"Shot it from the bridge," Lucas said. "We saw them up there. I didn't know the lenses were that good, though."

"Bey's still an open file, of course," Lester said, recrossing his legs from one side to the other. "No statute of limitations on murder."

"Should have thought of that yesterday," Roux said, getting up to pace the carpet, flicking ashes with every other step. Her hair, never particularly chic, was standing up in spots, like small horns. "They had Bey's mother on. She's this fragile old lady in a nursing-home housecoat, a face like parchment. She said we abandoned her daughter to her killers. She looked like shit, she looked like she was dying. They must've dumped her out of bed at three in the morning to get the tape."

"That video of Connell was pretty weird, if she's the one who tipped them," Anderson suggested.

"Aw, they phonied it up," Roux said, waving her cigarette hand dismissively. "I did the same goddamned thing when I was sourcing off the appropriations committee. They take you out on the street and have you walk into some building so it looks like surveillance film or file stuff. She did it, all right." Roux looked at Davenport. "I've got the press ten minutes from now."

"Good luck." He smiled, a very thin, unpleasant smile.

"You were never taken off the case, right?" Her left eyebrow went up and down.

"Of course not," Lucas said. "Their source was misinformed. I spent the evening working the case and even developed a lead on a new suspect."

"Is that right?" The eyebrow again.

"More or less," Lucas said. "Junky Doog may be working at a landfill out in Dakota County."

"Huh. I'd call that a critical development," Roux said, showing an inch of satisfaction. "If you can bring him in today, I'll personally feed it directly and exclusively to the Strib. And anything else you get. Fuck TV3."

"If Connell's their source, they'll know you're lying about not calling off the case," Lester said.

"Yeah? So what?" Roux said. "What're they gonna do, argue? Reveal their source? Fuck 'em."

"Is Connell still working with me?" Lucas asked.

"We've got no choice," Roux snapped. "If we didn't call off the investigation, then she must still be on it, right? I'll take care of her later."

"She's got no later," Lucas said.

"Jesus," Roux said, stopping in midpace. "Jesus, I wish you hadn't said that."

The TV3 story had been a mйlange of file video, with commentary by a stunning blond reporter with a distinctly erotic overbite. The reporter, street-dressed in expensive grunge, rapped out long, intense accusations based on Connell's file; behind her, floodlit in the best Addams Family style, was the redbrick slum building where Mercedes Bey had been found slashed to death. She recounted Bey's and each of the subsequent murders, reading details from the autopsy reports. She said, "With Chief Roux's controversial decision to sweep the investigation under the rug…" and "With the Minneapolis police abandoning the murder investigation for what appear to be political reasons…" and "Will Mercedes Bey's cry for justice be crushed by the Minneapolis Police Department's logrolling? Will other innocent Minneapolis-area women be forced to pay the killer's brutal toll because of this decision? We shall have to wait and see…"

"Nobody fucks with me like this," Roux was shouting at her press aide when Lucas left her office with Anderson. "Nobody fucks with me…"

Anderson grinned at Lucas and said, "Connell does."

Greave caught Lucas in the hall. "I read the file, but it was a waste of time. I could have gotten the executive summary on TV this morning." He was wearing a loose lavender suit with a blue silk tie.

"Yeah," Lucas grunted. He unlocked his office door and Greave followed him inside. Lucas checked his phone for voice mail, found a message, and poked in the retrieval code. Meagan Connell's voice, humble: "I saw the stories on TV this morning. Does this change anything?" Lucas grinned at the impertinence, and scribbled down the number she left.

"What're we doing?" Greave asked.

"Gonna see if we can find a guy down in Dakota County. Former sex psycho who liked knives." He'd been punching in Connell's number as he spoke. The phone rang once, and Connell picked up. "This is Davenport."

"Jeez," Connell said, "I've been watching TV…"

"Yeah, yeah. There're three guys in town don't know who the source is, and none of them are Roux. You better lay low today. She's smokin'. In the meantime, we're back on the case."

"Back on." She made it a statement, with an overtone of satisfaction. No denials. "Is there anything new?"

He told her about Anderson's information from the Wisconsin forensic lab.

"Ligatures? If he tied her up, he must've taken her somewhere. That's a first. I bet he took her to his home. He lives here-he didn't at the other crime scenes, so he couldn't take them… Hey, and if you read the Mercedes Bey file, I think she was missing awhile, too, before they found her."

"Could be something," Lucas agreed. "Greave and I are going after Junky Doog. I've got a line on him."

"I'd like to go."

"No. I don't want you around today," Lucas said. "It's best, believe me."

"How about if I make some calls?" she asked.

"To who?"

"The people on the bookstore list."

"St. Paul should be doing that," Lucas said.

"Not yet, they aren't. I'll get going right now."

"Talk to Lester first," Lucas said. "Get them to clear it with St. Paul. That part of the investigation really does belong to them."

"Are you gonna listen to my story?" Greave asked as they walked out to the Porsche.

"Do I gotta?"

"Unless you want to listen to me whine for a couple hours."

"Talk," Lucas said.

A schoolteacher named Charmagne Carter had been found dead in her bed, Greave said. Her apartment was locked from the inside. The apartment was covered by a security system that used motion and infrared detectors with direct dial-out to an alarm-monitoring company.

"Completely locked?"

"Sealed tight."

"Why do you think she was murdered?"

"Her death was very convenient for some bad people."

"Say a name."

"The Joyce brothers, John and George," Greave said. "Know them?"

Lucas smiled. "Excellent," he said.

"What?"

"I played hockey against them when I was a kid," he said. "They were assholes then, they're assholes now."

The Joyces had almost been rich, Greave said. They'd started by leasing slum housing from the owners-mostly defense attorneys, it seemed-and renting out the apartments. When they'd accumulated enough cash, they bought a couple of flophouses. When housing the homeless became fashionable, they brought the flops up to minimum standards and unloaded them on a charitable foundation.

"The foundation director came into a large BMW shortly thereafter," Greave said.

"Skipped his lunches and saved the money," Lucas said.

"No doubt," Greave said. "So the Joyces took the money and started pyramiding apartments. I'm told they controlled like five to six million bucks at one point. Then the economy fell on its ass. Especially apartments."

"Aww."

"Anyway, the Joyces saved what they could from the pyramid, and put every buck into this old apartment building on the Southeast Side. Forty units. Wide hallways."

"Wide hallways?"

"Yeah. Wide. The idea was, they'd throw in some new drywall and a bunch of spackling compound and paint, cut down the cupboards, stick in some new low-rider stoves and refrigerators, and sell the place to the city as public housing for the handicapped. They had somebody juiced: the city council was hot to go. The Joyces figured to turn a million and a half on the deal. But there was a fly in the ointment."

The teacher, Charmagne Carter, and a dozen other older tenants had been given long-term leases on their apartments by the last manager of the building before the Joyces bought it, Greave said. The manager knew he'd lose his job in the sale, and apparently made the leases as a quirky kind of revenge. The city wouldn't take the building with the long-term leases in effect. The Joyces bought out a few of the leases, and sued the people who wouldn't sell. The district court upheld the leases.