"Grandson, yes. Roger," Lucas said. "After we're done with the old man, we'll look him up. Him and his wife. He's our best candidate right now."

"Are we breaking the case now?" Nadya asked.

Lucas looked at Andreno, who did something Italian with his face and shoulders, meaning, "Could be." He said, "Could be."

And on the way down in the elevator, Nadya said, "Micky says this woman in Legally Blonde will be appointed to the federal appeals court by the president."

Lucas looked at Andreno, and said, "You pushed it too far." Andreno shrugged.

"You're joking me again," she said. "Why do American men joke so much? Do you ever discuss?"

On the drive up to Virginia, Nadya again asked about going to see Raisa Reasons. "I believe there are some useful things that I could tell her."

"Listen… you're not really a cop, are you?" Lucas asked. "You're some kind of intelligence agent. You can tell me, because I know you're not a cop."

"Why is this?"

"Because you know some stuff that cops know, but you don't know other stuff. Daily things. What we see every day. You don't know why you shouldn't go see Reasons's wife."

"Well, why shouldn't I?"

"Are you a cop? I won't tell anybody what you say."

She thought about it for a minute, then said, "No. I'm a major with the SVR. I'm in the Counterintelligence Division."

"Now we're getting somewhere," Lucas said. "Reasons and I figured out that you weren't a cop the first time we went to the morgue, to look at Oleshev's body."

"Yes?" She may have been discomfited, but didn't reflect it. Instead, she seemed amused and interested.

"Yes. You flinched when you looked at the body. Cops your age don't flinch. They've seen two hundred bodies and are interested in what they're going to find out, they don't really feel much about looking at another dead guy."

"Why would that tell me about talking to Raisa Reasons?"

" 'Cause you'd know it wouldn't do any good. When you've been a cop for a while, you figure out that the best thing in domestic disputes is distance," Lucas said. "Just simple distance. You get a husband and wife breaking up, and one of them goes after the other, the one thing that'll end the violence, end the anger, is distance. If you can't find the other person, don't know where she is, pretty soon the violent feelings dissipate and everybody goes back to living their lives."

"But I could tell her-"

"What's to explain? She knows what happened. What're you going to tell her, that it didn't feel good?"

"No, I-"

"That it did feel good?"

Small smile. "No, but-"

Lucas kept interrupting: "That he really loved her, but their marriage was troubled and he was lonely? That makes his death her fault. That he really wasn't serious? That devalues her marriage, that he could sleep with somebody so casually."

"Maybe tell her that I'm sorry."

"If you're sorry for her, that's patronizing, and it'll really piss her off. If you're sorry about the situation, that's obvious, and she won't care how sorry you are. None of it does any good," Lucas said. "The best thing to do is go home, get some distance. You know the saying 'Let sleeping dogs lie'?"

"I know it, but this dog is not sleeping," Nadya said.

"She'll be okay, when the shock wears off. The Duluth guys will manage her, they'll take care of her, and after a while, you won't be so important. She'll have other things to do and other things to think about. What to do with herself."

"Without Jerry," Nadya added, the gloom settling back.

"Without Jerry, but with some money," Lucas said. "Jerry had a lot of insurance coverage. She'll be okay."

Nadya sighed and stretched and yawned and finally said, "Maybe you're right."

"Of course I am," Lucas said. "I've seen it a lot. Best thing to do: get away from it if you can."

Maisy Reynolds was two minutes out of the shower, looking good in a cowboy shirt with pearl buttons and tight riding jeans; she smelled like Irish Spring soap. "I'm getting ready to go to work. If you guys keep coming around, I'll probably get fired. They're really mad about what you're doing. About Anton."

"How long have you worked for him?" Lucas asked, as he and Nadya followed her into her trailer. The place smelled like celery and carrots and beer. She pointed them at a tiny dinette, and Nadya and Lucas settled into chairs. Lucas took his laptop out of his briefcase and set it on the tippy Formica-topped table.

"Six years. He's not a bad guy. He's paternal, I guess you'd say. A little bit cheap, but you can talk to him. He doesn't mess with your tips."

"How about his kids?"

"The son is just like his dad. The daughter's an asshole."

"But this job, it must be good enough, if you can keep horses and a nice house," Nadya ventured.

"Thank you, honey, for the 'nice house,' " Reynolds said, looking around the kitchen. "Sometimes in the winter, when we get an ice storm, I feel like I'm living in a beer can… You guys want some carrot juice? I got some fresh."

"No, thanks," Lucas said, grinning at her. "It's made out of vegetables."

"I would like," Nadya said. "The vegetables in your restaurants are not so good."

"Better in Russia?" Reynolds asked, interested.

"I should say so," Nadya said. "Also better in France, in Germany, in Scandinavia, in Italy, in Israel."

"I can believe that. Most of our vegetables are designed so they're cheap to ship," Reynolds said, as she took a blender pitcher from the refrigerator. "But these are fresh and old-fashioned, right out of the garden, fertilized with genuine horse shit."

Lucas brought up the photograph of Burt Walther. Walther was outside his house in Hibbing, looking toward the camera, but not at it. He seemed to be looking at a van driver, while the photo was taken from the back of the van. Lucas turned the computer toward Reynolds, who was pouring the juice. She handed a glass to Nadya, and they both looked at the photo over their glasses. Reynolds sipped and said, "Jeez, it kinda looks like him…"

Lucas had the picture up in Photoshop Elements, and he put the zoom tool on the old man's face and clicked a couple of times, enlarging it. Reynolds half crouched, looking straight at the screen, and finally said, "That's the guy. That's definitely him. Who is he?"

"Rather not say right at the moment," Lucas said. He turned the computer around and shut it down.

"Okay. Spy stuff," Reynolds said. "Is this the thing that's gonna get me fired?"

"We won't tell if you don't," Lucas said.

"This juice, it is excellent," Nadya said. "From horse shit? I should try this when I get home. We have much horse shit in Moscow."

The Walthers lived in a small house in a working-class neighborhood of Hibbing. Most of the neighbors had gone to vinyl siding, but the Walthers had stuck with the original gray-shingle siding, with white trim gone gray and flaky with age. The small lawn was neatly kept; a sparse foot-wide flower bed, with burgundy petunias, lay along the front wall under the picture window. A detached garage leaned disconsolately away from the wind; an old bulk-oil tank stuck to the back of the house like a metal leech.

Lucas had called Andreno as they rolled into town, and was told that he'd been down the street for twenty minutes. "The old man's there-he went out to his mailbox."

When Lucas turned the corner, following the MDX's navigation system through town, he saw the blue-painted mailbox and pulled to the curb beside it. He saw Andreno's van parked up the street, where Andreno could see both Walther's house and the garage behind it.

"When I knock, stay behind me," Lucas said.

"Yes?" She said it with a question mark.

"In case he's a nutso Russian spy and comes up shooting. Knocking on doors is the most dangerous thing we do."