"Did you see a guy watching her last night? A big guy."

"Wasn't here last night. I was out with my wife," Anderson said, leaning on the wife.

"Okay," Lucas said. "Tell me this: how much coke was she pushing out on the floor here?"

"What?"

"Cocaine," Del said.

Anderson looked at them like they were crazy. "She wasn't dealing cocaine. No way. I woulda known about that. You get a bunch of dealers and one of them is pushing, everybody knows. There was nothing like that about Jane."

"She use it?" Lucas asked.

Anderson's eyes flicked away. "Maybe… I never saw her use it." He unconsciously rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "But she used to get a little cranked, and once or twice I thought she might've gone back to the ladies' can and done something."

"You didn't tell us," Hoffman said.

"I didn't know," Anderson said. "Hell, you even hint at something like that around here, and the next thing you know, somebody's looking for a job. And I kinda liked her."

"But not too much," Hoffman said.

"No. Jesus, Clark." Then his eyes narrowed, and he turned to Lucas. "Did that asshole Bud Larson put you on me?"

Lucas kept his face straight and shook his head. "Haven't heard any Larsons mentioned," he said. "Why?"

"Nothin'," Anderson said. To Hoffman: "He was the guy who complained that we cold-decked him. Last week? Mean-looking guy?"

Del looked at Lucas and shook his head.

WHEN THEY WERE finished with Anderson-still a worried man, despite Hoffman's assurances that he believed him-they went looking for other employees who remembered the big man. Les, the computer operator, brought down the first printout of the man's face: it was fuzzy, but would be recognizable in context.

Nobody else remembered talking to him.

By the time they finished talking with other employees, Les had saved a dozen shots of the man, and two stitched-together composites, to a CD that could be opened on any PC with the Imaging program, which he said was most of them.

"We still need the actual tapes," Lucas told him.

"We're pulling them; we'll hang on to them," he said.

THEY'D BEEN IN the casino for an hour and a half when Mitford called back. "We're running with Amex. They accepted a faxed subpoena and they're putting the list together now. They say they'll have it in half an hour. I'm having copies faxed to the sheriff's office up there, and another one down here. They say there might be a couple hundred names."

"We'll head downtown," Lucas said. "I've got a CD with some photos on it."

"We'd like to see some down here."

"I'll e-mail them to you. You gonna be there?"

"Until you guys go to bed," Mitford said. "Washington just had a press conference in Grand Forks and he says the law enforcement agencies must be complicit in this crime-I'm reading this-either actually or morally. Then… ah, blah blah blah. I think he's on his way up there to have a rally."

"Yeah? In Armstrong? Who's gonna rally?"

"I don't know. I'm just telling you what he says."

"I'll get back to you," Lucas said.

On the way out, they thanked Hoffman, agreed that Anderson probably hadn't been playing around on his sister, and made arrangements to have the videotapes picked up by a BCA crime scene man.

"SO WE GOT a face and a few hundred names," Del said. He looked at his watch. "You think we'll get him by midnight?"

"We're rolling," Lucas said. "And I'll tell you what: he left enough stuff on the bodies that when we identify him, we've got him. I'd bet that hair was his, I bet that blood on Warr's face was his."

"Could be Cash's."

"Not dripping down like that. It was fresh when she was hanging."

"God bless DNA," Del said.

ON THE WAY back to town, Lucas called Dickerson and filled him in. Then, "Did you get anything out of that motel room? Fingerprints, hair, anything?"

"We've got an ocean of fingerprints, but we've also got some places that appear to have been wiped," Dickerson said. "I wouldn't get your hopes up."

"Did you hear anything from St. Paul about tracking down the Cherokee?"

"If you go back a month, you can find maybe thirty Cherokee transactions in Minnesota. We've got the names on those, and we're working with North and South Dakota, Missouri and Iowa. I think Iowa's in, haven't gotten word from the others yet. I'm not sure South Dakota is computerized enough to get what we need that quick."

"Let's get what we can."

ABUNCH OF cops were leaning on the wall outside the Law Enforcement Center, smoking, when Lucas and Del pulled into the parking lot. Lucas had just gotten out of the car when his cell phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"Lucas, it's Neil. I got the list on those cards down here, and it'll be up there in the next couple of minutes. I don't think you have to waste a lot of time checking it out."

"Why not?"

" 'Cause I think I know who it is."

"What?"

"There's a guy on the list named Hale Sorrell. You remember him?"

"Sorrell? He's… oh, shit."

Del said, "What?"

Lucas ignored him, and asked Mitford, "Do you know him?"

"Yeah. I once tried to get him to give some money to our guy, on the basis that our guy was a rational conservative Democrat. Sorrell wasn't buying; he's a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. Seemed like an okay guy. Shitload of money from Medlux."

"Big guy, but not fat, big shoulders, dark hair, middle forties, glasses, this guy had a recent beard… "

"I don't know if he wears glasses, but he's at an age where he might. He's forty-six. He could grow the beard. Everything else is right on."

"I'm gonna e-mail you a photo. Maybe a couple of them," Lucas said. "Gimme an address."

"WHAT?" DEL ASKED, when Lucas rang off. "We got him?"

"Maybe," Lucas said. "Hale Sorrell? You remember?"

Del thought for a moment, then a light flared behind his eyes. "Oh, shit."

"That's what I said. Let's get this list. Maybe they got a T1 or a DSL line out of here, we can send the photos from here."

THEY CROSSED THE parking lot at a half-trot. One of the deputies pushed away from the wall and said, "Chief Davenport… you remember me?"

Lucas slowed down. He did remember the deputy, more or less. He'd beaten up the guy's partner a few years before, in a different county, but not too far away. "Yeah, I do," Lucas said. "What happened, you take a transfer?"

"Moved over here when Sheriff Mason retired. My folks live over here. Anyway, have you seen the TV? The news?"

"No. Bad?"

"Pretty bad. That little girl, Letty, she was terrific, but man, they took some pictures of those people hanging in the trees, and they're everywhere. They were on the CBS and ABC and NBC evening news, and they're on CNN almost full-time. They got video of the bodies sort of swinging in the wind."

"Aw, Christ."

"Then that Washington guy gave a talk down in Grand Forks and they had this video picture behind him with the bodies hanging, and it looked like he was standing in there with them, and he was screaming about lynching."

"Maybe we better figure this out in a hurry."

"I'm pretty sure you can do it," the deputy said. "I been telling the guys about you."

"Not too much, I hope," Lucas said.

"Yeah, I told them that part," the deputy said. "That's the best part. Uh, whatever happened to the girl? The girl that come up with you?"

"Marcy Sherrill. She's a lieutenant in Minneapolis, now. She runs the Intelligence unit."

"Really… jeez." The deputy was impressed.

"Gotta go," Lucas said. "Nice talking to you again."

As he and Del went inside, he heard the deputy's voice, "… got a pair of knockers on her like muskmelons and… "

"You got groupies," Del said.

"Groupie with a good eye for knockers," Lucas said, amused. "Muskmelons… those are cantaloupes, right?"