“Did you see anyone else there?”

“No.”

“Did Frank have a pair of snowshoes around?” Lucas asked.

“Not that I saw.”

“Did you see any snowshoe tracks outside the door?”

“No.” Bergen shook his head. “I didn’t. But it was snowing.”

“Did you pass any cars on the way out?”

“No. How far is it from the corner by the firehouse back to LaCourts’?”

“One-point-one miles,” Lucas said.

Bergen shook his head. “I’m a careful driver. I said it took a minute or two to get out to the corner, but two minutes would be thirty miles an hour. I wasn’t doing thirty. I was probably going a lot slower than that. And I was pulling my trailer.”

“Snowmobile?”

“Yes, I’d been out with the club, the Grant Scramblers, you can check with them.”

Carr came back: “They’re looking,” he said. “They’ll call back.”

Lucas looked at Carr. “If we have somebody waiting for Father Bergen to leave, and if he lures Frank LaCourt outside somehow, right away, kills him, then kills the other two, burns the place immediately and gets out, in a frenzy, and if you build a little extra time in between the firemen’s arrival at the place and finding the bodies—we could almost make it.”

Carr looked at Bergen, who seemed to ponder what Lucas had said. He’d chosen Lucas as the enemy, but now Lucas had changed direction.

“Okay,” Carr said, nodding. To Bergen: “I hated to hit you with it, Phil, but there did seem to be a problem. We can probably figure it out. When you were there, what were you talking about? I mean, it’s not confessional stuff, is it? I . . .”

“Actually, we were talking about the Tuesday services and the concept of an exchange with Home Baptist. I wanted to get some ground rules straight.”

“Oh.” Now Carr looked uncomfortable. “Well, we can figure that out later.”

“What’s all this about?” Lucas asked.

“Church stuff, an argument that’s going around,” Carr said.

“Could somebody get killed over it?”

Bergen was startled. “Good grief, no! You might not get invited to a party, but you wouldn’t get killed.”

Carr glanced at him, frowned. The phone rang down the hallway, and the priest said, “Let me get that.” A moment later he returned with a portable handset and passed it to Carr. “For you.”

Carr took it, said, “This is the sheriff,” then, “Yeah.” He listened for a moment, said, “Okay, okay, and I’ll see you out there in a bit . . . okay.” He pushed the clear button and turned to Lucas: “There was a bowl in the sink that could have been used to make frosting. No frosting in it, but it was the right kind of bowl.”

“Like I told you,” said Bergen.

“Okay,” Lucas said.

“If we’re done here, I’m going back out to the LaCourt place,” Carr said. He picked up his snowmobile suit and began pulling it over his feet. “I’m sorry we bothered you, Phil, but we had to ask.”

“These killings are . . . grotesque,” the priest said, shaking his head. “Obscene. I’ll start thinking about a funeral service, something to say to the town.”

“That’ll be a while yet. We’ll have to send them down to Milwaukee for autopsies,” Carr said. “I’ll stay in touch.”

When they were outside again, Carr asked, “Are you coming back out to LaCourts’?”

Lucas shook his head. “Nah. There’s nothing there for me. I’d suggest you button the place up. Post some deputies to keep out the curiosity-seekers and coyotes, and wait for the Madison guys.”

“I’ll do that. Actually, I could do it from here, but . . . politics.” He was apologetic. “I gotta be out there a lot the next couple of days.”

Lucas nodded. “Same way in the Cities.”

“How about Phil? What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas said. Far away, somebody started a chain saw. They both turned to look up the street toward the sound, but there was nothing visible but garage and yard lights. The sound was an abrasive underline to the conversation. “We still don’t have enough time. Not really. The bowl thing hardly clears him. But who knows? Maybe a big gust of wind scoured off the roof and put that snow on LaCourt in two minutes.”

“Could be,” Carr said.

“This Baptist thing—that’s no big deal?” Lucas asked.

“It’s a bigger deal than he was making it,” Carr said. “What do you know about Pentecostals?”

“Nothing.”

“Pentecostals believe in direct contact with God. The Catholic Church has taught that only the Church is a reliable interpreter of God’s word. The Church doesn’t trust the idea of direct access. Too many bad things have come of it in the past. But some Catholics—more and more all the time—believe you can have a valid experience.”

“Yeah?” Lucas had been out of touch.

“Baptists rely on direct access. Some of the local Pentecostal Catholics, like Claudia, were talking about getting together with some of the Baptists to share the Spirit.”

“That sounds pretty serious,” Lucas said. The cold was beginning to filter through the edges of the parka, and he flexed his shoulders.

“But nobody would kill because of it. Not unless there’s a nut that I don’t know about,” Carr said. “Phil was upset about Claudia talking to Home Baptist, but they were friends.”

“How about Frank? Was he a friend of Bergen’s?”

“Frank was Chippewa,” said Carr. He stamped his feet, and looked back in the direction of the irritating chain saw. “He thought Christianity was amusing. But he and Phil were friendly enough.”

“Okay.”

“So what are you gonna do now?” Carr asked.

“Bag out in a motel. I brought clothes for a couple of days. We can get organized tomorrow morning. You can pick some people, and I’ll get them started. We’ll need four or five. We’ll want to talk to the LaCourts’ friends, kids at school, some people out at the Res. And I’ll want to talk to these fire guys.”

“Okay. See you in the morning, then,” Carr said. The sheriff headed for his Suburban and muttered, mostly to himself, “Lord, what a mess.”

“Hey, Sheriff?”

“Yeah?” Carr turned back.

“Pentecostal. I don’t mean to sound impolite, but really—isn’t that something like Holy Rollers?”

After a moment Carr, looking over his shoulder, nodded and said, “Something like that.”

“How come you know so much about them?”

“I am one,” Carr said.

CHAPTER

The morning broke bitterly cold. The clouds had cleared and a low-angle, razor-sharp sunshine cut through the red pines that sheltered the motel. Lucas, stiff from a too-short bed and a too-fat pillow, zipped his parka, pulled on his gloves and stepped outside. His face was soft and warm from shaving; the air was an icy slap.

The oldest part of Grant was built on a hill across the highway from the motel, small gray houses with backyard clotheslines awash in the snow. Wavering spires of gray woodsmoke curled up from two hundred tin chimneys, and the corrosive smell of burning oak bark shifted through town like a dirty tramp.

Lucas had grown up in Minneapolis, had learned to fish along the urban Mississippi, in the shadow of smokestacks and powerlines and six-lane bridges, with oil cans, worn-out tires and dead carp sharing space on the mud flats. When he began making serious money as an adult, he’d bought a cabin on a quiet lake in Wisconsin’s North Woods. And started learning about small towns.

About the odd comforts and discomforts of knowing everyone; of talking to people who had roads, lakes, and entire townships named after their families. People who made their living in the woods, guiding tourists, growing Christmas trees, netting suckers and trapping crawdads for bait.

Not Minneapolis, but he liked it.

He yawned and walked down to his truck, squinting against the sun, the new snow crunching underfoot. A friendly, familiar weight pulled at his left side. The parka made a waist holster impractical, so he’d hung his .45 in a shoulder rig. The pistol simply felt right. It had been a while since he’d carried one. He touched the coat’s zipper tag with his left hand, pulled it down an inch, then grinned to himself. Rehearsing. Not that he’d need it.