her."

"Never?" Lucas asked.

"Not as far as I know, and I think I'd probably hear about it. I know some people who growed up over there. It ain't that far."

"Cross the county line, near to Springfield," McCoy said. He was plainly relieved: not his jurisdiction.

"Clara and Patsy didn't go to the same school?" Lucas asked.

"Not here," Baker said. "I don't know where Patsy went to school, maybe Springfield. But there was a time when Patsy and Clara was like this." He crossed two fingers. "They both grew up to be killers."

"She got any family around? Patsy?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah, over in Clendenon. Right there on Tree Street."

THEY TALKED A while longer, got a list of the stolen guns, and headed back into Hopewell. Lucas thanked McCoy for his help, then he and Andreno drove back toward the interstate in the Porsche.

"We going to Clendenon?" Andreno asked.

"We might be onto something," Lucas said. "The feds don't know about this-I read the whole file. If this Patsy Hill killed somebody years ago, and ran, and Rinker hid her, and if she's somehow living and working around St. Louis…"

"Then Hill could be paying Rinker back. Letting her stay over."

"And Hill couldn't turn Rinker in, no matter how big the reward was. Even more, I'll bet none of Clara's Mafia friends knew about Hill. Why would Clara tell them? One of them might have been tempted to use Hill as a get-out-of-jail card," Lucas said. He looked over at Andreno. "I'll tell you what. I'll bet five United States dollars right now that Rinker is staying with Hill. I don't know where Hill is, but if we can find her, we'll find Rinker."

Andreno thought about it for two minutes, then said, "No bet." He said it with a tone: Like Lucas, he could smell the trail.

A little farther down the road, Lucas said, "Let's not forget about that list of guns, huh? She's always been a pistol queen, but now she's got a carload of rifles. We gotta let Mallard know. We need to spread the net around Levy."

ON THE WAY to Clendenon, Lucas got the address for a Hill family on Tree Street, Chuck and Diane, and the phone number. He tried to call ahead, but there was no answer and no answering machine. "We could be here for a while," he said to Andreno.

Clendenon was a small town, not quite a suburb of Springfield, with a block-long downtown and a BP station at the end of that block. They asked the gas station attendant about Tree Street, and got detailed instructions. "You might want to keep your speed down in that Porsche," the attendant said, as they turned to go. "The town cop figures out speeds based on his best estimate, and your car looks like it's going forty when it's sitting at the gas pump."

"Thanks," Lucas said.

"No problem. You'll find the cop just about a block down that way… sitting behind that blue house. Take 'er easy."

They crept by the blue house at twenty miles an hour, and if there was a cop in the black Mustang parked at the curb behind the house, he made no move to come after them. They took a left two blocks farther on, and found Tree Street two more blocks down. Lucas took a left, found the house numbers going the wrong way, made a U-turn, drove two blocks down, and parked in front of the Hill place.

As with the Rinker and Baker houses, the Hills' was an older place, small, with a detached garage; but all of it was neatly kept, with a front window-box full of yellow- and wine-colored pansies and a strip of variegated marigolds along the driveway. When they got out of the car, Lucas could smell freshly cut grass. They knocked, got no answer, tried the neighbors. A woman in a housecoat told them that Chuck Hill worked at the grain elevator and Diane went grocery shopping in the morning and should be back at any moment: "Saw her leave an hour ago, so she oughta be… Here she comes."

DIANE HILL ARRIVED in an aging Taurus station wagon, bumped up the drive, and got out with a plastic grocery sack. She saw them coming, and waited in the driveway. Lucas identified them, and she said sullenly, "What do you want?"

"When your daughter disappeared, she had to go somewhere. We think she might have gone to Clara Rinker, and we think Clara might be with her now."

A transient look of-What? Pleasure? Lucas thought so-crossed Hill's face and then vanished as quickly as it had come.

"We don't have any idea where Patricia might be. We just hope to God that everything is all right with her, after the hell that her husband put her through."

"She never got in touch, just to tell you that she's all right?"

"Yes, she's called from time to time, and I told the police that. She calls sometimes, and she cries because she can't come home and she can't tell us where she is, because she's afraid that somebody will find out and the police will come get us. She's protecting us by not telling."

Andreno tried: "Mrs. Hill, honest to God, we don't care about Patsy-Patricia-she's somebody else's problem. But Clara is killing people-"

"Mafia hoodlums," Hill snapped.

"She's killed a lot of innocent people," Lucas put in. "She's going to kill more."

"That's not my problem," Hill said, clutching at her groceries. "All I know is, she was kind to my daughter when my daughter needed some kindness, and couldn't come here to get it. And I know what happened to poor Clara when she was just a girl, and it doesn't seem strange to me at all that she's grown up to kill people. Where were the police when her stepdaddy was working his perversions on her, and her not even fourteen? Where were they when Patricia's husband was burning her back with a clothes iron?"

"Mrs. Hill…"

"You tell me where the police were then."

"Mrs. Hill…"

"And if I were you, I wouldn't go talking to Chuck-that's my husband-because he's gonna be a damn sight less cordial than I've been. We don't approve of any kind of criminality, but if the police really took care of crime, there wouldn't be any Clara Rinker and our Patsy would still be with us. Excuse me." She marched up the driveway and into the house, and slammed the door.

After a moment, Andreno said, "I think we handled that pretty well."

"We oughta get a warrant and tear the house down."

"Really?"

Lucas shook his head. "No. Shit."

"Want to try Chuck?"

"I'll drop you off, if you want to."

"No, thanks. Back to St. Louis, then?"

Lucas sighed, looked up at the Hill house. "I guess."