"It won't-they're being routed downtown."

"Good. Where's this place…?"

The cop pointed farther up the street and across. "That white house. The one… There's Jim."

Lucas saw Goode step out on a porch and look down toward him. He went that way, fast.

"GODDAMN TIME," he said to Goode as he hurried up. "We've got no time."

"I know, I know… I got six people here." Goode looked at his watch. "We sent a guy downtown to get her ex-husband, he's been down at the station…"

"What's his name?"

"Uh, shit-Zack? Zeke?"

Lucas nodded: "Okay."

MARILYN DERECH WAS a plump blond woman who looked scared: wide-eyed and scared. Four other women and a plump man, who all looked scared, sat on the living-room couch and chairs, and two more kitchen chairs Derech had brought into the living room.

Lucas introduced himself, got their names: "We're really in trouble here," he said. "Does anybody know anything about her social life? Who she was seeing, where she went at night? Was she dating, did she go to bars?"

After a moment of silence, one of the women flipped up a hand. "We went to a restaurant up in the Cities, they have wine and music." "The woman had introduced herself as Carol Olson. She looked about forty, with medium-brown hair, a thin nose. "On Grand Avenue in St. Paul, it's called BluesBerries."

"BluesBerries-I know where that is," Lucas said. "Did you talk to guys, did you…"

"We just went up and had some wine and listened to music, and then we had dinner… we didn't really talk to anybody."

"Only the one time."

"I only went the one time, but I think she'd gone up a couple of times." Then she stopped and put a hand to her lips. "Listen to me. I'm trying to protect her reputation. I don't think she went up, I know she did. She knew the place pretty well, where the best parking was and everything. She liked it because she thought… it was interesting and safe and she wouldn't see anybody from Northfield up there."

"Why wouldn't she want to see anybody from Northfield? She was divorced."

"Yes, but Zach is around. He's not dating anyone," Olsen said. "When they broke up, it was sort of her that did it. She wanted a little… more."

"Adventure?" Lucas asked.

"More of something," Olson said.

"I'm not being cute," Lucas said. "Was she looking around? Was she hanging out? Was BluesBerries it, or was she hitting the bars? Did anybody ever hear of a place down in Faribault called the Rockyard?"

The guy, who had introduced himself as Tom Wells, knew about the Rockyard. "I live up the street, my business sells commercial sanitary supplies-toilet paper and paper towels and cleaning stuff… the Rock-yard is one of our accounts. If you were going to pick one place where Carlita Peterson would never go, that's it."

"But would she know not to go there?"

"She'd know," he said. "She wouldn't go there."

"If you took Carlita to a strange city and told her to find a place to eat, the first door she walked through would be the best restaurant in town," said a woman named Ann Lasker.

"But maybe she'd go there for an adventure? To the Rockyard?'"

"Her adventures wouldn't come in the form of a biker," Wells said. "If she was looking for action, it'd maybe be a"-he looked around at the women-"what? A history professor who sailed?"

A couple of them nodded.

LUCAS WORKED THEM THROUGH: Where did she go, whom did she see? The answers were "not far, and not many, outside the school."

Fifteen minutes in, Zachery Peterson arrived. He was a tall man, too thin, in a pale blue short-sleeved dress shirt, dark blue slacks, and brown thick-soled shoes. He wore tiny rimless spectacles and had a sparse, two-inch ponytail tied with a rubber band. He stood with his hands knotted in his pockets.

He hadn't heard from his ex-wife in two weeks: "We talked about once a month," he told Lucas, looking uncomfortable. "We hadn't really settled everything from the divorce yet. It was going slow."

"Did she mention any kind of relationship with anyone, any kind of relationship?" Lucas asked. "Did she have any new girlfriends? Anybody?"

They all shook their heads; and they went down his list of questions. Lucas was watching Peterson, caught him once wiping an eye, and wrote him off as a suspect.

"If he took her, he took her from the house, early. Did anyone see a car? Could you call all your neighbors and ask if anybody saw a strange car…?"

GOING OUT OF THE HOUSE, he looked back and caught the kitchen clock in the Derech house: an hour had gone by. Another one. He was nowhere.

Sloan called: "I can't find anyone who'll tell me that Larson was gay, or ever had any gay contacts, or even knew a lesbian, for that matter."

"Everybody knows a lesbian," Lucas said. He was outside on Derech's lawn, looking at the sun.

"Everybody but Larson."

LUCAS WENT BACK to Peterson's house, into the detached garage, pulled her car apart. Nothing to work with. Nothing. Back into the House, into the paper. Desperation pulling at his shirttails. Somebody called, "Agent Davenport?"

"Yeah…"

Back past the stove clock to the back door. A cop was there, in uniform. Another man stood in the backyard, an elderly man, cork shaped, with white-straw hair, wearing a cap that said top gun. He had a small black, brown, and white dog on the end of a thin leash. The dog kept jumping straight up in the air. Lucas thought it might have been a Jack Russell terrier.

The cop said, "Mr. Grass lives around the block… well, around two blocks. He was walking Louie this morning and thinks he may have seen a guy around here that he'd never seen before."

A pulse of hope.

Lucas stepped outside, trying to relax his. "Mr. Grass? Your first name is…" "Louie… just like the dog." He frowned at Lucas: "What the hell happened to your face, son? You look like you went three rounds with a better boxer."

"That's about right," Lucas said, touching the loop of bruised skin under his eye, wincing. "A guy plugged me right in the nose… Listen, tell me about this car."

"Silver car.

"Not white?"

"Mmm, looked silver. Could have been white, I guess. I saw him down at the bottom of the block going around the corner. I thought he might be lost because he was going slow."

"No way you would have seen the plates…"…

"I did see the plates, but I don't know what the number was. It was Minnesota, though."

"Could it have been an Oldsmobile?"

"I don't know… Do they have an SUV?"

Lucas grimaced. "An SUV? It wasn't a sedan?"

"Naw, it was an SUV," Grass said. "I couldn't tell you what make, they all look alike." He picked up Lucas's look of frustration and said, "I'm sorry."

"The driver…"

Now Grass shook his head. "Didn't see his face. I was going this way, he was going the other way, and he was looking away from me… but he came down this street, all right. Early. Before six o'clock. This goddamn dog has a bigger prostate than I do, I think. He starts jumping up and down, yapping, wants to get out and pee first thing."

"Mr. Grass, if you can remember anything else… this is really critical…"

Grass looked sad; thought and shook his head. "I'm sorry, son. I saw this car go by, all by itself, early, slow, and it just stuck in my mind. But I didn't pay it any real attention."

"Think about it, will you?" Lucas asked. "Any little thing."

They talked for another minute, then Lucas got on his phone and called the co-op: "Listen: we've got a second guy who says the car may be light, silver or possibly white. But he says it's an SUV. Put that out: tell everybody not to rely on it, we're still looking for a white Olds, but if anyone spots a silver of white SUV in a sensitive area, stop it."