“Probably burned it,” Lucas said.

“Probably not. Takes too long, and he was on a tight schedule. We know he didn’t burn it in the home fireplace, because crime scene checked it, did samples, and said the last fire was a long time ago. And Merion had to drive like hell to get up to his cabin before Gloria’s daughter came home and found the body. The fireplace at the cabin was gas, not wood, so he didn’t burn it there.”

“So . . .”

“What we’re thinking is, he whacked Gloria in the bathroom, threw her down the stairs, pinched off her nose and mouth, wiped up the bathroom floor with that Foaming Bubbles stuff, jumped in his car and took off.”

“Nobody saw him,” Lucas said.

“Because Sunfish Lake is darker than the black hole of Calcutta, and he’s up on that ridge. He looks out the window, to make sure nobody is coming down that little road, then he jumps in the car and takes off,” Jenkins said. “Once he’s out of the house, who’s going to see him, or know who’s in the car? Anyway, he goes up to the cabin, the club is in his trunk. Carefully wrapped in something, because he’s no dummy. He gets up there, knowing that the daughter could, at that point, get home anytime and find the body. When that happens, he’s going to have to drive back to Sunfish Lake right now, like a grieving husband should. So he gets to the cabin, still got the club, has to get rid of it. Can’t burn it, because it would take too long. It’s dark, he goes out into the woods with a shovel . . . some obscure spot, buries it. We’re thinking, probably in that vacant side lot. Not the front lawn, not between the cabin and the road, but in that empty lot, or maybe in the woods across the road. Doesn’t need a deep pit, the club’s only two inches in diameter. Carefully rakes some leaves over it . . . and it’s gone.”

“Or maybe he just threw it in a ditch on the way up,” Lucas said.

“He’s more careful than that. Throw it in a ditch, it could be found,” Jenkins said. “It’s pretty distinctive and it’d have some blood on it.”

“So, what you want to do is . . . ?”

“We don’t think he would have gone way deep in the woods, because he’d want to hear the phone ring. Remember, the daughter called him on the cabin phone, and then the cops called him on his cell, and they both put him up there . . . So we’re thinking, we should go up there and mark out the likely spots, and walk it inch by inch.”

Lucas thought about it and said, “Say, aren’t there a lot of golf courses around Cross Lake?”

“Lucas, for Christ’s sakes, we’re trying to help out here,” Jenkins said.

“What about the computer chips?” Lucas asked Shrake.

“Those guys are long gone. We got the word out, so people are watching for them . . . but we don’t think they’ll pop up here again. Not for a while, anyway, and the Merion trial is coming up.”

“If you motherfuckers play more than one round a day . . .”

•   •   •

SKYE DIDN’T CALL the next day, either, or the next.

On the morning of the fourth day, the South Dakota highway patrol guy called and asked, “I threw away the note you gave me, but you were looking for a Henry Mark Fuller, correct?”

“That’s my guy. You got him?”

“A body came up in Sheridan County. The DCI’s got him, you need to talk to a guy named Steve Clemmens. The word I get is that the body has been identified as Fuller.”

Lucas took a few seconds to digest that, and then asked, “How long has he been dead?”

“I guess he looks like he’s been down for a week or so. They’ll be doing an autopsy today or tomorrow, crime scene is out there now. I heard that it was really rough, what they did to him.”

Lucas got a number for Clemmens, called him, got him on his cell phone. Clemmens was in rural Butte County, north of Sturgis, up in some piney hills, looking at the crime scene. Lucas explained who he was and why he’d been looking for Fuller.

“We need to talk to that Skye, if you can find her,” Clemmens said. “Doesn’t look like a domestic, though, no way. This wasn’t one guy cutting him up. This took at least two or three, that’s why we’re looking at the bikers, or a group of people. And if you can track down this Pilate . . .”

Clemmens said Fuller’s body had been found by a couple of Indian kids who’d been out with .22s, shooting around the countryside. Whoever had buried Fuller had only gone down a couple of feet before they hit rock, and the body had been partly uncovered by coyotes.

“What they did was, or what it looks like, is that they nailed him to a tree, and then took their time cutting him up. We got the tree, signs of blood on the bark, no weapon, we got a few tracks, but we got nothing definitive, what might be a pair of Nike athletic shoes, and a boot mark. There was a campfire right there, and fresh, we think it’s related, but no way to tell for sure. There was some partly burned trash in the fire, food wrappers, we’re processing those for fingerprints, but like I said, we’re not sure it’s related.”

“When you say he was cut up, do you mean, dismembered?”

“No. Slashed. Long cuts running all down his body. Looks like he was castrated, but we’re not sure about that, because that part of the body and the stomach area was worked over pretty good by the coyotes. His hands and arms were in good enough shape to take prints . . . that’s how we got the quick ID. He was arrested in Johnson City, Texas, for burglary, three years ago, fingerprinted. We got a hit in the first ten minutes. We can still see the spike holes in his wrists, below the heels of his hands.”

“Pretty crude,” Lucas said. “Listen, there was a woman killed out in L.A. . . .”

He told Clemmens about the Kitty Place murder. “I’m worried because both you and the L.A. guy used the word ‘slashed.’ I’d like to see the autopsy photos of the wounds, and have the L.A. homicide guys take a look.”

“We’ll get them to you,” Clemmens said. “You’re the guy involved in that Black Hole case last year, right? The guy who got that female cop back?”

“Yeah, that was me,” Lucas said.

“Hell of a thing,” Clemmens said.

•   •   •

LUCAS CALLED HALL in L.A., told him about the find in South Dakota. “I’m going to hook you up with the homicide guys,” Hall said. “This is something.”

An L.A. homicide detective named Rick Robinson called Lucas back a few minutes later and Lucas gave him the story. “They’re doing the autopsy later today. We should be able to get the raw digital photos right away—the South Dakota guy said he’d make it a priority. If you want to call him, I’ve got a number, he could send them directly to you.”

“Need to see ’em,” Robinson said. “Sounds like the same thing somebody did to Kitty Place—long slashes across her body. She wasn’t crucified or anything, though.”

After he got off the line with Robinson, Lucas called Letty to tell her what had happened. His daughter was not a typical teenager: she’d seen violent death, up close and personal; she could handle the news about Henry.

Letty: “Why did somebody say they’d seen Henry up in Duluth? It sounds to me like they were setting her up. They’re afraid that she’ll talk about Henry. Dad, we’ve gotta get up there.”

“I can go up there,” Lucas said. “You can stay here.”

“Dad, I’m not going to mess with you—but you sort of need me,” Letty said. “I’ve met some of these people and I can talk to them when you’d just scare them. They don’t like people like you.”

Lucas said, “If I put you on a bus home, you stay on the bus. I don’t want you running around the countryside—”

“I’ll come home. I will. I’ll come home when you say so.”

•   •   •

THEY DROVE UP to Duluth that afternoon, in Lucas’s truck. Lucas called ahead, to a friend on the Duluth police force, and was told that they should check out Leif Erikson Park on the lake.

Lucas got directions, and they rolled into town a few minutes before three o’clock, on a day that had been hot in the Cities. In Duluth, an east wind off Lake Superior had kept things cool. They found a meter on East Superior Street, cut through a parking lot, and took a footbridge into the park.