There was a figure coming up the alley, tall and thin, in a rain jacket. Carl. He gestured at the car, and Carl edged between the car and the garage wall, careful in the dark, and got in the driver's seat. "Where to? What's going on?"

"We need to talk to your father," Grandpa said. "He's up in Virginia."

"Dad? Do I have to talk to that asshole? What are we talking to him for?"

"Because he knows. And he's a drunk. The police have ways to put pressure on people, and he has to be warned. I can't call him-they may already be watching him… They asked about him this morning."

"What if they're watching him now?"

"They might be. But I think this whole investigation is small. They had a van watching me for two days, different vans, and now there's nobody. The police who came today seemed confused about what was going on…" He told Carl about the interview with Nadya and Lucas.

"So they know everybody," Carl said, when Grandpa finished.

"They know everybody, but not everything," Grandpa said.

"What are we going to do?"

"I'm working on that," Grandpa said. "I'm working on a story. A story they can believe."

"Dad's part of it? He's a drunk, he might say anything."

"I think he'll be able to handle it. I've figured out a role for him," Grandpa said.

Carl watched their back trail. Every time a car turned a corner behind them, he reported it. They took back roads, miles through the dark, rarely had anything in the rearview mirror.

"What did you tell your mom?" Grandpa asked.

"I told her I was going to stay over with you, that Grandma had been trying to get up at night."

"Good. As long as she doesn't call."

"She was already going to bed when I left."

Grandpa turned in his seat, looked at the long dark road behind them and said, "Enough. Let's go."

"I don't know where he is. Dad."

"I do," Grandpa said. "I had Bob Spivak find him."

Roger Walther was living in a shack off Old 169 between Hibbing and Parkville; a shack in every sense of the word-old weathered-board siding showing streaks of moss and rot in their headlights, a tumbledown plank stoop, junk in the front and side yards-old washing machines, a junked car, a battered fourteen-foot Lund fishing boat with a thirty-year-old outboard on the back, sitting on a trailer with no wheels.

A small porch had holes where the screens should have been; there were lights in the windows behind the porch, and when Carl got out of the car, he could smell the smoke from a wood fire, the smoke being pushed down to the yard by the thin drizzle. Grandpa got out of the car and said, "Come on."

"You sure he lives here?"

"That's what Bob said."

"I don't want to talk to the sonofabitch," Carl said. "I would've kicked his ass the last time we met up, except Mom stopped me."

"I'm not asking you to come in, I'm telling you," Grandpa snarled in the dark. "This is not an option; this is an operation. We are going to try to figure out a way to put an end to this investigation."

"How're we gonna do that?" Carl asked. The windows in the front had curtains, and now a silhouetted figure parted the curtains and looked out. The silhouette looked to Carl like a woman's.

"Watch," Grandpa said.

They walked up to the porch and as they were about to knock on the front door, it opened. A woman was there in a terry-cloth dressing gown, yellow with age; she was forty, overweight, with dark, oily skin; she smelled of bourbon and cigarettes.

"Who're you?"

"I'm Roger's grandfather and this is his son. We need to talk to him for a moment," Grandpa said.

The woman looked them over, then turned and called, "They say it's your kid and your grandpa."

"I'm coming…"

She stepped back from the door, and they stepped inside. The place smelled like cheap burning wood and newspaper, and baked beans. Roger came out of the back. He was a tall man, wearing black jeans and a plain white T-shirt; his hair, once blond, was going gray. He was barefoot. "What do you two want?" he asked.

"We need to talk to you for a moment. It's important, but…" Grandpa looked at the woman, and then back at Roger. "It's private."

Roger looked at them for a long four seconds, then asked, "Something happen to Jan?"

"No. It's about the four families," Grandpa said. "We've got a big problem."

"Fuck that," Roger said. But he turned to the woman and said, "You go on back in the bedroom. I'll be back in five minutes. You shut that door tight."

She put her hands on her hips and sighed, as if he'd just unloaded the burden of the world on her, then sullenly went back to the bedroom and slammed the door.

When the door slammed, Roger looked at Grandpa and then at Carl, and said, "Carl knows?"

"Yes," Grandpa said. He had his hand in his pocket and when he took it out, he had the silenced pistol in it.

Carl said, "What?" when he saw the pistol coming up, and Grandpa shot Roger in the heart.

Roger, looking surprised, fell down with a thump. The wooden floor echoed like a drum.

Carl said, "You shot my dad." Like a slap in the face; it staggered him.

Grandpa said, "Don't think. Go do the woman." He handed the gun to Carl. "Don't think, don't touch her, don't touch anything. Just go do it."

"You shot my fuckin' dad," Carl said, and the gun barrel drifted up toward Grandpa's waist.

"Don't point the gun at me; just take care of the woman."

"You… Jesus Christ." Carl stared at the old man.

Grandpa's voice turned to gravel: "Take care of the woman."

For a moment, everything balanced on a knife. The gun was now aiming at Grandpa's heart, and Carl took up the slack in the trigger.

"Don't think…"

They posed for another three seconds, then Carl suddenly turned, walked to the bedroom door, pushed it open. Grandpa heard the woman say, "What?" and then three shots, a quick bap-bap, and then a finishing bap.

Carl wandered back into the living room, a dazed look on his face. Grandpa said, "Are you all right?"

"Maybe."

"Give me the gun."

Carl handed it over. "Are you going to kill me someday?"

Grandpa was neither startled nor disturbed by the question. "No." He put the gun in his pocket and took out two black oversized garbage bags. "Help me get Roger in these things. I don't want blood in the trunk of the car."

"What's going on?" Carl asked, a pleading note in his voice.

"The cops were breaking us down-they're going to break us down. Unless we give them the shooter. We're giving them Roger."

"Why would… this is crazy."

"No. I can't tell you all of it. I can tell you this: from now on, you have to be a kid. You told me about maybe asking this girl to the home-coming. Tomorrow you've got to do it. You have to borrow some money from me for a sport coat and slacks, and you have to go buy them."

"What…?" Crazier and crazier.

Grandpa touched Carl on the shoulder, looked straight into his eyes. "There's more on this to do… But listen to me now. You are the last one of us. You have to go underground, and for you, that means that you have to go back to being a kid. A child. You're an adult now, and it'll be hard, but it's critical, Carl. You have to remember what you are, but you have to play at being a high-school boy. Can you do that?"

Carl shrugged, and said, "I suppose," and a flock of tears trickled down his cheek. He didn't notice.

Grandpa pointed at Roger's body, and Carl, stunned, helped roll the body into the two bags. When they were done, there was a small blood puddle on the floor, and Grandpa cleaned it up with paper towels and water and found that he'd left a clean spot on a dirty floor.

They fixed that by dragging a welcome mat across it a few times, until it had blended. That done, Grandpa went in to look at the woman: she was dead, all right. Carl had walked the gun up her body, shooting her first in the stomach and then in the chest, with a final shot in her forehead.