"Dusty fuckers versus metalheads; and you always leaned toward the metal," Del said. "Back when you were running around town on that bike. I remember when you went to that first AC/DC concert. You talked about it for weeks."

"They kept your motor clean," Lucas said. They were coming up on Broderick. "Tell you what-let's go on through town and find that kid."

"Letty… "

"West."

A FORD TAURUS was parked in the yard next to the Wests' Cherokee. Lucas and Del trooped across the porch, and Martha West met them at the door before they had a chance to knock.

"The state policemen," she said to the room behind her. She pushed the door open and said, "C'mon in."

The front room was too warm and smelled of wool and, Lucas thought, old wine and maybe Windex or lemon Pledge. Letty was sitting on a piano bench in front of a broken-looking Hammond organ; a short, muscular black man with a notebook was perched in an easy chair, forty-five degrees to her right, a Nikon D1X by his feet. A pillow sat on the floor at the third point of the triangle, where Martha West had apparently been sitting.

"Hey, Lucas and Del," Letty said. She got up, smiling. "Did you see me on TV?"

"All over the place," Del said. "You were like Mickey Mouse."

Martha West said, "We've been having an interview with Mr. Johnson from the Chicago… " She looked for the name but couldn't find it.

"Tribune,"the black man said, standing up. He wore round, gold-rimmed glasses and looked like he might once have been a lineman for Northwestern. "Mark Johnson." He reached out to shake hands with Lucas, and then with Del. "You're agents Davenport and Capslock?"

Lucas nodded. "I'm Davenport and this is Capslock. I'm surprised you're here. Your friends got out of town fast enough," he said.

"Mostly TV," Johnson said, as if that explained everything.

"We need to talk to Martha and Letty, but we don't want to disturb your interview," Lucas said. "We can come back, if you'd like."

Johnson shook his head. "I got most of what I was looking for. I'm trying to figure out how in the hell Cash ever wound up here."

"Learn anything?"

"No. The guy down in the car shop won't talk because he's afraid he'll get busted, or even worse, get sued. The guy with the dogs won't talk to me because of his American principles. And the women at the church think I'm probably a rapist because I'm black, but they're too nice to say so."

"We can't help you with Cash," Lucas said. "We'd like to know ourselves. He just doesn't fit."

"He was pure-bred city," Johnson agreed. "I called some people down in KC and they tell me there's no truck-driving job in the world that'd keep him up here. He'd rather have some cheap-ass job like robbing 7-Elevens."

"Interesting," Lucas said.

"It is," Johnson said, gesturing with his notebook. "Now you tell me something. Do you really think Cash and this Joe guy and Jane Warr kidnapped the Sorrell girl? If they did, why in the heck would they be out in the country where everybody could see them coming and going, and know every move they made?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "But I think they were involved in the kidnapping. I think they did it for the money and we'll eventually nail it down. We've got a state crime scene crew taking their cars apart, looking for DNA that might tie them to the girl."

"Can you tell me precisely why you think they were involved?" The notebook was poised again.

Lucas thought it over, then asked, "Do you know Deke Harrison?"

"Yeah, sure. He's my guy at the Trib," Johnson said. "He runs our desk."

"He used to come through the Cities," Lucas said. "For years. We'd go out and get a drink."

"Yeah. That's my job now. He moved up," Johnson said.

"Tell him to give me a call," Lucas said. "I've got a cell phone."

LUCAS GAVE JOHNSON the cell phone number, Johnson said good-bye to Lucas and Del, went out through the door, and then a moment later stuck his head back inside. "Find a good place to eat?"

Letty said, "The Red Red Robin."

"That's the best? God help us." Johnson said, and he was gone.

Letty put her hands on her hips and looked at Lucas. "Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"

LUCAS TOLD LETTY and Martha West what they needed: any hint of an irregularity around the Cash-Warr property. "There is no body in the house-we took the place apart after we found the money and the dope."

"So they must've buried her," Letty said, crossing her lips with both of her forefingers, thinking. Martha shivered at the thought, and looked at her daughter. Letty seemed more interested than scared.

"I imagine they did," Lucas said. "But out here… there's ten thousand square miles of unbroken dirt and bog."

"Yeah, but even out here, there's always people going by. You couldn't just drive out somewhere and spend an hour digging a grave and be sure nobody saw you," Letty said. "People see you out here, because-wherever you are-you're unusual. They notice you. I'll be walking across the lake down by the old dump and two days later somebody'll say, 'Saw you down by the dump with your gun.' And I never saw them."

"Gives me the creeps," Martha West said. "You got no privacy."

Letty looked out the window, the white winter light picking out her blue eyes. Still not much snow. "Why don't we go look around?" she asked. "I'll come with you, see if I can see anything. I walk up and down there all the time, on my way to the crick. If we wait until tomorrow, there might be too much snow."

"Must've been snow since the girl was taken," Del said. "She was taken before Christmas."

"There's been some, but not much," Letty said.

"If you guys are gonna take Letty, could I get you to buy her some lunch or something?" Martha West asked. "I've got to run into town for a while."

"Sure," Del said. "Down to the Bird."

MARTHA WEST WAS suddenly in a hurry, and Del looked past Letty at Lucas, catching his eye, with an uh-oh twist of his head: Martha West needed a drink right now. Lucas nodded and said to Letty, "Get your coat."

"Want me to bring the.22?"

"That won't be necessary."

"Piece of crap, anyway," she said, and headed up the stairs to her bedroom.

Martha West was gone before Letty came back down. Letty came down wearing a slightly too big parka, pac boots, and carrying a pair of mittens. "S'go," she said, clumping through the living room to the door.

"Your mom's already gone," Del said.

"Straight to the Duck Inn," Letty said. She added, without irony, in a voice that sounded older than her twelve years, "It's a tragedy."

THEY DROVE BACK down to the Cash/Warr house in the Acura, Letty fascinated by the CRT screen in the dashboard. "Can you play movies on it?"

"Nope-you get the information screen and the map screen, and that's it. Unless you have to eject." Lucas kept his voice flat. He was a firm believer in lying to children. "If you need to eject, you go to the information screen, and push History, and one second later, you're history. Throws you right out of the car, through the moon roof."

Letty, in the back seat, thought about it for a second, then said, "It's not nice to fuck with kids."

Del twisted and said, "Jesus Christ. Watch your mouth, little girl."

TWO VEHICLES WERE sitting in the driveway at the Cash/Warr house: a BCA crime scene van, and a sheriff's department car. Lucas pulled in behind them. They all climbed out, and a deputy sheriff came out on the stoop and said, "Your guys are out in the garage, if you're looking for them."

"Thanks," Lucas called back. They trudged up the driveway to the garage, and went in through the side door. A BCA tech was standing at the open trunk of Jane Warr's car, and said, "Hey, guys." When he spoke, another man, shorter and stockier, backed out of the trunk. He was holding a plastic bag and a pair of forceps. A magnifying hood was pulled down over his glasses, and his eyes appeared to be the size of ashtrays.