The deputy came to the house and said to Lucas, "It's Harbinson's stepsister. Corine Maples. She's got a picture of Harbinson with Roger Walther."

"Bring her in."

The woman, dry-eyed but nervous, asked Lucas, "Is she still here?"

"Yes. I'm afraid we can't let you in."

"No, no, I don't want to see her… But I have a funeral home, the name of the funeral home."

"See the guy over there?" Lucas asked, pointing to a deputy. "That's Max Anderson; he's the deputy in charge of the scene. Give it to him. She'll be taken to the medical school first, for an autopsy, and then… Well, talk to Max."

"Okay," she said. "I knew Roger was bad news, the first time I met him."

"You have a photograph?"

She fumbled in her plastic bag and pulled out a photograph taken in a backyard with a wooden fence, a summer scene with a flower bed and, partly visible to one side, a plaster Virgin Mary with her hands spread over a pond the size of a garbage-can lid. Two people stood in the foreground, squinting into the sun and the camera.

"We had a barbecue and they came," Maples said.

"Does he still look like this?"

"Oh, yes. I saw them on the street two weeks ago. That picture is only two months old."

"He looks older than I expected. I thought he was right around forty."

She bobbed her head. "He is, but, he's had a pretty hard life. He smokes and he drinks and he stays out all hours. You can't drink two or three six-packs a day and not have it get to you."

"Doesn't look fat."

"No, no, he's never been fat. But he's not healthy. We tried to tell him…"

"We need to send this picture to the FBI," Lucas said. "If you don't mind…"

"He'll know it came from me," Maples said nervously. "He's still loose, with a gun."

"We'll just use the head portion," Lucas said. "And we think he's running. It's pretty unlikely that he's still around here."

"Okay…" But nervous.

"Do you know Janet Walther? Roger's ex-wife?"

"No. Roger wasn't from here, he was from Hibbing. I never met the family."

"Okay. Let me introduce you to Max. He'll fill you in…"

Out in the car, Lucas drove silently while Nadya and Andreno chatted. Andreno noticed after a while, and said, "What?"

"That fuckin' glove," Lucas said.

"What?"

"The fuckin' glove puts it on Walther. The shells in the bedroom could have been left behind by anyone, but that fuckin' glove…"

"That's bad?"

Lucas said, "I run three miles most days. I try to keep it at twenty-one minutes. Some days, I run five or six."

"You're my hero," Andreno said.

"You see that picture of Walther? The guy looked like a walking heart attack. And he outran me up and down the hills of Duluth, carrying a pizza box?"

Then they all rode for a while, and finally Andreno said, "You know the old line: too many facts can fuck up a perfectly good case."

"Yeah, yeah."

"What is this?" Nadya asked.

They went to Janet Walther's house, which was on the way into downtown Hibbing, found it-nobody home-and continued to the frame shop. An older woman in a cloth coat was talking to Walther about a frame for a photograph of her grandchildren, something under twenty-five dollars, and Walther, almost flinching away from Lucas, Andreno, and Nadya, took her to a ready-made stand and helped her choose one. The woman said twice, "You can help these other people," and she smiled and nodded at Lucas, but Walther said, "No, no, let's get this right."

When the woman was finally gone, she moved behind her counter and said, "What do you want?"

"Your ex-husband was living with a woman named Kelly Harbinson, up near Virginia," Lucas began.

"So what? I don't know what he does, and I don't care."

"We found her shot to death in her bed this morning. Roger Walther is missing. We're looking for him."

Her mouth opened and closed, and opened and closed again, as though she were having trouble breathing, and then she said, "Oh, my God."

"Have you seen him?"

"Not for weeks. He came here and asked for a loan and I told him I didn't have any extra."

"You don't know where he might be running to? Or how he might be getting there?"

She shook her head: "I have no idea. This whole spy thing is crazy, though. He's probably in a tavern in Duluth. Or here." She looked out the front window, as though she expected him to show up. Then, "Are you sure he's the one who… did it?"

"He was living with her, he's missing, apparently some clothing and his shaving equipment are gone…"

"I don't know. I just don't know."

He tried a threat: "You know that if you're hiding him, or helping him, you're an accomplice."

Now she raised her voice: "I'm not doing that! I don't like the man anymore! He's not the man I married anymore! I don't have anything to do with him!"

Lucas swerved to a new topic: "How… senile… is Burt Walther? Is he qualified to take care of his wife?"

"Burt? Burt's not senile. Burt's sharp as a tack." Her voice was sharp, at first, as though she was afraid of a trick. Then her voice softened: "Melodie has gone away, though. She was a nice woman, and she's gone now. If Grandpa couldn't take care of her, I don't know what would happen. They'd lose the house if they had to put her in a nursing home."

"Burt's not senile."

"No, he's not senile. Have you talked to him?"

Out the door, pissed.

Lucas said to Nadya, "You were right. The guy bullshitted me. That doesn't happen too often."

"It's because you're afraid to look at old people who are, mmm, mentally dying? I don't know your word, but you know what I mean," Nadya said. "This happened to my grandfather, when he lived with us, and I saw it all. Old friends would not look at him or talk to him. It is very unpleasant. Burt did not seem that way to me."

There was no one at Burt Walther's house. Lucas banged on the door, and looked in the windows, and finally a neighbor came out and said, "They're not home. Can I help you with something?"

"We're police officers and we need to talk with Burt Walther," Lucas said. "Have you seen him?"

"This is their day at the doctor," the man said. "You missed them by ten minutes. They're usually gone for two hours."

"Do you know which doctor?"

"Not exactly which, but I know the clinic…"

At the clinic, Andreno spotted Walther's Taurus. "They're here. Want to go in after them?"

Lucas, still a little angry, thought about it, but finally shook his head.

"We can wait. Let's get lunch. No point in messing with them in public."

They took Nadya to a Subway; she liked the sandwiches and Lucas suggested that a franchise might work in Moscow. "Probably is one," she said. "We have one of everything now."

They swung past the clinic on the way back to the Walther house, and the Taurus was still there. Down on the main drag, they stocked up on newspapers-New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Star Tribune-went back to the clinic parking lot, rolled down the windows, and read newspapers for half an hour. Then Andreno said, "Here they come."

A nurse was pushing Melodie Walther in a wheelchair, and helped her into the car. She and Burt Walther talked for a moment, then Burt got in the car and drove away. Lucas fell in behind and closed up. When he was close enough, he could see Burt's eyes in the rearview mirror. He hung at that distance, and Burt took them home.

At the house, Lucas pulled to the side of the alley, next to the garage. Burt came out to meet him. "Get your wife inside, then we'll talk."

"I don't…" His eyes unfocused.

"Can the senile shit," Lucas said. "We talked to Janet Walther. She said you're sharp as a tack."

Walther's head bobbed up and down a couple of times, and he shuffled back to the car and helped his wife out, and into a wheelchair that he'd left in the garage. He pushed her up the back walk, helped her inside, with Lucas a step behind, Andreno and Nadya trailing.