Lucas and Del were eating scrambled eggs at a Bakers Square restaurant on Ford Parkway, six blocks from Lucas's house, when the other two arrived. Jenkins was a heavyset man, unshaven, with gray hair and suspicious eyes. Shrake was tall and lean, closely shaven with a pencil-thin white mustache, also gray-haired with suspicious eyes. They both wore hats and buttoned-up woolen overcoats and Shrake had an unlit cigarette pasted to his lower lip. They didn't sit, they stood outside the booth looking down, their hands in their coat pockets, like a couple of wandering East German Stasi thugs. They finished each other's sentences.

Jenkins: "If we can bust this asshole at ten… "

Shrake: "We can get back up here in time to watch the playoff game."

Jenkins: "If you guys don't fuck something up."

Shrake: "In which case, we'll miss the game."

Jenkins: "Then we'll tell everybody in the BCA that you guys are queer."

Shrake: "And that Davenport is the girlie."

Lucas continued to chew and Del put a piece of bacon in his mouth, and stared out the window at the Ford plant across the street.

"I think we can get it done by ten," Lucas said, after swallowing. "But you guys oughta know-Del actually is gay, and you've probably violated about six diversity guidelines."

Del turned and stared steadily at the pair, unsmiling, until Jenkins said, "Not that it really matters," and they all tried to laugh, but it was too early in the morning and too cold, and Shrake's hoarse laughter trailed away into a spasm of tobacco coughs. The sun was just up, and the car exhausts were melting the frost on the streets, leaving behind nasty little streaks of black ice. Too fuckin' early.

THE TRIP THROUGH the frozen countryside took an hour and a half, with an orange sun finally groaning up over the horizon. There was more snow around the Cities than in the northwest, and for twenty minutes, they ran down the highway alongside a snowmobile rally in the adjoining ditches, a couple of dozen sleds making a fast run south.

"Canadians call them snow machines," Del said, shaking himself out of a slumber, and looking out the window at the riders. They were in Lucas's new Acura SUV, which Lucas had begun to suspect was a disguised minivan.

"What?"

"They call them snow machines, instead of snowmobiles. Or sleds."

"Fuckin' Canadians."

"They are the spawn of the devil," Del agreed, yawning. "Want me to drive for a while?"

"If we stop, those goddamn flatfeet are gonna pull that Dodge off the road, and then they're gonna get stuck, and then it'll take another half hour to get down there, and we'll all be freezing and our socks will be wet."

"Good. I didn't want to drive. Wake me up when we get there."

SORRELL'S HOME WAS eight miles outside of Rochester on a rolling piece of country that might have made a decent golf course. Though the driveway was open, Lucas had the feeling that they'd triggered security sensors when they crossed between the two stone pillars that marked its entrance. The driveway leading to the hilltop house was blacktopped, carefully plowed, and though it seemed to pass through a woodlot, the trees were too aesthetically pleasing to be natural.

The house itself seemed modest enough from the bottom of the drive, a kind of Pasadena bungalow of redwood and brick, with a wing. Only when they got closer did Lucas realize how big the place was, and that what looked like a wing was a garage.

"I could put the Big New House in the garage," Lucas said, as they neared the crest of the hill.

"You paid what, a million-five for that?" Del said. Del had been trying to worm the price out of him.

"Nothing near that," Lucas said. "But this place-this place would go for a million-five."

"Or maybe six million-five… "

The driveway disappeared around the corner of the wing, apparently to hide the utilitarian commonness of garage doors. They stopped in front of the house, got out, waited until Jenkins and Shrake joined them. Jenkins parked his car beside Lucas's SUV, effectively blocking the driveway. They walked as a group, blowing steam in the cold air, up the steps of the low front porch. The porch had a swing, as did Lucas's Big New House, and a stone walkway along the front, under an overhanging eave.

Lucas looked at Jenkins and Shrake, said, "Ready," and Jenkins said, "Unless you want me around back." Lucas shook his head. "Let's everybody be polite," he said.

"Probably at work anyway," Shrake said. "The place feels empty."

Lucas pushed the doorbell and heard the empty echo. Shrake was right: there was something weird about houses-they felt either occupied or empty, and even without looking inside, most street cops could feel whether there were people inside.

One of Lucas's old friends with the Minneapolis police force, Harrison Sloan, theorized that people who were tiptoeing, or even breathing, gave off vibrations that the house amplified, and that you could subconsciously feel the vibrations. Lucas told him he was full of shit, but secretly thought he might be onto something.

He pushed the doorbell again, and then a third time. Jenkins moved down the walkway to a line of windows, and tried to see inside, trying one window after another. Halfway down, he stopped and moved his head up and down, his hand against the glass of the storm window, blocking reflections. Then he shook his head and said, "I'll be right back."

He went out to the Dodge, popped the trunk, and fished out a twenty-pound, yellow-handled maul. As he climbed back up the porch, Lucas said, "What are you doing?"

"Gonna knock the door down," Jenkins said.

"What are you talking about?" Del asked.

Jenkins sighed, as if instructing a slow student. "If you look through that window, you'll see a hand and an arm. Just a hand and an arm, sticking out of a hallway into the kitchen. It looks to me like a dead hand, but I can't be sure. It might still be a live hand, that dies while we stand here bullshitting. So if you'll stand back… "

Lucas turned to Del who said, "Oh, boy," and to Shrake, who said, gloomily, "There goes the fuckin' playoff game."

JENKINS HAD A nice smooth wood-chopping swing, and the edge of the maul hit just above the doorknob, blowing the door open. Jenkins stepped back, and Lucas slipped his.45 out of its holster and pushed the door open with his knuckles. Del, to one side, with his Glock pointed overhead, said, "I'm going… " and then he was inside, with Lucas two steps behind, and Jenkins behind him. Shrake had jogged around to the back, just in case.

"Guy down here," Del said, and Lucas moved forward, and then Del said, "Another one," and Lucas saw the first body sprawled in the hallway, one arm sticking like a chicken claw into the kitchen. Sorrell. Lucas recognized him from the photographs, except that the photographs didn't have a bullet hole in the face.

Del was moving, and Lucas moved with him, and Lucas saw the woman, facedown in a puddle of blood. Like Sorrell, she was wearing a bathrobe, and one leg stuck out toward Lucas. As he'd done with the door, he stooped and touched her leg with his knuckles. Not cold; still some warmth.

"Not long ago," Lucas said.

"Let's clear the first floor," Del said.

Lucas spoke over his shoulder to Jenkins. "Put a gun on the stairs. We're gonna clear the floor."

"Gotcha," Jenkins said. He moved to the base of a curling stairway with a blond-wood railing, his pistol pointed generally up the stairs. Lucas and Del took two minutes clearing the first floor, slowing to pop the back door and let Shrake in. When the floor was clear, Shrake and Jenkins took the basement and Lucas and Del took the second floor, although all four believed the house was empty, except for themselves and the bodies.

And it was.

Lucas came back down the stairs, tucking the gun away, and said, "Let's move it out on the porch… make some calls."