Below the story Raleigh found four police artist sketches of Pilate, Kristen, Bell, and himself: Pilate was listed as “Porter Pilate,” the only time Raleigh had ever heard of Pilate having a first name. He, Kristen, and Bell were listed only by their single names. The image of Pilate was a good one: Raleigh thought he’d be able to pick him out, on the basis of the sketch alone. The sketches of the other three were not nearly as good, except that Kristen had those filed teeth, which would give her away to anyone who saw both the teeth and the drawing. As for himself and Bell, he doubted that anyone could pick them out.

Precisely at midnight, he took out his phone, shook it out of its sack—they all had sacks that supposedly blocked cell phone signals, so they couldn’t be tracked—and turned his phone on and called Pilate, who came up immediately.

“Yeah?”

“They got one of those police drawings of you in the newspaper in Hayward,” he said. “It’s pretty good. If people see it, and you, they could pick you out.”

“Shit. But that newspaper won’t no way make it to the UP, right?”

“Probably not, but it’s not the paper’s drawings, it’s the cops’. They might be spreading them around. You got to watch all the newspapers, in case you pop up somewhere else.”

“Good information,” Pilate said. “What else?”

“That chick you whacked just before we left, the one who got hauled away by the fat man. Turns out she’s a cop’s kid. At least, I think she is. They acted that way.”

“Good. Happy to do it. What else?”

“That’s about it. Anybody in trouble?” Raleigh asked.

“Not as far as I know,” Pilate said. “They’re all calling in right now. Talk to you later.”

When Raleigh hung up, and had slipped the phone back in its sack, Linda asked, “Now what? We still camping out?”

“Nope. We’re finding a motel. I’m gonna do you.”

“Don’t hurt me,” she said.

“Gonna hurt you a little bit,” he said. “That’s what I do, huh?”

•   •   •

RALEIGH AND LINDA stayed for the whole Hayward Gathering. The Skye murder scene was still taped off on the last day of the Gathering, but there was only one sheriff’s deputy keeping an eye on it. The cops were apparently done with it, and Davenport, the Minnesota cop, was no longer around.

Raleigh talked to Pilate most nights, at midnight, usually for no more than a few seconds—Pilate was getting paranoid. The four pictures printed in Hayward had also shown up in a paper in southern Wisconsin, where some of the disciples had gone to hide out. Pilate wouldn’t say where he was.

Raleigh and Linda started out for the UP, with three days to go before the Sault Ste. Marie Gathering. They had money for food and gas, but not enough for a nightly motel. They did have a stash of weed, and just before leaving Wisconsin, managed to sell two ounces of low-grade AK-47 to a musky fisherman staying in a motel in Presque Isle.

“That only leaves us an ounce for ourselves,” Linda whined.

“Gonna have to make do,” Raleigh said. “Need the motels more’n we need the weed.”

They needed the motels because Raleigh’s sex life involved slapping Linda around, and then taking her orally or anally, which she hated. Which was why he did it. Or how he got the most pleasure out of it, when there was only one chick available, and nobody to watch. He didn’t want her to enjoy herself. He wanted to use her, and for her to know that she was being used, like an appliance. She was an appliance.

“All you gotta do is toast the bread,” he said. “You don’t have to like it. That’s what you’re for. Shut the fuck up and get to work.”

He was afraid to take that attitude in a park campground, where somebody might be watching or listening—he was not a man of the North Woods, but more of a city guy. Who was to know what might be back in all those trees?

Occasionally, at night, in a motel, after a particularly vigorous round of sex and assault, his eyes would pop open and he’d worry that Linda might wake up, while he was asleep, and stick a knife in his chest. If he got too worried, he’d wake her up and slap her around some more and maybe stick her again. ’Cause that was what he did.

They traveled like that, across Wisconsin, and then into the UP, and then to the Gathering, on its first full day.

He’d just parked, and gotten out of the car, when Davenport drifted by, paying no attention to him.

“There’s that big cop from Minnesota,” Linda said, from the passenger seat.

“Yeah. Gonna have something to tell Pilate tonight.”

Lucas shouldered through the crowd, trying not to look like a cop, but couldn’t help it. People glanced at him and gave way, sometimes with tiny smiles—I know what you are. They weren’t hostile, but they were wary.

Lucas wasn’t by nature particularly patient, except when he was working: there was a rhythm to surveillance, and when he was on the street full-time, he’d occasionally spent whole days and nights watching a person or a house or a business.

In addition to a psychological patience, he’d found, the biggest assets in surveillance were an interest in faces, a decent novel, and a strong bladder. Not a big intellectual, he’d nevertheless spent an entire summer reading an English translation of Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust’s À la recherché du temps perdu while knitting together the web of a major crack gang that spread over the Twin Cities. He couldn’t read French, but the book had made him want to learn the language; he’d just never had time.

Now he ambled through the crowd, not in any particular hurry: he knew now that Pilate was coming, just a matter of time. The part-time deputies, Barnes, the Subway owner, and Bennett, the postmaster, were watching the two guys who’d been with Melody Walker.

Lucas spotted Randy, the fat man, still riding in the back of the John Deere Gator, still throwing out bottles of Faygo, and went that way. As he came up, the fat man shook his head. “Not a thing.”

Lucas hadn’t had much time to talk to him, but now he did: “What’s up with you?” he asked. “What do you do for a living? You can’t spend all your time passing out bottles of pop.” He quickly amended that to “I mean, bottles of soda,” remembering that he was now on the soda side of the soda/pop linguistic border.

Randy shook his head. “No, no. I manage a self-storage place down in Ann Arbor. Not much to do, you know. Keep the college kids from trying to live in the place, make sure nobody’s running a meth lab. That’s about it. ’Course, the pay’s for shit. Sleep a lot. Play a little music.”

“Yeah? What do you play?” Lucas asked.

“Guitar.”

“Guitar? Tell you what: I owe you big for helping Letty. I’m serious. I owe you bigger than you know. How about I buy you a guitar? Something you don’t have.”

The fat man looked at him for a long moment, then said, “You’re shittin’ me.”

“No. I’m not. You got a guitar that you want?”

“About fifty of them. You could get a Mexican version of a Gibson Les Paul for a few hundred bucks. Do that, I’d drive over to your house, wherever it is, and kiss you on the lips.”

“That wouldn’t be necessary,” Lucas said, suppressing a shudder. He took a card out of his pocket and handed it to him. “Write your name and address on it, and the name of the guitar. I’ll drop-ship it to you.”