"So I was talking to Charlie Pope."

"I don't know, but that information is accurate," Lucas said.

"All right. He said he killed the kid with an aluminum baseball bat, wiped it with Adam Rice's undershirt, and then threw the bat into a field next to the house. Is that possible?"

"I don't know. Of course, it's possible," Lucas said. "We'll look tomorrow morning…Listen, I need to know exactly what this guy told you."

"Then you can either come over here and I can give you a transcript, or I can read it to you… Hang on, hang on."

Lucas could hear the phone being fumbled, then a woman's voice said, "Lucas, this is Sharon White."

"Hey, Sharon."

"You better come over here. We don't want to use anything that would mess anybody up or interfere with the investigation, but we're going to run something, and I would like to discuss it with you. And Ruffe. If you can get here in like, fifteen or twenty minutes?"

"I'll meet somebody at your door in fifteen," Lucas said.

WHEN LUCAS TURNED the corner in downtown Minneapolis, Sloan was already standing in the street outside the Star-Trib building. Thin, gray, unshaven, with hair sticking sideways out over his ears, he looked like a bum; and his nose seemed to be swollen. Lucas dumped the Porsche behind Sloan's Chevy, put a cop-on-duty sign on the dashboard-they were both parked in a no-parking zone-and got out.

"Gotta be the guy," Sloan said. He held a handkerchief to his face and coughed into it. "Man. I'm sick."

"What happened?" Lucas leaned away from him.

"I don't know. I was fine at dinner, and now I'm all fucked up. I took four green Nyquils, and my nose keeps getting bigger."

"Well, Jesus Christ, don't sneeze on me."

A YOUNG MAN WAS STANDING behind the Strib's front doors. When Lucas and Sloan walked up, he lifted an eyebrow, and Sloan held up a badge case. The young man pushed the door open and said,

"They're waiting."

They followed him into an elevator, then down through the cluttered newsroom to a cluster of people standing and sitting around a desk where Ruffe Ignace sat behind a computer, typing.

Lucas recognized Sharon White, the executive editor, and Phil Stone, the paper's attorney. White nodded and said, "It's a problem," and Stone said, "You guys look like I feel."

"I was sleeping like a baby," Lucas said. "What're we doing?"

"Ruffe is putting together the maximum story that we have," White said. "You have no approval over it at all. We decide what goes in and what stays out. We're telling you what we have in advance so we don't… mmm… step on some aspect of the investigation."

Lucas looked at Stone, who smiled the way an attorney smiles: with his lips.

"Good of you," Lucas said. "Could we get Ruffe to give us a couple of printouts of what he has?"

Ignace looked at White, who nodded, and he hit a button on his keyboard. A printer started humming in the quiet background, and Ignace said, "Fifteen seconds." The young man who'd brought them up said, "I'll get them." He headed for the printer.

Lucas asked Ignace, "What time did the call come in?"

Ignace, pitching up his voice: "I think there's a real question of how much cooperation we owe you guys…"

Lucas put his hands in his pants pockets, sighed, and said, "Ruffe, I've sat around with newspaper guys for years having philosophical discussions about this kind of thing, and I'd be happy to talk to you, but we, all of us…" Lucas gestured to White and Stone "… have sort of worked out an understanding. You don't help me investigate, so you stay pure, but you don't fight me on what might help catch a criminal, if I'm going to get the information anyway. If I have to, I can take you in for questioning, we can get lawyers and judges working on it, we can get the paper all kinds of bad publicity and maybe sued by some future victim, and I'll get the information anyway and all you'll have done is delay things in favor of the asshole who's killing these people. Is that what you want to talk about?"

"He's not talking about that," Stone said genially.

"Yes, I was," Ignace said.

"No, you're not," Stone said. The young man came back with copies of the story printout, and Lucas and Sloan took them. LucaS scanned it, then said, "What time did the call come in?"

"A few minutes before eleven o'clock," White said. "We don't know the exact minute."

Lucas to Ignace: "Was it direct-dial or did it come in through the switchboard?"

"Probably switchboard," Ignace said, with a show of reluctance. "We're not listed individually."

Sloan said to Lucas, "I'll get it." He stepped away and took a cell phone out of his jacket pocket.

Stone frowned and asked, "What's wrong with Sloan?"

"I don't know, but I wouldn't shake hands," Lucas said. To Ignace: "He said he might call back?"

"That's what he said." Ignace had gotten past his pro-forma objections and was enjoying himself now. He said to White, "I think we should get something for all this cooperation. Some kind of access."

White lifted an eyebrow, and Lucas said, "We'll take care of you, one way or another. You know." She nodded, and Lucas asked Ignace, "How did he sound? He's supposed to be sort of a shit kicker…"

"His voice was weird. He says Rice kicked him in the throat, he didn't say when or how… so he whispered. It all sounded like… something you'd see in a movie. Hoarse whisper."

"How about his language?"

"I took it down verbatim," Ignace said. He took his notebook off his desk, and Lucas saw that it was covered with shorthand. Despite himself, he was impressed-the kid had some tools. "You want me to read it, word for word?"

"We don't have much time here," White said, looking at her watch. "You got a problem with the story?"

"If you want to print the penis thing, that's up to you," Lucas said. "I think it's in bad taste. The usual formula is 'mutilated,' but I don't see why you'd want to put this in so Rice's mother can read it, after she has lost both her son and her grandson."

White said to Ignace, "Change it."

"Man…"

"We've got no time," White said. "Change it."

Ignace's hand rattled across the keyboard, then he asked Lucas, "Do you have an official comment?"

"You can say, 'Davenport said authorities will immediately begin investigating the Star-Tribune report and indicated that there are aspects of inside information in the phone call that make it possible or even likely that the caller was Charles Pope.' That work for you?"

"That works for me," Ignace said, taking it all down.

"You can add this," Lucas said. He dictated; "Davenport added that any woman who feels that she is under surveillance, or might have been, or who has seen anyone who resembles Charlie Pope, should call her local police department and report it. Even a weak feeling-it's better to be wrong than to be dead."

Ignace's keyboard rattled along, keeping pace with the statement. "Good," he muttered. "That's great."

Sloan called, "Lucas," and Lucas stepped over to him. "Rochester pay phone."

"Call the Rochester cops. Get them out on the street, make stops on any single males, on foot or in cars. Give them a description. Tell them to be careful, he's probably got a gun. Tell them right now. Right now."

"I better put that in," Ignace said.

SLOAN WALKED OFF, working the cell phone, and Lucas asked Ignace to read his shorthand notes, and Ignace did. Lucas stopped him once or twice: "You say he said, 'He come down the stairs…'He didn't say, 'He came down the stairs…"

"Just like I've got it," Ignace said. He trailed his finger farther down the page of Gregg script. "And here he says, 'wouldn't have no fingerprints.'"