Lucas and Letty looked at each other, and Letty said, "Bring it out."

They took the pump, but Letty got it for two seventy-five, with five boxes of.22 long-rifle shells thrown in as a deal-sweetener. She said to Lucas, "I've had enough of that.22 short bullshit. Next time this jerk comes around, he better be wearing a bulletproof vest."

LUCAS ENJOYED POETRY. Couldn't help himself. He was especially fond of haiku, the Japanese form, and in reading haiku from time to time, he'd encountered talk of Zen Buddhism, and the concept of the koan. A koan was a kind of a riddle, or paradox, without a solution. They were used by the Zen master to demonstrate the ultimate futility of logic, and to provoke-with some pupils, anyway-instant enlightenment.

Lucas heard Letty say bulletproof vest and took a step toward enlightenment, though later he thought the enlightenment might have been provoked by the way she'd orally italicized the better be.

DEL ARRIVED BACK the next day at one o'clock, knocked on the door. Lucas was lying on the bed with the door unlocked and called, "Come in."

Del pushed the door open, stuck his head in, and said, "Am I too early? Or have you figured it out?"

"I don't have a name yet," Lucas said. He held up the art pad, and the top page was covered with red and green squares and arrows. "I've got some thoughts."

Del tossed his duffel in the corner, sat on the second bed. "Give."

Lucas said, "One: We figure out in the evening that the killer was probably Sorrell. Then we drive home, and about twelve hours after we leave Armstrong, we arrive at the Sorrell house. He's dead, and he's been dead for at least a little while. That means that the killer had to hear that we'd figured out Sorrell, had to make a plan, and had to drive seven hours, at least-Rochester is more than an hour south of the Cities-and then he has to find Sorrell's house, where the phone number is unlisted, do the killing, and get away. That's pretty amazing, when you think about it.

"Two: Thirty hours after he hanged two people in Armstrong, Sorrell lets his own killer into his house, with his wife standing right there with him. He's unarmed and is shot down in cold blood. He takes no precautions, he never thinks that the guy at the door might be connected to the murders.

"Three: Why did the guy attack Letty? We don't know. But we do know that Letty's mother let him in the house after midnight, when both she and Letty knew there was a killer running around loose.

"Four: Letty claims she shot the guy, but none of the hospitals inside two hundred miles report a guy shot in the chest with a.22, that might possibly be our guy. Why is that?

"Five: I talk to Burke, Annie's dad, and he shows us stuff that looks like it came from the FBI. It looks real. How'd they know how to do that?

"Six: I talk to Letty last night after you head back to the Cities… Hey, did you get laid?"

"Yeah." Del nodded. "It was wonderful."

"I have fantasies about Cheryl. Maybe you could tell me… Never mind."

"C'mon, wiseass."

"All right. Anyway, I talk to Letty, and one thing leads to another, and we buy her a replacement rifle down at Ace Hardware. And she says to me that if this asshole comes back, quote, 'He better be wearing a bulletproof vest,' unquote."

Lucas looked at Del and raised his eyebrows. Del asked, "That's it?"

"That's it."

Del shook his head. "Maybe I can get a refund on some of them pens. Looks like you only used red and green."

"Think about it for a minute," Lucas said. "What are the chances that… the guy is a cop?"

DEL THOUGHT ABOUT it for a minute. "If the guy is a cop, he would have heard about Sorrell really early. If he was wearing a uniform, people would let him in their house any time of day. He'd see FBI stuff, so he'd know the format. And if he was wearing a bulletproof vest… it would explain all of that shit."

"We know that there are at least two cops who were friendly with Gene Calb-Ray Zahn and this other guy, the boyfriend of Katina Lewis. Zahn sometimes hung out there, and the boyfriend painted his cars up there."

"How many points did you have? Six?"

"Six," Lucas agreed.

Del nodded. "Then here's number seven. If you were running a major car-theft ring, there'd be nothing more valuable than having a cop inside the only major police agency for miles around. In fact, you'd just about have to have one."

THEN LUCAS SAID, "I got another list."

"Yeah?"

Lucas said, "One: You're a friendly looking guy like Gene Calb, maybe with a spy inside the department, or maybe not-it's a small town, and word gets around. He bluffs his way into Sorrell's house, kills him, and gets back here.

"Two: He goes after Letty. We don't know the specific reason, but we do know that Letty hung around his shop and maybe he's afraid that she saw or heard something. And Calb is a friendly guy, everybody likes him, and if he knocks on the door, maybe Martha West lets him in-Letty told me one time that Martha'd had a crush on Calb.

"Three: Calb kills Katina Lewis. Why? We don't know, but suppose that Letty really did shoot him, and hit him in the chest like she said. He was hurt, but not badly. Maybe his wife patched him up or something. But suppose he bled through his shirt, or did something that tipped Katina that his chest was hurting. Heck, maybe she patted him on the chest. Anyway, the instant that she suspected, he'd have to get rid of her, because all she'd have to do is tell any cop, and we'd go straight to Calb and take his shirt off. We find a bullet hole or even a bruise, he'd be toast. So he'd have to kill her. Maybe that was done so spontaneously that he panicked, and ran."

DEL LAY BACK on the bed, and after a minute said, "I like the first one better. The cop."

"Why?"

"Because it all goes back to kidnapping the girls, and everybody says that Calb wouldn't do that. He might have been a criminal, but he wasn't a nut. Because if this car ring worked like we think it did, he was up to his ass in money-why'd he need to kidnap somebody? And most of all, he really seemed to think that Deon Cash and Jane Warr were stupid assholes. Would he get involved in a kidnapping with partners he thought were stupid assholes? I don't think so."

LUCAS THOUGHT ABOUT that for a while, then said, "Let's go talk to Letty and Ruth Lewis. They're up at the church. I think we ought to stay away from the sheriff's office until we've got something solid."

"I don't think Ray Zahn," Del said. "He's one of our guys."

"Yeah, well. I don't think so either, but… we gotta keep him on the list. And we gotta think about the possibility that it's nobody we know yet. Maybe a cop, but nobody we know yet."

"Think we'll have him by midnight?" Del said, joking.

"I don't know. If I were gonna bet, I'd say a week. Or less."