muzzle was three or four inches from his temple when he pulled the trigger, and with the shock of the bullet and the recoil, he should have gone one way and the gun another. Instead, it beat him to the floor.'
'The M.E. still working on him?'
'Oh, yeah. They've got samples of everything. I don't know, it's getting curiouser.'
Lucas sat in his office, thinking it over, feeling the rats of depression galloping just below the surface of his mind. If he stopped concentrating, they'd be out. He forced his mind into it: Did Druze kill Cassie? Despite the questions, it seemed likely. In most murders, the most obvious answer is correct-and in any crime investigation, there are always anomalies. The gun shouldn't have beaten Druze's body to the floor, but maybe it did.
One of the rats slipped out: If only Cassie had identified him a day earlier and Loverboy had called with a definite identification…
Fuckin' Loverboy…
Lucas frowned, picked up the phone and called Violent Crimes. Sloan was at home, they said, trying to get some sleep. Lucas called, got him out of bed.
'Last night, when I was doped up. Did anybody call?'
'No.'
'Hmph. What time did we identify Druze for television and release the news that it was part of the series…?'
'This morning-I mean, they had Druze's name last night, midnight or so, but just the name. We didn't release the serial-killing business until this morning.'
'Huh. Okay, thanks.' He let Sloan go, dialed TV3 and got Carly Bancroft. 'This is Lucas. Did you make Druze's name on the news last night?'
'No, we had it for the wake-up report,' she said. 'I could have used a little help…'
'I was… out of shape,' Lucas said. 'What about the other channels? Did they have it?'
'Not as far as I know. We picked up the news release on morning cop checks. Nobody was bitching about getting beat, and they would have, on something like this. When can you talk to us? You found them, right? What-'
'I really can't talk,' Lucas said. 'I'll call you later.'
He hung up and sat in his chair, rubbing his temples. Loverboy hadn't called.
Jennifer's car was in the driveway when he got home. He rolled past it slowly as the garage door went up, and parked and walked out of the garage as she got out of her car.
'How are you?' she asked. She was wearing a black turtleneck under a cardigan, with gold loop earrings visible under her short-cropped blond hair.
'What do you want?' His voice was so cold that she stepped back.
'I wanted to see how you were…'
'Did Elle put you up to this?' Jennifer had her back to the car door and he loomed over her. His hands were in fists, inside his jacket pockets.
'She said you were in trouble.'
'I don't need your help. The last time I needed your help, I got my head pushed under,' he said. He turned away, walked back into the garage.
'Lucas…'
His mind was moving like a freight train, all the facts and suppositions and memories and plans and possibilities flying like boxcars just behind his eyes, unsuppressible. Jennifer. Green eyes. Full lips. Sarah, a bundle, squealing when he tossed her in the air. Jennifer and Sarah together in the delivery room, up at the lake cabin, Jennifer skinny-dipping in the moonlight, Sarah starting to crawl…
He was at a branch, he felt, when ten thousand things were possible, but he couldn't deal with that, with all the branches…
'Just… go away,' he said.
He tried, but couldn't sleep. Too many suppositions. Finally, glancing at the clock, he called the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and asked how late the gift shop was open. He had just enough time.
He hurried, trying not to think. Just keep moving. Don't worry about the guns. They sit there in the basement and they glow, and fuck 'em, let 'em glow.
The gift shop was empty, except for a bored saleswoman who was dressed so well that Lucas guessed she was a volunteer.
'Can I help you?' she asked.
'Yeah. I'm interested in a dude named Odilon Redon. What've you got? Got any calendars?'
Five minutes later he was back in the car, looking for a scrap of paper. He finally found a receipt from a tire store. He turned it over, flattened it against the Porsche owner's manual on his leg and started a new list.
And later, afraid of the bed, he sat in the spare bedroom with a bottle of Canadian Club and stared at his charts.
The Killer One chart was complete: Druze. A troll, powerful, squat, odd head, murdering Stephanie. No question about that anymore. If he was working with Bekker, must have killed George, because Bekker was with Lucas. Could have killed Cassie. Could have killed Armistead. Could have killed woman at the shopping center-but why? She was entirely out of the pattern. Not at home; not with the academic/art crowd… And where did the photos come from, with the missing eyes?
Killer Two: Did he exist? Was it Bekker? Some tracks at the site of the George killing suggested a second man. How would Druze have found George if Bekker hadn't fingered him? (Possibility: He'd watched Stephanie's funeral?) Why would he have driven George's Jeep to the airport? How could he have killed Armistead? Why the phone call-a coincidence, somebody trying to get in free?
The answers were in the pattern, somewhere. Lucas could feel it but couldn't see it.
He took the tire store receipt from his pocket. At the top he'd written 'Loverboy.'
He looked at it, closed his eyes and let the circumstances flow through his mind.
At six in the morning, he phoned Del. 'I gotta come over and talk to you,' he said. Del had an affinity for speed.
'Jesus Christ, man, what're you doing up at six o'clock? You're worse'n me…'
Lucas drove across town with the breaking dawn, another cool, overcast day. The drive-time radio programs had started, and he dialed past the jock talk to 'CCO, half listening as he put the car on I-94 toward Minneapolis.
Del met him at the door in a pair of slightly yellowed jockey shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that Clark Gable would have approved of. When Lucas told him what he wanted, Del shook his head and said, 'Lucas, you'll kill yourself.'
'No. I just need to stay awake for a while,' Lucas said. 'I know what I'm doing.'
Del looked at him, nodded, went to the bedroom and came back with an orange plastic vial. 'Ten hits. Heavy- duty. But don't try to stretch it too far.'
'Thanks, man…' Lucas said.
A woman's voice came from the back. 'Del…?'
'In a minute,' Del said. He smiled thinly at Lucas. 'Cheryl. What can I tell you?'
The speed brightened him up. He turned south, looking at the clock. Almost seven. Sloan would be up.
'How're you feeling?' Sloan's wife asked as she opened the door.
'Everybody wants to know,' Lucas said, grinning at her. She was a short woman, slightly plump, motherly and sexy at the same time. Lucas liked her. 'Is Sloan out of bed?'
She turned her head. 'Sloan? Lucas is here.'
'Out on the porch,' Sloan called back.
'Does Sloan have a first name?' Lucas asked as he went past the woman.
'I don't know. I never asked,' she said.
Sloan was sitting on the sun porch, smoking a cigarette and eating a cherry Moon Pie. A Coke sat on a side table by his hand.
'A real lumberjack breakfast,' Lucas said.
'Don't talk loud,' Sloan said. 'I'm not awake yet.'
'I need you to sweet-talk some people for me,' Lucas said. Sloan was the best interrogator on the force.
