“On credit?” the sheriff said. “Dope?”

“That’s what he tried, and the guy tried to get out, I guess he had a gun. Pilate said something about him having a gun, but then there was a fight and this guy came crashing through the bedroom door and there was blood gushing out of his neck, like they cut his throat or something, and Pilate told Kristen—Kristen got cut bad, they talked about that, they took her to a hospital, I think in St. Paul, last night. Anyway, Pilate said that the RV wouldn’t be safe anymore because there was no way they could clean up all the blood. I mean, there was blood everywhere, you wouldn’t believe it, so he decided to burn it . . .”

She told the story, sitting on the edge of the car, of how she got the phone, and how she called Letty, and how they took her off the street in Duluth. Then she turned her eyes up to Lucas and said, “I think they might have killed Henry. Have you heard?”

Lucas shook his head. “Henry . . . didn’t make it.”

She’d been stressed and talking fast but showing no tears . . . until Lucas told her that Henry hadn’t made it, and then she suddenly began leaking tears and flopped backward into the trunk space, sobbing. The sheriff pulled on Lucas’s sleeve and Lucas stepped back and the sheriff whispered, “We gotta talk. Who in the heck is Henry?”

“Her companion. They killed him in South Dakota. Let’s get her on the way to the hospital, and I’ll fill you in.”

•   •   •

THE AMBULANCE ARRIVED, and though Skye said she wasn’t hurt, Lucas put her in the ambulance and told her, “Just ride along with this. You don’t have to be bleeding to be hurt.”

She no longer had her pack—she thought it might have burned in the RV—but her walking staff was in the backseat of the car in the bean field.

“If I could get that . . . I’ve had it a long time.”

“I’ll see to it,” Lucas said. “They’ll probably want to take fingerprints off it, in case one of the other people handled it. So, it could be a while.”

“Okay. Call Letty,” Skye said. “Tell her what happened. She saved my life.”

“I will,” Lucas said.

The ambulance left for the hospital in Menomonie and Lucas stepped away from the deputies and the post-shooting bureaucracy, and called Letty. Letty answered halfway through the first ring and Lucas said, “We got her. The guy she was with was killed.”

He told her what had happened, and Letty said, “I’m coming to the hospital.”

“Not a bad idea, you might be her only friend. Uh, take your mom’s car.”

“Mom’s not here.”

“Letty . . .”

“I’m coming,” she said.

She hung up and Lucas looked at the phone and said, “Ah, shit.”

She’d be coming, all right, in his Porsche.

She had a right foot like a ship’s anchor.

•   •   •

LUCAS GAVE THE SHERIFF everything he knew, from the murder in Los Angeles to the crucifixion in South Dakota, to the murder of Malin the night before, the search of Malin’s apartment, and the phone call to Letty.

The sheriff stuck a wad of Copenhagen under his tongue as he listened, chewed, spit once, and then said, “Those sonsofbitches come to this county, they won’t be walking away.”

“I don’t think they’re looking to walk away,” Lucas said. “They’re like a tornado: they don’t think about too much at all. They just kill and move on.”

“So we’re shifting this basically over to the DCI? To Stern?”

“I guess. Nobody knows exactly where these people are, or what their cars look like. Probably get Skye to do some identikits.”

Another car came rolling fast from the south, grille lights flashing, and the sheriff said, “That’s probably Stern now.”

•   •   •

IT WAS. STERN LOOKED at the body in the car and said, “One down. Would have liked to have talked to him.”

“I made the call,” the sheriff said, spitting again. “We thought he was about to shoot the girl.”

Stern slapped him on the shoulder and said, “I’m not criticizing, Jim, we all would’ve done the same thing.” He turned to Lucas: “Did the girl give us anything useful?”

“One thing. There were two people present at the murder last night, this Pilate guy, and one of the women, named Kristen. Skye said she got cut pretty bad and she was treated at an emergency room, probably in the Twin Cities. We should get some video of her.”

“We need that right now,” Stern said.

“I’ll call on my way down to Menomonie,” Lucas said. “About Skye. You guys are going to want to wring her out, but when you’re done . . . she’s sort of a friend of my daughter. If you want, I’ll put her in a hotel in St. Paul and we’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Probably as good as it’s gonna get, if she doesn’t have an address,” Stern said. “Appreciate the offer.”

Before Lucas left, he took the highway patrolman aside and asked, “Are you guys running any speed traps down on I-94?”

“Just curious?”

“Well, my daughter’s coming over, she’s a friend of Skye’s. She’s probably upset and driving too fast, because she’s kinda freaked out. If I could slow her down a bit . . .”

The patrolman checked and found a trap near Exit 10, at Roberts, Wisconsin, not far from the Minnesota line. Lucas called Letty from his truck: “Where are you?”

“I-94.”

“But not in Wisconsin, yet,” Lucas said.

“Not yet. Not quite.”

“The Wisconsin highway patrol is running a trap near Exit 10, that’s ten miles on the other side of the river. Watch the mile signs.”

“Got it. I’m driving slow. I’ll tell you, though, a seven-speed manual seems a little overcooked for this bitch. You can keep it in fifth and still blow the doors off anything else on the road.”

“Letty, goddamnit . . .”

“Just honking your horn, Dad. I’ll see you in Menomonie.”

•   •   •

LUCAS HAD JUST GOTTEN in the Benz when he saw Stern jogging toward him. He rolled down the window, and Stern came up and said, “He had a cell phone. We looked at the recents and he had a call just a minute or so before he got off the highway. That had to be somebody else in the caravan who spotted the roadblock being set up.”

“Had to be,” Lucas said.

“I’ll get the numbers down to Madison and we’ll start pinging them,” Stern said. “We oughta have a location pretty quick.”

•   •   •

LUCAS WAS ALMOST AS FAR from the hospital as Letty was, the difference being that she was driving a Porsche on an interstate highway and he was driving an SUV on back roads. On the way down, he called the BCA duty officer and told him about the woman who’d been treated for knife cuts, and asked him to check the local hospitals.

“Sometime right before or after midnight, probably,” he said.

“We’ll get it going.”

•   •   •

LUCAS WAS NOT SURPRISED when he pulled into the hospital parking lot and saw his Porsche already there. When he walked past it, he could hear the ticking as the engine cooled. Inside the emergency room, Skye was sitting on a bed, talking to Letty, who was sitting in a visitor’s chair.

A nurse called to Lucas, “Are you a relative?”

“I’m a cop,” he said.

She nodded and he got a chair from an empty bay and put it next to Letty’s. He asked Skye, “You okay? I mean, more or less?”

“Yeah. They gave me some dope. Said it would help relieve my anxiety, which is good, because I’m pretty anxious. How did Henry die?”

“Stabbed, I think,” Lucas lied. “I haven’t seen the autopsy report, they’re doing that in South Dakota. I’m sorry. I know you guys . . .”

Skye said, “Yeah,” and “His folks still live in Johnson City, Texas, if that makes any difference to anyone.”

“Somebody will contact them. Probably already have,” Lucas said.

“He was a good guy,” Skye said. “Good traveler. I think the dope is taking the edge off, but I’m . . . awful sad.”

“Proves you’re a human being,” Letty said.

Lucas said, “Some Wisconsin cops are going to talk to you . . .”