"He's here now, we're working out a warrant."

"Listen, a friend of the Calbs from down the street had a key and permission to go into the house. She went in, found blood, and invited us in. I don't know the legal aspects of it, but it looks bad. We need that warrant down here right now, before we start pulling the house apart. But we need it now. "

"Ten minutes," Anderson said. "I'll walk it around myself."

Lucas called Green, the FBI agent, told him about the blood. "Send our crime scene guys down here, will you?" Lucas asked. "We may have another scene for him to process."

"Right now," Green said.

Lucas rang off and Del said, "Over here."

He was squatting in a corner of the kitchen, and Lucas stepped over. A pistol shell lay against a molding.

"A.380," Del said.

"Yeah. Goddamnit. Listen, let's do a walk-through. We're okay on that-the blood's fresh enough. Quick trip through the house."

THE HOUSE WAS large, but they did the first pass in five minutes. No bodies, but the house had been stirred around. "Closets are halfway cleaned out," Del said. "Lot of stuff gone, and they were in a hurry."

"Whose blood is it, if the Calbs were running?"

"How did they run, if both of their cars are in the garage?"

"Taxi to the airport?"

"Do they have a taxi here? Do they have airplanes that go anywhere?"

"Shit, I don't know."

They were snapping at each other, feeling the pressure. Three people on the line-the Calbs and the church woman, Katina Lewis.

"Where's the goddamn sheriff?"

ANDERSON ARRIVED TEN minutes later-"Couldn't find the judge. He was in, but he was down in the surveyor's office, bullshitting. Took forever to find him."

"We're okay to dig around?"

"Go ahead," Anderson said. "You need more people?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "The BCA crime scene people are coming down from Broderick. The FBI may be with them… First thing, we've got to figure out if the Calbs are really gone."

"Where's that blood?"

Lucas showed him, and Anderson shook his head. "That's a lot of blood."

"But whose blood is it?" Lucas asked.

HAVING GIVEN THE house a quick run-through, they checked the cars. The engines were cold, so they hadn't been used in the past couple of hours. There was nothing in either one of them that helped.

The lead crime scene guy arrived, with one of his subordinates, and with Del and Lucas trailing, they began in the basement and slowly worked their way to the top of the house. The subordinate noticed the strands of wool on the hatchway that led to the space under the eaves.

"They wouldn't hang there forever," he said. "If they were in a hurry, what were they doing up there?"

"Had something hidden?" Del suggested.

They got a chair, and then an ottoman to stack on top of it, and Lucas and Del helped him balance as the crime scene guy stood on top of the ottoman, pushed the hatch up, clicked on his flashlight, and froze. "Oh, Jesus," he said. "Aw, Jesus Christ."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Get me down."

The tech hopped down and Lucas clambered on top of the ottoman. When he stuck his head through the opening, Katina Lewis's face was four inches from his. Her dead eyes looked straight through him and he instantly flashed back to the hanging scene, the dead eyes of Cash and Warr; and he saw the face of the other woman, Ruth Lewis, in this woman.

"Lewis," he told Del. "Just like the other ones."

"Only her?"

Lucas couldn't see past her, but he could see the rest of the area, and there was nothing but pink insulation. "I don't see anyone else. I need to get a little higher… " He grabbed the edges of the hatch, pulled himself up a foot, but didn't have the leverage to get any farther. He could just see over Lewis's body, and there was nothing but insulation. "Nope. I think it's just her."

"I'll get something out on the Calbs," Anderson said. "You think it's Gene doing this?"

"Looks like it," Lucas said. He climbed down off the ottoman and chair. "Whoever it is, he's breaking up-he's going through a psychotic break. If it's Calb, I'd say his wife is in big trouble. He could kill anyone, now."

20

THE CRIME SCENE crew had suspended work at Cash's house and had moved down to Calb's. Lewis's body was still in the crawl space under the eaves and nobody knew exactly when they could move her-removing the body would be a job, and they wanted as few people as possible going in and out of the house until it was fully processed.

Lucas and Del carefully probed through the life the Calbs had left behind. Calb had a small home office, and one of the file drawers was open. Files had been taken, Lucas thought. He found income tax returns for 1996-99, but nothing newer. None of the files related directly to the body-shop business, but when they'd talked to Calb the first time, Lucas had noticed a row of filing cabinets in his office, so business papers might well be there.

Del came in after a while, with a small zippered bag. He handed it to Lucas, who said, "What?" and zipped the bag open. An insulin kit.

"Somebody's a diabetic and didn't take his or her shit," Del said.

"Unless this is a backup."

"Still."

A deputy came through, and they asked him about the airport; it was small planes only, and Calb wasn't a flier, as far as the deputy knew. Nor were there any taxis in town.

One of the BCA investigators from Bemidji, who'd been working at the Cash house, called to say that he and his partner had walked across to Calb's place and had frozen it-all the employees were there, and they were detaining any more who showed up.

Then the crime scene crew at Calb's house found a fingerprint on the.380 shell. "We'll do the Super Glue trick but it's about the best single print I've ever seen," the tech said. "We'll have something for you."

Lucas, going through Mrs. Calb's bedroom closet, found two shoeboxes that contained virtually new shoes, with perhaps an evening's worth of wear on the soles. In Calb's closet, on the floor under some shoes, he found a steel box, and inside the box, a thousand dollars in ten-dollar bills and a loaded.38 caliber Smith amp; Wesson revolver.

"I'm getting a bad vibe," Del said. "He might leave the gun, if he's got another one. Why would he leave the money?"

AFEW MINUTES after noon, the sheriff came back, trailing a tall cowboy-looking cop who the sheriff introduced as Loren Singleton.

"Loren was seeing Ms. Lewis," Anderson said.

"I'm sorry," Lucas said. "About your friend."

Singleton was distant, a little vague. Lucas had seen it before. "I'm, a, you know, we were… hell, we were sleeping together. But, I, uh… " A tear ran down his cheek and he wiped it with his shirt sleeve. "Goldarnit. Why'd this have to happen? You think it was Gene that did it?"

"Can't find him. Do you know any reason he'd have a problem with Ms. Lewis?"

"No, I don't," Singleton said. "I know what Katina was doing… I know what those women were doing, and I'm sure Gene knew… but how in the heck, I mean, what would that mean to Gene?"

"What were the women doing?" Anderson asked, taking a half-step back from his deputy.

"Bringing prescription drugs across the border from Canada," Lucas said. "They had a little distribution thing going, giving out drugs to the poor."

Anderson nodded, glanced at Singleton, and said, "Well, tell you the truth, half the people in town do that sometimes. No point in smuggling, though-you can order on the Internet."

"Gotta have the Internet," Lucas said. "Most of their clients are poor, and a lot of them are older-probably not too big on the Internet."

"How well did you know Gene Calb?" Del asked.

"I grew up here, so I knew him pretty well," Singleton said. "I didn't think… I don't know that he'd do anything like this. I mean, I refinish cars as a hobby, and once a year or so, I'd rent one of his paint booths to do some painting… That's how I met Katina. At Calb's."