"He was here," Martin insisted. "He was that guy who walked up the hill, he had that bag of doughnuts…"

LUCAS WAS LOOKING at Clanton's face as he absorbed what Martin had said. His expression shifted from anger to confusion and then to disbelief. He said, "That retard? The retard with the smiley T-shirt?"

"That's him," Martin said.

"I didn't know who he was," Clanton said, lifting his head to look at Lucas. And, "We ran that asshole off. He wanted to pick beans or some shit. We told him we didn't have no fuckin' beans, and to go the fuck away."

Clanton told the story, and it was short: Pope had been at the farm-house for ten minutes, having hitchhiked out from Austin. When he found out there weren't any beans, he walked back down the hill with his bag of doughnuts.

"What's this about the doughnuts?" Youngie asked.

"It was like he thought he might be camping out,and he needed food, so he bought doughnuts," Martin said.

Clanton said, "He's a fuckin' retard. He can't be the guy who did all that shit. He walks around in a smiley shirt with a bag of doughnuts, for Christ's sake."

Lucas pressed the pad to his face and said, "Jesus."

THE DEPUTIES CLEARED the farmhouse and found a hundred and fifty gallons of agricultural precursor in the kitchen-so much for Sandy Martin's tale of checking the house. With cops all over the place, and no real information about Pope, Lucas decided to head back home. He washed his face in the farmhouse kitchen sink, got a new first-aid pad from Youngie, and climbed into his truck. "You oughta stop at the hospital," Youngie said.

"I'm only an hour and a half from home."

"There's gonna be a report, the gunshots…"

"You can do most of it. I'll either send you an affidavit or come down and talk to your county attorney, whatever you want… Now I just want to go home," Lucas said,

Youngie grinned: "Man, you look like shit."

"One of your guys already told me," Lucas said. He started the truck. "Thanks for the reminder."

THE DAY WASN'T QUITE DONE. He could feel his nose swelling, and blood still dribbled from one nostril. He stopped at a convenience store, paid five dollars for a bag of ice and some Ziploc bags to hold it, showed his ID to a gawking counter girl so she wouldn't call the cops, put a Ziploc bag on his face, and wheeled onto I-35.

Clanton, Lucas thought, had called Pope a retard. That was after a ten-minute acquaintance, if Clanton was to be believed. And Lucas believed him, on that much, anyway. Then he thought, What if Pope was really this sophisticated Cary Grant kindof guy who for years… He almost smiled to himself, but when he started to smile, pain arced down through his face.

That was Charlie Pope's fault, too.

HE SAW THE HIGHWAY PATROL car when he topped a hill. He went for the brake but knew it was too late: he could feel the radar waves passing through his nose. He was doing eighty-eight, and when the lights came up behind him, he pulled over. The patrol car idled in behind him, the patrolman calling in the Lexus's tag number. When the patrolman got out of his car, Lucas hung his ID out the window.

"Lucas Davenport, BCA,"Lucas called back to him.

The cop stepped closer, looked at Lucas's shirt, soaked with blood: "What the hell happened to you?"

"I busted a meth lab with the Mower County sheriff's guys about an hour ago. One of the dopers knocked me on my ass and broke my nose. You can call the Sheriff's Department, if you want to check."

The cop took Lucas's ID, looked at it, handed it back. "You know how fast you were going back there?"

"Yeah, yeah. Man, I'm just trying to get home," Lucas said. "I'm really messed up."

"Jeez, you're gonna have a shiner, Davenport," the patrolman said with great sincerity. "You look terrible."

"Thank you," Lucas said. "That makes it fuckin' unanimous."

13

LUCAS WENT TO the Regions Hospital emergency room, where a doctor with warm soft fingers pushed his nose around, said the bleeding seemed to have stopped, and asked how Weather was doing in England.

"You know her?"

"I used to talk with her when I was doing my surgical rotation over at the university," the doc said. "She's got some amazing skills."

"I've seen her work," Lucas said.

The doc smiled at him and said, "I know. The famous tracheotomy. She used to tell us that if we really wanted to impress our boyfriends, we'd cut their throats."

She smiled; but Lucas thought of Angela Larson and Adam Rice, and grimaced. The doc, whose hands had been on his face, said, "Ooo-did that hurt?"

"No-so what's the diagnosis?"

She crossed her arms and looked at him with what might have been skepticism. "You got punched in the nose. It looks likes your poor nose has been through the routine before, I could feel some scar tissue on the bone…"

"Yeah, playing hockey… and one time… never mind."

"This time, it's only a crack, not a clean fracture. Best thing to do is to leave it. I'll put a plastic protective cup on it and give you a prescription for some pain medication. You may need it to get to sleep."

EVEN WITH THE PAIN MEDICATION, he couldn't sleep; but because of the pain medication, his brain got foggy and he couldn't think about the case, either. The protective cup drove him crazy, and at two a.m., he got up, pulled it off, and threw it away. He spent the rest of the night sitting in a leather club chair, semiupright, vacillating between slumber and stupor.

He did get a few hours: he last looked at the clock at five a.m. When Weather called at eight, he was asleep. The phone rang a second and a third time before he got to it; his back hurt from the unaccustomed position in the chair, and his face and neck hurt from Clanton's punch.

He picked up the phone: "How are you?" she asked.

WHEN HE GOT OFF THE PHONE, he went into the bathroom and looked at his face. He had a bruise the size of a saucer, a stupendous black eye; rather, a purple eye, with stripes of crimson and yellow-gray.

"Jesus H. Christ," he muttered.

He went back to his chair, closed his eyes. Another hour of unconsciousness, and the phone rang again. Sloan said, "I heard you got your nose busted."

Lucas groaned and looked at the clock. Time to go. "Yeah. My whole goddamned head hurts. I gotta sleep sitting up."

Sloan might have choked back a chickle. "They splint is? Your nose?"

"Naw. They pushed it around a little and gave me some pills."

"Got a shiner,huh?"

"You're a ray of sunshine," Lucas said. "How's the disease?"

"I'm dying. Every hole in my body's got junk running out of it."

"I'd rather have the busted nose."

"I'd have to think about it for a while…"

LUCAS FILLED HIM IN on the meth-lab bust. Sloan summed it up: "You got nothing but hit in the face."

"No. I got something," Lucas said seriously.

"Yeah?"

"This Clanton guy, the guy who knocked me on my ass. We were on the lawn after we busted him, and I was pushing him on Pope. He didn't know who I was talking about. I was looking at his face when he figured it out-and, man, he couldn't believe it. He called Pope a retard."

"Mr.Politically Correct."

"Hey- we've been fighting the same thing. We've got all these really smart professionals at St. John's talking about Pope in a professional way. They'd never call him a retard. What they know about Pope is too complicated. But Clanton made it simple: he knew a retard when he saw one. And he's right."

"Huh." Sloan knew what Lucas was saying. "You think we're chasing the wrong guy"