"What do you, uh, do with the 'rats?" Del asked.

"Sell them to Joan Wickery. She's the fur-buyer in these parts," Letty said.

"How much do you get?" Lucas asked. He'd never met a trapper.

"Depends on what it is," Letty said. "She gives me $1.75 for average 'rats, and six dollars for 'coon. Problem with 'coon is, they're smart and they catch on when you're trapping them. I have to drive over to the dump to get them. So I only go over about two days a week, get maybe two or three at the most. I can get twenty 'rats out of the ditch, and the marsh across the road, and be done before school."

"You don't have to skin them out or… whatever?" Lucas asked.

"Nope. Joan's boys do all of that. I just bring in the carcasses."

Del was fascinated. "What do they do with all the muskrat bodies?"

"Grind them up. Turn them into feed. I don't get paid for that, though. I only get paid for the fur. Joan says the carcasses pay her to keep the doors open, and the fur's her profit."

Del asked, "Feed for what?"

"Mink. Joan's got a mink farm."

THEY SAT AND looked at her for a minute, then Lucas asked, "Anything else you can tell us?"

"I hope I don't die by getting hung," she said. They all thought about that for a moment, then she added, "They twisted. Hanging there. They twisted." She made a twisting motion with her fingers.

They thought about that some more, Lucas groping for something to say that might comfort her, but he couldn't think of anything. After a moment, he asked, "Listen, why'd you think it was your mom's car going down the road?" Lucas asked. "Anything about it?"

She thought for a second, then nodded. "Yeah. It was a Jeep. I think it was. A Jeep Cherokee's got this big square red taillight… " She drew a big square taillight in the air. "And then a big square yellow light under that, that's your turn signal. Then there's a little white light which is the backup light, inside the yellow light. That's what I saw on the road. Those red taillights like my mom's, and then, when he was backing around down there, when I was afraid she'd go in the ditch, it had those white lights inside the big square yellow light-the yellow lights didn't come on, but you could see them because of the white light inside them."

"Jeep Cherokee," Lucas said.

"Yup. I didn't think of it this morning, when I was talking to the other cops."

They talked for a few more minutes, and Lucas finally smiled at her and said, "Okay. I'm out of questions."

"I got one," Del said. "I'm a city guy. How do you trap muskrats?"

She told them quickly, about the difference between feeding platforms and houses. "The houses look like little tepees made out of sticks and cattails and stuff. You see them all over on marshes. Little piles. I went down to the Cities once with my mom and I saw a place by the airport that had more houses and feeders than I ever saw in my life."

"Really." Del was charmed. "By the airport?"

"Yup. Anyway, after freeze-up, you can open the houses and some of the big feeders with a machete or a hay knife and slip a trap right inside; there's a whole bunch of rooms in a big house. So you put the trap inside, and there's a chain off the trap, and you pin that down outside the house. Then you patch the hole in the house, so it's dark in there, and they'll walk right into the trap. Then, there's a hole in the bottom of the house that leads under the ice-that's how they get around after freeze-up-and when the trap snaps, they jump through the hole to try to get away, and they drown. I use mostly Number 1 jump traps."

"So, what do you do, pull on the trap to see if there's a body…?"

She shook her head, groped in her pocket, found a pencil stub, and got a napkin. "The chain comes out of the house like this… " She drew a chain with a bigger circular link at the end. "Then you put your pin through this circle, so that the 'rat can't pull it free. But you keep the pin in the middle of the circle, when you set it, so if something hits the trap inside, it'll pull the circle against the pin. That way, you can walk up to a house and see right away if anything has hit the trap."

"Huh."

"You can usually get four or five of them out of a house. You always got to leave some breeders."

"How much do you make during a winter?" Lucas asked.

She grinned at him and shook her head. "That's not polite."

"You're a kid," he said.

"Tell that to the feds when they want their taxes."

"THINK YOU COULD give me a ride home?" Letty asked. She crushed the empty Pepsi can in her hands, and tossed it into a waste basket.

"What about your mom?" Lucas asked.

"She can always get a ride from one of her friends," Letty said. "I don't want to hang around all day."

Lucas nodded. "Okay. But let's go check with Mrs. Holme, see if they had anything else set up."

"I'd rather ride with you," Letty said. "I don't like the deputies. They give me a hard time."

"You get in trouble?"

"Mostly about driving my mom's car. But I got no other way to get around, and it's too far to walk to town."

"How old are you?" Del asked.

"Twelve," she said.

"That's a little young to be driving, don't you think?"

"Might be for some people," she said. Then, "If you give me a ride, I could show you around Broderick. I know every house in the place."

"Sounds like a deal," Lucas said.

HOLME WAS HAPPY enough to let Lucas take Letty home. Outside, in the parking lot, they decided that Del would hit the local motels, and ask about strangers driving Jeeps. Lucas would take a look at the victims' house in Broderick. Later on, they'd hook up for an afternoon snack, and then go out to the casino and talk with Warr's coworkers.

Letty listened to them talk, then told Del, "There's four motels. You want to know where they're at?"

Del said yes, and Letty started to explain the layout of the town, drawing with a piece of gravel on the blacktop, her hands rough, red, but apparently impervious to the cold. Halfway through the explanation, Lucas cut her off, and they walked over to the courthouse, found the county clerk, and bought maps of both the town and the county. Letty read the maps well enough and, with the clerk, pinpointed the motels.

Outside again, Del took off in the Mustang, and Lucas and Letty headed back toward Broderick. As they crossed the river, Lucas noticed a dense spread of ice-fishing shacks at a bend to the north. A few were simply flat-topped boxes with doors, while others were more elaborate, with pitched roofs and American flags on door poles. Then the river was behind them and they followed the railroad tracks past the pastel Cape Cods and the dwindling businesses and quickly were back on the prairie.

"You ever been out here before?" Letty asked after a while.

"Not exactly here," Lucas said. "Been over to Oxford."

"You got a gun with you?"

"Yes."

"You ever shoot anybody?"

"Maybe," Lucas said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you should mind your own business," Lucas said.

He tried not to be mean about it, but Letty stayed on top of him. "Don't want to talk about it?" Letty asked.

He looked at her. "Why don't we change the subject?"

She shrugged. "Okay, if you don't want to talk about it."

AFTER A WHILE, "You got any kids?"

"Two," Lucas said. "A daughter, and my wife just had a baby boy."

"What's your wife do?"

"She's a doctor."

"I'd like to be a doctor," Letty said, looking out at the countryside. The countryside reminded Lucas of a modern painting he'd once seen at the Walker Art Center as a young cop, out on a sexual assault call. The painting had been done in two colors-a narrow band of black on the bottom, a wider band of gray above it. He still remembered the name: Whistler in the Dark: Composition in White and Gray. If the artist had known about it, he could have called it Winter Landscape, Broderick, Minnesota.