The second one had a maraschino cherry in the center: excellent. Feeling much better and hardly guilty at all, he wheeled out onto Mississippi River Boulevard, over to Cretin, and down to I-94, playing with the Porsche's engine as he went.

CAROL WAS POKING FRANTICALLY at her computer when Lucas arrived at the office. Lucas ran the BCA's Office of Regional Research, a bullshit title invented by Rose Marie Roux created to cover up the fact that he did what he wanted, or what the governor wanted him to. A fixer, in some ways.

He had two full-time investigators, and since the office was so small, Carol, technically a secretary, was effectively the office manager. She was a cheerful young woman with auburn hair and blue eyes and freckles, black plastic glasses, a little too heavy, and sometimes a little too loud. Despite her cheerful personality, she'd had a reputation around the Department of Public Safety for ruthless efficiency. Lucas had stolen her from the Highway Patrol, in a transfer arranged by Rose Marie Roux as a payoff for solving a series of horse shootings.

She propped herself in the doorway as Lucas hung up his jacket: "You didn't sign the overtime."

"You sign it," he said. She'd have to forge his signature.

"I did. I'm just saying. You gotta start signing it, or someday they're gonna put me in jail. Also, Lanscombe called and said that Del put eight hundred miles on a state car last weekend."

"Ah, jeez, could you handle that? Make up some shit and tell him I said it."

"You want me to kick Del's ass?"

"Find out what he was doing, anyway. You get that stuff from Minneapolis?"

"Yup." She'd bound the paper into a blue report cover. "Photos are in the back. I borrowed the photo printer down in Crime scene. You should buy one for us. You're rich enough."

He ignored the suggestion. "Is Del coming in?"

"He was in. He went back out on the Ransom thing. Dannie's with him. Husband and wife."

"Christ, like Jack Sprat and his old lady."

She smiled, a white-tooth Wisconsin dairy smile as Lucas headed into his office: "But who'd suspect they were cops?" she called after him.

Ransom was not a payoff. Ransom was a man who'd run a series of home-improvement scams with the help of a local lawyer and an out-state bank. Del and Dannie Carson were about to take out a second mortgage on a house they supposedly owned, to pay for a new roof, windows, garage door, and driveway, work that would never be done, even though the money had been paid. When the bank came around to foreclose on the mortgage, two or three months down the road, the governor would hold a press conference. Ransom would go to jail, the bank would cough up a few million dollars, and the governor would be hailed as the champion of the poor and benighted…

With any luck.

But why had Del driven eight hundred miles over the weekend? That was as far as Kansas City and back…

LUCAS WAS HIGH ENOUGH in the BCA hierarchy to get an extra seventy square feet of office space and rich enough-Carol was right about that-to buy two comfortable chairs to fill it with. He got a steno pad from his desk, dropped into one of the chairs, and started reading through the bound murder file: much of it he already knew from talking with Sloan and Elle the week before.

And he thought, "Elle." He should give her a call.

He made a note to do that and pushed farther into the file. Made another note: Larson worked in some kind of artsy-crafty store, and Rice worked in a hardware store. A craft connection? Weak. A retail connection, people whom a killer might see in the routine course of business? Also weak. Larson was single, just breaking off a relationship, maybe. Rice was out looking?

He was poring over the photos when Carol came to the door: "There's a parole officer on the phone for you. About the case. He says it might be urgent."

Lucas nodded: "Put him through."

HE STEPPED OVER to his desk and when the phone rang, picked it up. "Davenport."

"Mr. Davenport, agent, uh…Yeah, this is Mark Fox down in Owatonna. I'm a parole officer. I just read the Star-Tribune story about this serial killing and I called Gene Nordwall and he said I should call you…"

"What's up?"

"There's this guy… A few weeks back a guy named Charlie Pope was turned loose from St. John's," Fox said. "He was a Level Two, convicted in St. Paul of raping a woman and trying to strangle her. There was evidence that he might have killed another woman or maybe two, way back."

"I don't remember the case."

"It was years ago. And he didn't kill anyone in the case he was convicted on." Fox spent a couple of minutes outlining Pope's career and added, "Frankly, he's nuts.He doesn't say much, but he's crazier than a loon."

"They let him go?"

"He was only convicted on the one rape, and he was coming to the end of his sentence. They couldn't hold him. They decided the best thing to do was to let him go a few months early-he was pretty des-perate to get out-and make a long-term ankle bracelet a part of the deal. A few weeks back, he cut the bracelet off and split. He was staying a trailer down here in Owatonna. When I went over to look for him, there was no sign of him."

"Trailer still there?"

"Yeah. I sealed it and told the manager to keep an eye on it," Fox said. "I didn't know what had happened to him. I still don't. Anyway, I thought this might have something to do with your problem."

"Good call," Lucas said.

"I would have gotten in touch after the Larson thing, but I didn't know about it until I saw the Star-Tribune story."

"Bureaucracy," Lucas said. "Give me a number-I've got a meeting with the Minneapolis homicide people in about ten minutes, but I might come down there and bring some guys with me. Do we need a warrant to look at that place?"

"Not if you're with me. I'd be happy to meet you there," Fox said.

"I'll get back to you within the hour, tell you one way or the other," Lucas said. "One last thing," Fox said. "He's in your DNA database. They made damn sure of that before he left St. John's."

SLOAN CAME IN, with Elle Kruger trailing behind, looking a little abashed. She was wearing street clothes, as she had started to do more often: the full traditional nun's habit, she said, had started to feel too much like an affectation. "I wasn't sure I should come," she said, nearsightedly peering around, checking out Carol. Elle came to dinner twice a month, had become tight with Weather, but she'd never been to his new office.

"Glad to have you, as long as I don't have to put you on my budget," Lucas said. He put them in the soft chairs and dropped in behind his desk. "I just got a call from a parole officer…"

He filled them in on what Mark Fox had said, and Sloan said, "So Pope disappeared just before Larson was killed? That's the best lead we've had so far. Why didn't we hear about it?"

"Usual BS. He didn't know about Larson, nobody knew to ask about Pope, time passes," Lucas said. "Anyway, I'm getting Pope's file sent up from St. John's." To Elle: "Sloan has you all filled in on the Rice killings?"

"Not so much on the detail, as on the behavior," she said.

"One important detail," Lucas said. "Adam Rice apparently tried to fight the guy off, and there was blood and skin under his fingernails. If it's not his own blood… well, we have Pope's DNA in the database here. We oughta know tomorrow if we've got a match."

"We're looking for him now?" she asked.

Lucas nodded. "Yes. There's a bulletin out, I'm sending it to Iowa and Wisconsin, too. We've got a six-week-old picture from St. John's. They took it just before they let him go."

"Gonna be a black eye for the state, letting him go," Sloan said.