At four in the afternoon, a young man named Joshua called and said he'd found the name of a ninety-one-year-old man named Lou Witold who showed a baptismal certificate in Mahnomen County, and a notation that his original birth certificate, issued by the Catholic hospital, had been destroyed.

"That's the guy," Lucas said.

"He's dead," Joshua said. "He died six years ago."

"That's not the guy," Lucas said. "Got anything else on him?"

"He was married to an Anne Witold, whose records were destroyed in the same fire. She's also dead."

"Okay. You said it's, uh, Joshua? Listen, Joshua, start tracking Witolds. Pull all the Witold driver's licenses from St. Louis County, and see if you can build a genealogy, okay?"

"Okay. Do you want it today?"

"Yes. Tell your supervisor that all the overtime was authorized by the governor."

"Really?"

"Really," Lucas said. "You don't want to piss off the governor, not with these reductions in force going on."

"I need the overtime," Joshua said earnestly. "I'll work as long as the computers are turned on."

"Atta boy," Lucas said; he sounded like Andreno.

The early news had Reasons all over the place. First cop killed in years-died trying to save a Russian. Every news channel that Lucas looked at had bought the bodyguard line.

At five twenty, a woman named Romany called: "I've got another one of these Mahnomen-fire birth certificates, issued to a Burt and Melodie Walther. Both still alive-Burt still has a driver's license. He's ninety-two. You want me to do the genealogy thing, like Josh?"

"Yeah. This could be the guy we want… How's Joshua doing?"

"Let me check," she said.

Joshua came back. "Lou and Anne Witold had two children, both boys, Leon and Duane. Duane married somebody named Karen Hafner, and we have driver's licenses for them up to nineteen seventy-eight, and then no more. It's like they moved. The other kid, Leon, married a Wanda Lindsey, and they're still in Hibbing. And they've got a couple of kids, named John and Sarah, and Sarah I can't find, but John is living in Rochester-he's twenty-eight, and I don't know if he's married or not, or if he has any kids. I'm still looking."

"Keep going," Lucas said. He hung up, took his notes on Witold over to the Oleshev genealogy, and slipped it into one of the two remaining charts, three generations.

"Goddamnit," he said, looking at it. Too good to be true? They'd get a test with Bert and Melodie Walther.

He called Nadya, who'd moved to the Harbor Lodge: "What'd you tell the bosses?"

"I told them that Jerry was shot while guarding me."

"Atta girl," he said.

"That's what Micky says. Atta girl.'"

"We've got some new people for our genealogy," he said.

He filled her in, and she said, "We need a picture of this man," she said. "This Walther. We can show it to the woman in the aluminum house with the horses, who saw the old man at Spivak's…"

"Maisy Reynolds," Lucas said. "We can do that. I'll talk to the chief up there about getting a picture. What are you doing?"

"Watching a movie. Legally Blonde. This is a very peculiar movie."

"Actually, it's based on a true story," Lucas said. "It's kind of a documentary."

"Really?"

"True. This can be a very unusual country, sometimes."

Lucas was smiling when he hung up. Weather had made him watch Legally Blonde, and he'd loathed it. Then she made him watch Legally Blonde II, and he'd wanted to pluck out his eyeballs. The idea of Legally Blonde going back to the KGB, or whatever the fuck it was, as a documentary…

That made him laugh, and then he thought of the mote in the eye, Jerry Reasons, and he stopped laughing.

Maybe laugh tomorrow, he thought.

Chapter 21

Andreno and Nadya arrived at nine o'clock the next morning, Nadya still red and puffy around the eyes. She'd been having crying jags, Andreno told him, but not as often anymore. Andreno was solemn and attentive when he was beside her, but he winked at Lucas when her back was turned. Andreno was wearing a green-and-white baseball jacket with a hammerless. 38 hanging in a holster under his arm. "What's happening?"

"The Hibbing cops got a picture of the old man this morning," Lucas said. "They phoned it in to St. Paul, and St. Paul e-mailed it to me. I've got it in my laptop."

"Christ, you're a computer weenie," Andreno said. "But I knew that."

"Look, here's where we're at," Lucas said. "We know that who-ever's doing the shooting isn't ninety years old and is probably hooked into these families-unless the shooter is from completely outside." He looked at Nadya. "Like a shooter out of the embassy."

She shook her head: "Absolutely no."

"I buy that," Lucas said to Andreno. "The only reason to go after the Russian Mafia guy, the Russian embassy guy, and Nadya is that these people are trying to protect themselves from everybody. So we're looking for somebody tied into these families, but young and healthy enough to run away from me. Spivak's kids would be candidates, except that we know where they were when the killings took place."

"Maybe not the daughter…"

"That wasn't the daughter running from me the other night," Lucas said. "That was a guy. Anyway: it's gotta be somebody young enough to run, which means not more than my age. I'm in good shape, for my age, and I wasn't gaining on him."

"So if we look at everybody related, everybody young enough to run away from you…"

"Unless the families have brought somebody in," Nadya said. "They were spies. They have resources. They would have some hidden money-gold, even. They would have some criminal contacts to perform their duties."

"Yeah…" They all thought about it for a few seconds. "If they were moving people out of the country through Canada… I mean, Canada is notorious for the criminal gangs along the border, preying on Americans," Lucas said. "They work over here, go back there, and take advantage of the lack of coordination by the cops. If it's a Canadian killer, we're probably not going to find him."

"But we keep looking," Andreno said, "Because it probably isn't."

Nadya shifted the subject: "Should I find Jerry's wife and try to talk with her?"

Lucas shook his head: "No. Nothing to be said."

"Always something to be said," Nadya argued.

"Nothing that would do any good," Lucas said. "Best to finish this case, and go back home."

She nodded, but with an air of doubt, and Andreno said, "If you gotta talk to her, I'll go along. Don't go sneaking over there. Cops got guns."

Nadya nodded again and changed the subject again: "What now? With this picture in your laptop?"

"We go back up to Virginia," Lucas said. "We'll talk to Maisy Reynolds-I called and told her we're coming-and show her the old man's picture. The guy I've got in the computer looks like her description, but we need her to say yes."

"What about the genealogy?" Nadya asked.

"It fits," Lucas said. "The Walther family slips right in. One difference: the oldest ones, Burt and Melodie, the ones with the weird birth certificates, are still alive. But their kids-they had a son named Thomas, who was married to a woman named Catherine-are dead. They were killed in a car accident back in the seventies. There was still a third generation, though. Thomas and Catherine had a son named Roger who married a woman named Janet. They're still around, in Hibbing."

"You still want me to trail you?" Andreno asked.

"Yeah. If Reynolds identifies the old guy as the one who was in Spivak's bar, we're gonna go jack him up. Maybe even if she can't identify him. I'd like you to get to his place before we do, find a spot on the street, and then just watch. See if anything happens after we leave."

"What about the youngest one?" Nadya asked. "The old man's… what? Grandson?"