The fuckin' phone, Lucas thought. He'd dropped his cell phone on the bed. Stupid. He ran through the dark and the other man turned a corner, moving uphill across a vacant lot, through weeds and some bushes, past a house, and Lucas stumbled, almost lost a shoe-didn't tie his fuckin' shoes, either-and climbed over a thigh-high concrete-block retaining wall and plunged into the weeds of the vacant lot, moving fast, sand burrs ripping at his shoelaces and socks, looking uphill at a line of trees and lights in residential windows…

More sirens, three or four of them now. Lucas kept climbing, and realized he was losing the guy, the guy had gained ground on him. Lucas kept going, lost the guy in the darkness of a residential street, but knew which way he was going, and ran that way, saw him again-and the guy saw him, turned and raised his arm and Lucas saw three quick sparks and went down on his stomach, thinking, "Too late," but nothing came close, and he scrambled back to his feet and saw a man with a dog, and the man ran up on a lawn, away from him, and Lucas kept going, north, he thought, running awkwardly with his gun held in both hands out in front of him…

Saw the man again, again a spark-some kind of flash retarder on the pistol, Lucas thought-and the man had the hillside behind him, and Lucas raised over his head and fired two quick shots with his. 45. Way too far away, but maybe, maybe it'd slow the guy down somehow. The man scrambled away, running through yards and around trees, sometimes a faint movement in the streetlights, sometimes simply absent.

Had to make him hide. If Lucas could make him stop, make him hide, make him play cat-and-mouse, he could get the Duluth cops to throw a cordon around the neighborhood, seal it up, and then start going through it yard by yard and garage by garage. If the guy kept moving, though, sooner or later he'd lose himself in the dark…

Lucas sprinted along the street, tired, mouth hanging open, gasping for air. He ran three miles, three times a week, but it was on the flat; so far this had been all uphill.

Now where? There: quick movement, man turning down the hill, running downhill now. Still crashing through yards, over fences. Lucas followed, but the noise was terrific as he hit stuff in the dark, bushes, branches, weeds, a can, then the guy out front of him hit a barbecue grill and it clattered across a patio and a few seconds later, a backyard light came on and Lucas saw him disappear through a hedge.

A branch caught him on the cheek and he felt the skin rip; shit. He kept going, through the lighted yard, managed to kick the lid on the barbecue, and a guy in a T-shirt on a three-season porch yelled, "Hey, what ya…" and Lucas was through the hedge into the next yard, between two houses, onto the next street, working back into business buildings.

Two ways to go, left or right. He ran left a few yards, saw nothing, turned back right, saw nothing, went that way, then saw the dark movement back to the left and ran after it. But he'd lost more ground. The movement this time was a hundred and fifty yards away: the guy had a definite advantage because he apparently knew where he was going, and Lucas thought, Car. He's gotta have a car, probably close to the hotel.

The problem was, they were both running back toward the hotel again, and there was no way to shortcut the other man. He got a stitch in his side, ran through it, turned the corner where he'd seen the movement. Nothing down the hill, but he ran that way anyway, crossed a street, was coming to another when a cop car went by, lights flashing, then suddenly pulled to a stop and Lucas came down into the street and the cop piled out of his car and screamed something at him and Lucas slowed and looked toward him and then the cop fired a shot with a pistol, and Lucas screamed, "BCA, BCA, BCA," and raised his hands and the cop screamed something and Lucas couldn't hear it, and then the cop fired again and Lucas felt something pluck at his shirt and he started running down the hill again.

A moment later, he heard the cop car coming around and he ducked around the next corner and saw, two blocks away, the last sight of the man in the black jacket, turning downhill on that block. No chance to catch him, the cop car coming, no way to outrun it.

Lucas stepped into the street, stuck his gun into his belt, lifted his hands above his head. The cop car slewed around the corner, then nearly ran across the curb into the building, and two cops jumped out, and Lucas screamed, "I'm a cop. I'm a cop with the BCA. The guy who shot Reasons-"

But the cops were screaming at him, their guns pointed, and Lucas shouted, "BCA, you dumb motherfuckers," and finally one of the cops waved a hand at his partner and said, "Put the gun on the street."

"Fuck you," Lucas yelled back. "My hands are over my head, I'm not touching the gun again, you dumb motherfuckers'll shoot me sure as shit. I'm Lucas Davenport, I'm with the state and I'm staying at the Radisson and the guy who shot Jerry Reasons just ran around that corner down there and he's gone, or he's gonna be gone by the time you assholes figure this out."

Now the two cops were confused, and another cop car pulled up and the passenger-side cop came from behind his door and said something to his partner, and they skated around the car, pistols pointed shakily at Lucas, and then one cop said, "Put your hands down and behind your back, sir. We're gonna cuff you till we find out what's going on."

Lucas tried to be calm: "The guy who shot Reasons just ran around that corner-"

"There are more people down the block; just try to be calm and put your hands down…"

Lucas put his hands down, and said, "If you don't get a car down there in five seconds, he's gone," and the cops said, "That's all taken care of, sir," but he didn't exactly say sir as if he meant it, and the driver-cop cuffed him, the other cop took the. 45 out of his belt.

Lucas was talking fast. "If we go back to the Radisson, I've got my ID in my room, and I talked to a guy named Larry Kelly in your detective bureau when we found the old lady's stuff down by the tracks… and the Russian investigator can ID me… Listen, you gotta find out…" He stopped, took a breath: too late. "Ah, fuck, never mind."

"Never mind, what?" asked the cop who cuffed him. Lucas could tell he'd started to believe.

"Never mind trying to put more guys on the killer. He's gone. He's gone. Didn't even get a look at his fuckin' car…" He looked down the street, pulled around, hoping against hope that a car might zip through one of the intersections he could see. None did.

Now they believed him a little more; didn't uncuff him, but he said, "Look, let's go over to the hotel. Reasons looked pretty bad. And be careful of the. 45. The safety's on, but it's still cocked and there's a round in the chamber."

He let them put him in the backseat of the squad car, and then said, "Put out a call and tell them to nail any speeders they see. I don't know what kind of car, but we're looking for a thin blond guy in a black jacket or a white shirt. He was wearing a white shirt when I saw him, but he pulled a black jacket over it."

The driver put out the call immediately; then the other guy said, "What about Reasons?"

Lucas thought about Reasons shaking and trembling on the floor of Nadya's room. Brain death. He'd seen it before, when a guy's brain was starving of oxygen. "I think Jerry… Jerry was hit pretty hard," Lucas said. "I called nine one one before I ran after the guy, but he was hit hard."

"You think…"

"Yeah, I think."

"Jesus Christ," the cop said, his eyes big. "Jesus Christ. I was just talking to him this afternoon."

The uniform cops brought Lucas through the police lines around the hotel, everybody looking at him hard-they thought he might be a suspect-and they went up in the elevator and Nadya, in the hallway, her blouse soaked with black blood, saw them coming and said, "Lucas, why are you…" and then Larry Kelly, the cop who'd been leading the Wheaton murder, and who had been talking to her, turned, saw his arms pinned behind him and asked, "What's going on with you?" looking querulously behind him at the uniform cops.