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15

THE CELL HAD THE BLOODY-STEAK SMELL of sudden death, riding over the usual odors of floor wax, paint, and disinfectant. The medical examiner's assistants had rolled Gene Rinker's body, but not moved it off the bunk.

Rinker's ferretlike face was paper-white but finally peaceful, almost happy in death, except for the dry salty tear paths that ran sideways across his nose and cheeks. He'd been crying as he went down, Lucas thought. There were no marks on his body of the kind that usually accompany violent death, except that his lower arms and legs were coated with dried blood, and there was a stripe of blood in his hair where he apparently had pushed back his long bangs after cutting himself. The blood puddle had soaked into the mattress.

When Lucas and Andreno stepped inside the cell to look, the ME's assistant moved back to improve the view, and said, "He's got old transverse scars-he tried before."

"Got it right this time," Lucas said.

"Gives me the goddamn willies," Andreno said. "I'm afraid of flu shots. But cutting yourself, man…" He shuddered at the thought.

After cutting his wrists, and probably wiping the hair out of his eyes, the ME's assistant said, Rinker had rolled onto his side, into a fetal position, and clasped his hands between his thighs. There were three new cuts on one wrist, two practice marks in addition to the killing cut, but only one on the other. The cuts ran vertically beside the ligaments that ran down to the hand.

"NOW I WISH I hadn't brought him," Malone said from behind them. Standing just outside the cell, she was gray-faced, tired, on the edge of anger. "These people…" She looked around. "How could they let this happen?"

Andreno opened his mouth to say something, then closed his mouth, shrugged, and went past her toward the exit, past the line of locked cell doors.

"What's with him?" Malone asked.

"I think he, uh, was kinda depressed by the whole thing," Lucas said. "Where's Mallard?"

"He went down to talk to the people who were on duty last night. Not that there's going to be much-they followed procedure, but the procedure was bad."

"Probably don't have that many people cutting their wrists with Coke-can holes," Lucas said.

"Just goddamn incompetence," Malone said bitterly. "And some of the mud's gonna stick to me. What a disaster."

"I gotta find Mallard. Are you coming?"

"I'm going to wait until they move the body. I don't want anything else screwed up," Malone said. She looked past his shoulder and said, "Here's Louis."

Mallard came up, blocky, thick-necked, face sour, as angry as Malone. He was wearing a suit jacket over what might have been a silk pajama top. He looked at Lucas and shook his head. "Bad business. Gonna be hell to pay for this."

"Especially after White's column yesterday."

"I don't blame people for being mad-this is unbelievable," Mallard said. "These people…" He looked around and shook his head.

"Louis… Rinker's gonna call me when she finds out," Lucas said. "We gotta be ready. I think we should move all your people and whatever kind of detection equipment you can find down to Soulard. She'll use the cell phone, but I bet she doesn't drive a hundred miles to do it. I bet she calls from wherever she's hiding, or maybe goes out a few blocks. But she'll be pissed, and I bet she'll call."

"You think?"

"I'd bet you a hundred dollars."

"So then maybe we want it on TV," Malone said. "This Gene Rinker thing is bad enough, but if we can snag Clara, then maybe some good'll come of it."

"She's gonna call," Lucas said. "She's gonna freak out. I'm gonna head down to Soulard myself, and wait. There's nothing else to do."

"I'll get everybody going. I'm gonna try to get some choppers in. We've got a couple in Chicago that are equipped to spot cell-phone calls. And we gotta keep the net on Levy-but every other guy I got, and the technicians, I'll have them down there."

ANDRENO WASN 'T IN the building. Lucas looked around for him, then stepped outside and spotted him leaning against his car's fender in a handicapped zone. He saw Lucas and pushed away from the car, and came up the sidewalk to meet him. "Those assholes," he said.

"Who?" Lucas asked, but he knew.

"The fuckin' feds. Malone and Mallard," Andreno said. He was fuming. "For Christ's sakes, they're the ones who did this, not some poor broke-down jailer. But guess who's gonna take it in the ass?"

"Friends of yours?"

"Not exactly. But-they're our guys. They're not some big-shot assholes piped in from Washington to run the world."

"If the jail people have any sense, they'll announce an investigation and all, but then they'll go out the back door and talk to press and blame the feds… and nothing'll happen to anybody."

"Maybe," Andreno said, squinting at Lucas.

"That's what would happen in Minneapolis," Lucas said. "I'd take care of it myself."

"If you were gonna take care of it yourself, would you call White directly, or go through a friend, or what?"

"Everything," Lucas said. "I'd know White would bite, because he's a hometown boy and he's inclined to piss on the feds. He's already started. Then, if I had any media friends, I'd fill them in, get them on my side. That's if I was in Minneapolis."

Andreno nodded, and then said, "And that's just taking care of yourself. Nothing to do about that poor fuckin' Rinker kid." Lucas shook his head, and Andreno continued: "I grew up in a shithole, and half the kids I went to school with wound up in jail, or dead some bad way. I feel like I'm about one inch from Gene Rinker. If it hadn't been for my mom… Why'n the hell did they have to drag him out here? Wasn't right, Davenport."

"No, it wasn't. But I've done something like it, a few times, myself."

Andreno thought about it for a minute, then nodded quickly, a head jerk: He'd done it, too. "So'd I, but I always knew what was going on. I always knew the guy I was fuckin' with. I wouldn't have done it with Rinker, if I'd known him. You could see this coming. Both of us could."

"Didn't do much about it," Lucas said.

"Yeah…" Andreno shook his head again, in disgust. "What're you gonna do now?

Lucas told him: He'd head for Soulard, wait for the news of Gene Rinker's death to be released, and then wait for the call from Clara.

"Drive around in the Porsche?"

"I guess," Lucas said.

"I got a couple errands to run," Andreno said. "When I get done, I'll call you. We can hook up, cruise in my car."

"See you then," Lucas said. "Good luck with the errands."

Andreno looked up at the jail. "Yeah, well, fuck those fuckers."

LUCAS WENT BACK to the hotel, had breakfast, went up to his room, checked his cell phone to make sure it could receive calls inside the room, and then sprawled across the bed and read the paper. A second Sandy White column was stripped across the top of the front page, this one from inside the St. Louis police-some of the cops apparently thought his Rinker column was a little too pro-outlaw, so now it was kiss-and-make-up time. The favored cops agreed that if Rinker was caught, she'd be caught by a cop on the street, probably during a traffic stop.

Lucas yawned through the column. The next day's story would be better, he thought, when the paper found out that Gene Rinker was dead. White was about to become a prophet, which, over the long term, was unfortunate, Lucas thought. In his experience, few newspaper columnists could resist prophet status, and after assuming the robes, became tedious and eventually stupid.

When would Clara Rinker hear about Gene? And how? On television, probably. Maybe on the radio. Word was probably leaking already-certainly was if Andreno had carried out his preemptive strike on the feds. Could be any time. He went into the bathroom to take a leak, and thought, halfway through, that maybe he shouldn't be in the bathroom-maybe the phone wouldn't work in there, with all the tile…