"Hey…"

The man rolled up farther, tried to sit up. Junky Doog. He was barefoot. And he had a knife, a long curved pearl-handled number, open, the blade protruding five inches from the handle. Doog held it delicately, like a straight razor, and said, "Gothefuckaway," one word. Doog's eyes were a hazy white, as though covered with cataracts, and his face was burned brown. He had no teeth and hadn't shaved in weeks. As he stood, his graying hair fell down on his shoulders, knotted with grime. He looked worse than Lucas had ever seen him: looked worse than Lucas had ever seen a human being look.

"There's shit all over the place," Greave said. Then: "Watch it, watch the blade…"

Junky whirled the knife in his fingers with the dexterity of a cheerleader twirling a baton, the steel twinkling in the weak sunlight. "Gothefuckaway," he screamed. He took a step toward Lucas, fell, tried to catch himself with his free hand, the hand without the knife, screamed again, and rolled onto his back, cradling the free hand. The hand had no fingers. Lucas looked at the stump: the brown things were pieces of finger and several toes.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered. He glanced at Greave, whose mouth was hanging open. Junky was weeping, trying to get up, still with the knife flickering in his good hand. Lucas stepped behind him, and when Junky made it to his knees, put a foot between his shoulder blades and pushed him facedown on the worn dirt just off the mattress. Pinning him, he caught the bad arm, and as Junky squirmed, crying, caught the other arm, shook the knife out of his hand. Junky was too weak to resist; weaker than a child.

"Can you walk?" Lucas asked, trying to pull Junky up. He looked at Greave. "Give me a hand."

Junky, caught in a crying jag, nodded, and with a boost from Lucas and Greave, got to his feet.

"We gotta go, man. We gotta go, Junky," Lucas said. "We're cops, you gotta come with us."

They led him back through the shit-stink, through the weeds, Junky stumbling, still weeping; halfway up the path, something happened, and he pulled around, looked at Lucas, his eyes clearing. "Get my blade. Get my blade, please. It'll get all rusted up."

Lucas looked at him a minute, looked back. "Hold him," he said to Greave. Junky had nothing to do with the killings; no way. But Lucas should take the knife.

"Get the blade."

Lucas jogged back to the campsite, picked up the knife, closed it, and walked back to where Greave held Junky's arm, Junky swaying in the path. Junky's mind had slipped away again, and he mutely followed Lucas and Greave across the yellow dirt, walking stiffly, as though his legs were posts. Only the big toes remained on his feet. His thumb and the lowest finger knuckles remained on his left hand; the hand was fiery with infection.

Back at the shed, the fat man came out and Lucas said, "Call 911. Tell them a police officer needs an ambulance. My name is Lucas Davenport and I'm a deputy chief with the City of Minneapolis."

"What happened, did you…?" the fat man started, then saw first Junky's hand, and then his feet. "Oh my sweet Blessed Virgin Mary," he said, and he went back into the shed.

Lucas looked at Junky, dug into his pocket, handed him the knife. "Let him go," he said to Greave.

"What're you gonna do?" Greave asked.

"Just let him go."

Reluctantly, Greave released him, and the knife, still closed, twinkled in his hand. Lucas stepped sideways from him, a knife fighter's move, and said, "I'm gonna cut you, Junky," he said, his voice low, challenging.

Junky turned toward him, a smile at the corner of his ravaged face. The knife turned in his hand, and suddenly the blade snapped out. Junky stumbled toward Lucas.

"I cut you; you not cut me," he said.

"I cut you, man," Lucas said, beginning to circle to his right, away from the blade.

"You not cut me."

The fat man came out and said, "Hey. What're you doin'?"

Lucas glanced at him. "Take it easy. Is the ambulance coming?"

"They're on the way," the fat man said. He took a step toward Junky. "Junky, man, give me the knife."

"Gonna cut him," Junky said, stepping toward Lucas. He stumbled, and Lucas moved in, caught his bad arm, turned him, caught his shabby knife-arm sleeve from behind, turned him more, grabbed the good hand and shook the knife out.

"You're under arrest for assault on a police officer," Lucas said. He pushed the fat man away, picked up the knife, folded it and dropped it in his pocket. "You understand that? You're under arrest."

Junky looked at him, then nodded.

"Sit down," Lucas said. Junky shambled over and sat on the flat concrete stoop outside the shack. Lucas turned to the fat man. "You saw that. Remember what you saw."

The fat man looked at him doubtfully and said, "I don't think he would have hurt you."

"Arresting him is the best I can do for him," Lucas said quietly. "They'll put him inside, clean him up, take care of him."

The fat man thought about it, nodded. The phone rang, and he went back inside. Lucas, Greave, and Junky waited in silence until Junky looked up suddenly and said, "Davenport. What do you want?"

His voice was clear, controlled, his eyes focused.

"Somebody's cuttin' women," Lucas said. "I wanted to make sure it wasn't you."

"I cut some women, long time ago," Junky said. "There was this one, she had beautiful… you know. I made a grapevine on them."

"Yeah, I know."

"Long time ago; they liked it," he said.

Lucas shook his head.

"Somebody cuttin' on women?" Junky asked.

"Yeah, somebody's cuttin' on women."

After another moment of silence, Greave asked Junky, "Why would they do that? Why would he be cuttin' women?" In the distance, over the sound of the trucks moving toward the working edge of the fill, they could hear a siren. The fat man must have made it an emergency.

"You got to," Junky said solemnly to Greave. "If you don't cut them, especially the pretty ones, they get out of hand. You can't have women getting outa hand."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You cut 'em, they stay put, that's for sure. They stay put."

"So why would you go a long time and not cut any women, then start cuttin' a lot of women?"

"I didn't do that," Junky said. He cast a defensive eye at Greave.

"No. The guy we're looking for did that."

Lucas looked on curiously as the man in the lavender Italian suit chatted with the man with no toes, like they were sharing a cappuccino outside a cafй.

"He just started up?" Junky asked.

"Yup."

Junky thought about that, pawing his face with his good hand, then his head bobbed, as though he'd worked it out. "'Cause a woman turns you on, that's why. Maybe you see a woman and she turns you on. Gets you by the pecker. You go around with your pecker up for a few days, and you gotta do something. You know, you gotta cut some women."

"Some woman turns you on?"

"Yup."

"So then you cut her."

"Well." Junky seemed to look inside himself. "Maybe not her, exactly. Sometimes you can't cut her. There was this one…" He seemed to drift away, lost in the past. Then: "But you gotta cut somebody, see? If you don't cut somebody, your pecker stays up."

"So what?"

"So what? You can't go around with your pecker up all the time. You can't."

"I wish I could," Greave cracked.

Junky got angry, intent, his face quivering. "You can't. You can't go around like that."

"Okay…"

The ambulance bumped into the landfill, followed a few seconds later by a sheriff's car.

"Come on, Junky, we're gonna put you in the hospital," Lucas said.

Junky said to Greave, pulling at Greave's pant leg with his good hand, "But you got to get her, sooner or later. Sooner or later, you got to get the one that put your pecker up. See, if she goes around putting your pecker up, anytime she wants, she's outa hand. She's just outa hand, and you gotta cut her."