Lucas asked, "Joe's running, in a car. Or a truck, or something-he's down I-35. You know where he would have gotten a car? We saw him selling his van, and we can't find another car registered under his name. We find a couple bikes, but they're both at his apartment…"

"Don't know," she said. "But he's a member of the Seed. So I suppose… he wouldn't have any trouble getting a ride, if he wanted to pay for it."

Lucas nodded: that made sense. "Okay. So we've got to get you out of here. Can you arrange for somebody to feed the horses?"

"I suppose… for a couple days. There's a handyman in town who does that, but I have to find him."

"Give him a ring."

"You really think it's necessary? I don't have a lot of money for hiring people."

"Look, these guys, the killers-if they even suspect that you might give them away, that Lyle might have told you something… they'll kill you. To them, they've already killed a bunch of people, one more won't make any difference."

"I don't have any place to go," she said.

"Holiday Inn," Lucas said. "State'll pick it up for however long it takes to break this. We should have it in a week or so… it's too crazy to keep going." SHE GOT THE HANDYMAN, and he agreed to take care of the horses for thirty dollars a day. As she was packing up some clothes and personal-care stuff, Lucas asked, "Do you have a phone number for Joe?"

"No, I… You know who did? Lyle. He had a special phone. They both did."

"We've got that. Do you have a cell?"

"Well, sure."

"Okay-we may want you to call Joe on it," Lucas said. "We may need you to vouch for our story-that Lyle was killed. I'm not sure Joe believed us."

She stopped: "Why should I believe you? This could be like that moon-landing stuff. A big pack of lies." She looked at Jenkins. "You guys aren't lying to me, are you?"

"Honey Bee, Lyle's still at the bar. We can stop and look, if you want."

Pause. Then, "I'll think about it."

"The thing is," Lucas continued, "we know that Joe didn't kill the woman in the van. The Jill MacBride lady. Somebody else did. We got DNA from Joe, and from the killer, and Joe wasn't the killer."

"Really?"

"Really."

She nodded: "That makes sense. I don't think Joe's got it in him to kill anybody."

"We might need you to tell him that. The thing is, maybe he still kidnapped Jill MacBride, I don't know. But maybe not. If not, there's no reason to run. He'd be in a little trouble for running, but that's minor, compared, you know, to murder."

"He could come back and get the bar," she said.

"He might do a little time," Lucas said.

"But I could run the bar while he was in jail-I mostly run the place anyway."

"Works for us," Jenkins said. "But first, we got to get him back." THEY EXCHANGED cell-phone numbers, and she followed them in her truck, toward town, and halfway in, called and said, "I want to stop at the bar."

"You sure?"

"I want to look at his face," she said.

The place was overrun with cops and crime-scene people; Marcy and Shrake had gone. Lucas took her through the cops, to the body, which was still on the floor. He left her with a cop, stepped over to the crime-scene guy and asked, "Could we get a plastic bag or something, over his lower body? We got his girlfriend here to do the ID."

When the black plastic bag was in place, Lucas led her over, holding on to her arm. She looked down, nodded, pursed her lips as though she were going to spit, and turned and pulled him away from the body. Turned a bar stool around, sat down, and stared at the bar.

"You okay?" Lucas asked.

"No," she said.

"I want to get you out of here. Send you into town with one of my guys, get a statement, and get you settled at a motel."

She said, "Okay. Okay. Goddamnit, that hurts. If it's okay, I gotta go to the ladies'."

"Sure."

She wandered off toward the hallway that led to the ladies' room, and Lucas watched her until she went through the door, then moved over to Jenkins. "I want her to trust me, so I don't want to look like I'm watching her. I'm going down to the other end. But keep an eye on the ladies' can until she comes out. We don't want her running on us." INSIDE THE BATHROOM, Honey Bee paused for a moment, then dug in her purse and took out a key ring with two keys-one a Schlage and one a Yale. She stood at the sink for a moment, as though she'd been looking at herself, or washing her hands, but she wasn't: she was listening. After a few seconds, she moved quickly to a fire door set in the wall opposite two toilet stalls, opened it with the Schlage, listened again, then stepped forward to an electrical box labeled "High Voltage," and locked with a padlock. She opened it with the Yale. Inside were two small brown paper sacks, the kind that doughnuts might have come in. She took them, snapped the lock back in place, wiped it with a piece of tissue paper, pushed the door shut with an elbow, locked it, and scurried into a stall.

Inside, she dropped her jeans and underpants, sat down, and dug the bags out of her purse. Two solid stacks of currency-mostly twenties, she was disappointed to find. Still: eighteen thousand dollars in a quick count. Homeboy PayPal, for those hard-to-resist items that came in after midnight.

She put it in the bottom of her purse, stood up, flushed, washed her hands, looked at herself in the mirror, splashed some water on her face, wiped it with a paper towel, and went back into the main room. She saw Davenport down at the far end. He held up a hand and came to get her; brought her to Jenkins, who'd take her to BCA headquarters for a statement.

Lucas said, as they were leaving, "Hang on to her there, until I get back. Won't be long." HE TOOK a call from Stephaniak, the Wisconsin sheriff. "Listen, I have what might be bad news for you, but I'm not sure."

"I could use some bad news, since all the other news has been so good," Lucas said.

"Yeah, well, you might want to get yourself some stainless-steel underwear," Stephaniak said. "You know, I told you about a bunch of guns and other stuff?"

"Yeah?"

"The crime-scene crew got down in there, in the tank, and they found this empty box. Military. There was one empty hand-grenade canister beside it, no grenade. It's just possible that these guys have a whole box of M67 HE frag grenades."

Lucas scratched his head. He didn't really know what to say.

"Hello? You there?" the sheriff asked.

15

LUCAS DROVE SOUTH on Highway 61, crossed the Mississippi into Hastings, took Highway 55 to the law enforcement center, checked in with the sheriff's office and was escorted to forensics. A tall, narrow, dark-haired woman met him at the door and stuck out a hand: "Lucas? Nancy Knott. Come on through. What's up?"

Lucas followed her to a cubbyhole office, took the visitor's chair as she settled behind her desk. Lucas asked, "You processed the scene at the Haines-Chapman murder, right?"

"Basically, Lonny Johnson did, but I was out there for a while," she said. "Lonny's off today. I did most of the in-house processing."

"So when I read your forensics report yesterday, it said that you found hay-wait, not hay, you said straw-stuck to the back of one of the victims. You thought that he might have died in an agricultural area. I understand the bodies were found in a ditch under a little bridge, in an ag area. So my question is, so what? Was there something about the straw?"

"There wasn't any straw there," Knott said. "It was one of those seasonal creeks, grown up with dead weeds. There was a bean field up the hill, so no straw there. And the bodies were in plastic bags, and the straw was stuck to the outside of their clothing, inside the bags."

Lucas dug in his pocket and pulled several pieces of straw from his pocket. "Hay like this?"