shoulder at Nadya. 'Isn't that right?'
She nodded. 'This is widely recognized in the community. Family stress is a very big problem.'
Wolfe nodded, looking out the window. 'Just… messed up, Roger was. Never saw the man really happy, except maybe at his wedding. Wonder where he is now?'
The Magnuson house was a half mile down a gravel road from Wolfe's place, set in a deep patch of woods along a small muddy river. There was a chain on the gate, and they could see a long track down through the trees to where the house must be, but they couldn't see the house. 'There's a spot over there where you can get in, where they cut the brush out for the power line,' Wolfe said, pointing down the road. 'You might scratch your car…'
Magnuson wouldn't care, Wolfe said, he was a good ol' boy.
The sheriff's GMC led the way through, and they stopped halfway down to Magnuson's house, at the point where the driveway came closest to Wolfe's. Lucas gathered the three deputies around him, and they went over the approach. They took a couple of flash-bangs and some tear gas, and just as they were about to start into the woods they heard a distant banging sound, metal on metal, from the direction of Wolfe's place.
'Somebody there,' Wolfe said. 'It's gotta be him.'
'Let's go,' Lucas said.
Carl had gotten into the house with a rock through the kitchen window. He cleared out the glass, boosted himself inside, turned on the water pump and the electricity, pushed the thermostat from fifty to seventy-two, found a local station on the satellite, got the gun and a box of shells out of the hideaway.
All right. Get something to eat. He rummaged through the kitchen, found a couple of cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, heated it up, and sat at the kitchen table gobbling it down, the gun on the table.
The movement kept him preoccupied. Only when he put the bowl in the sink did he begin to feel alone-nobody to tell him to wash the bowl and put it away, nobody to tell where he was going, no Grandpa to talk to. No place to go, not with the cops looking for him.
In fact… the Chevy was outside, in plain sight. If anybody came down the drive, it would be the first thing they'd see. If the cops were looking for him, somebody could come down the drive, spot the car, and sneak away to report him, and he'd never know.
He picked up the gun, went outside, checked the garage. It was locked, but with a cheap padlock, enough to keep out kids. He looked around, found a hand-sized field stone, and beat on the lock until the hasp pulled out. He went inside, checked the four-by-four for keys-there were none, they were probably hung on the back of the bookcase-and lifted the overhead door.
With the door up, he moved the Chevy inside, then went back to the house. A local news program was on. He got a Coke from the refrigerator, perched on the couch. He thought about the Honda in the garage. Maybe later, he'd go out and scout around. For the moment, he'd just see what they were saying about him. Maybe, he thought, nobody had noticed he was gone.
Eight hundred yards, through second-growth timber, the ground soft and marshy underfoot. The banging continued, off and on, for the first three or four minutes of the march, and then stopped. They crossed a rise a few seconds later, and Wolfe whispered, 'When you come across that next little rise, there, you can see the place.'
They crossed a wet depression, and one of the sheriff's deputies whispered, 'Nettles,' and Lucas raised his hands over his head-he hated nettles-and warned Nadya. She nodded, and a minute later, they climbed out of the wet ground, through some scrubby maples, and looked down at Carl Walther's Chevy.
Carl was just walking out of a metal pole barn. A rifle lay on the hood of the Chevy and he picked it up, got in the car, started it, and rolled it into the pole barn.
'Broke into the pole barn to hide the car,' Wolfe guessed.
'What's in there? Vehicles?'
'Yeah, there's a four-wheeler, a Honda, a boat, a couple of trailers, a couple of sleds, a John Deere Gator. I don't know if he knows where the keys for the Honda are, but… now that I think of it, I bet he does. I bet when they were up here screwing around with that gun, they were running the four-wheeler, too. If he got on that, he could go where we couldn't…'
Lucas turned to the deputies. 'Everybody move carefully. We've got him. There's no point in anybody getting hurt.' One of the deputies carried a radio, and Lucas said to him, 'Call in, get some more people down here.'
'We gonna talk to him, or what?'
'We'll stay in the woods, block the place, and wait until the other guys get here. Then we'll talk…'
'If we see him outside without the rifle, we could try to rush him.'
'We could, but he might have something else with him-the pistol he used on Jerry Reasons,' Lucas said.
The radio guy came back: 'All right, I talked to Jim, and they're on the way, the whole bunch of them. Half hour.'
'Let's move in close, and then wait,' Lucas said. 'Just close it up…'
Nadya stayed at his elbow, her face flushed, intent.
The house sat on the north side of the narrow river, with a tiny roll-out dock already pulled up on shore; a twelve-foot aluminum row-boat was turned upside down on the bank beside the dock. The house itself was surrounded by an open grassy yard that extended perhaps thirty feet on all sides, before the trees began; a few marigolds were spotted along the sidewalk to the front door. The driveway cut across the north edge of the yard, leading to the pole barn.
The sniper went with Lucas and Nadya, with Wolfe trailing. One of the other deputies took the east side of the house, the second the west side. They sat and waited. Five minutes passed, then ten.
And then Carl Walther burst from the house, running, rifle in hand, a fat cloth laundry bag over his shoulder. He went straight into the pole barn, head down.
'What's happening?' The sniper asked.
Lucas looked at the cabin roof. 'You've got a satellite TV in there, don't you?' he asked Wolfe. He could see the pie-pan dish.
'Yeah.'
'The fuckin' TV people saw them tearing out of the police station,' Lucas said. The Honda's engine rumbled to life, and Carl backed out of the garage. The cloth bag was attached to a rack behind the seat, held in place with bungee cords. The rifle was in a plastic scabbard.
'Take the tires as soon as he's clear of the garage,' Lucas said to the sniper. 'Watch your guy there in the background.'
The sniper spoke into his shoulder radio and then the Honda was easing out of the garage. 'Take it,' Lucas said.
The sniper waited another two seconds, waiting for an angle, and then took the back tire with a burst of three shots.
Carl tried to accelerate, but the tire flopped on the driveway and he jumped off the Honda, grabbed the gun, looked wildly in their direction, fired a single shot straight up in the air and then ran into the house again.
'What was that about?'
'Scared,' Lucas said. He looked at his watch. 'The other guys are still twenty minutes out. I'm going to call down to him. I'll move off your position, get as close as I can, and yell at him.'
'What if he comes out with the gun?'
'You have to decide. I don't want him killed.'
'Sure you don't want to wait?'
'I'm worried about what he's thinking in there,' Lucas said. 'His grandpa just killed himself.'
Lucas worked his way back into the woods, so the pole barn was between himself and the house. Wolfe stayed with the sniper, but Nadya followed Lucas.
'You can come,' he said, when he saw she was coming no matter what he said, 'but stay out of the way.'
'A woman's voice…' she said.
'You're the woman he once tried to kill. And he almost cut the head off another woman, if he's the one who killed the old lady in Duluth.'
'Still. He might believe he would be safer with me.'
'Just stay out of the fuckin' way, okay?'
