“No, I guess not,” Helper said.

“Did you actually see Bergen’s Jeep come out of the lake road?”

“No, but that’s the impression I got. He was moving slow when he went past, even with the snow, and he was accelerating. Like he’d just turned the corner onto 77.”

“Okay.” Lucas stood up, walked once around the room. Looked at the stairs.

“What’s up there?”

“There’s a bunk room right at the top. I live in the back. I’m the only professional firefighter here.”

“You’re on duty twenty-four hours a day?”

“I have time off during the day and early evenings, when we can get volunteers to pick it up,” Helper said. “But yeah, I’m here most of the time.”

“Huh.” Lucas took a turn around the room, thumbnail pressed against his upper teeth, thinking. The time problem was becoming difficult. He looked at Helper. “What about Father Bergen? Do you know him?”

“Not really. I don’t believe I’ve spoken six words to him. He drinks, though. He’s been busted for drunk driving, but . . .” He trailed off and looked away.

“But what?” Helper was holding something back, but he wanted Lucas to know it.

“Sheriff Carr’s on the county fire board,” Helper said.

“Yeah? So what?” Lucas made his response a little short, a little tough.

“He’s thick with Bergen. I know you’re from the outside, but if I talk, and if it gets back to Shelly, he could hurt me.” Helper let the statement lie there, waiting.

Lucas thought it over. Helper might be trying to build an alliance or drive a wedge between himself and Carr. But for what? Most likely he was worried for exactly the reason he claimed: his job. Lucas shook his head. “It won’t get back to him if it doesn’t need to. Even if it needs to, I can keep the source to myself. If it seems reasonable.”

Helper looked at him for a moment, judging him, then looked out the window toward the road. “Well. First off, about that drunk driving. Shelly fixed it. Fixed it a couple of times and maybe more.”

He glanced at Lucas. There was more to come, Lucas thought. Helper mentioned the ticket-fixing as a test. “What else?” he pressed.

Helper let it go. “There’re rumors that Father Bergen’s . . . that if you’re a careful dad, you wouldn’t want your boy singing in his choir, so to speak.”

“He’s gay?” Gay would be interesting. Small-town gays felt all kinds of pressure, especially if they were in the closet. And a priest . . .

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Helper said. He added, carefully, “It’s just gossip. I never gave it much thought. In fact, I don’t think it’s true. But I don’t know. With this kind of thing, these killings, I figured you’d probably want to hear everything.”

“Sure.” Lucas made a note.

They talked for another five minutes, then three patrol deputies stomped in from duty at the LaCourt house. They were cold and went straight to the coffee. Helper got up to start another pot.

“Anything happening down at the house?” Lucas asked.

“Not much. Guys from Madison are crawling around the place,” said one of the deputies. His face was red as a raw steak.

“Is the sheriff down there?”

“He went back to the office, he was gonna talk to some of the TV people.”

“All right.”

Lucas looked back at Helper, fussing with the coffee. Small-town fireman. He heard things, sitting around with twenty or thirty different firemen every week, nothing much to do.

“Thanks,” he said. He nodded at Helper and headed for the door, the phone ringing as he went out. The wind bit at him again, and he hunched against it, hurried around the truck. He was fumbling for his keys when Helper stuck his head out the door and called after him: “It’s a deputy looking for you.”

Lucas went back inside and picked up the phone. “Yeah?”

“This is Rusty, at the school. You better get your ass up here.”

Grant Junior High was a red-brick rectangle with blue-spruce accents spotted around the lawn. A man in a snowmobile suit worked on the flat roof, pushing snow off. The harsh scraping sounds carried forever on the cold air. Lucas parked in front, zipped his parka, pulled on his ski gloves. Down the street, the bank time-and-temperature sign said - 21. The sun was rolling across the southern sky, as pale as an old silver dime.

Bob Jones was waiting outside the principal’s office when Lucas walked in. Jones was a round-faced man, balding, with rosy cheeks, a short black villain’s mustache and professional-principal’s placating smile. He wore a blue suit with a stiff-collared white shirt, and his necktie was patriotically striped with red, white, and blue diagonals.

“Glad to see you,” he said as they shook hands. “I’ve heard about you. Heck of a record. Come on, I’ll take you down to the conference room. The boy’s name is John Mueller.” The school had wide halls painted an institutional beige, with tan lockers spotted between cork bulletin boards. The air smelled of sweat socks, paper, and pencil-sharpener shavings.

Halfway down the hall, Jones said, “I’d like you to talk to John’s father about this. When you’re done with him. I don’t think there’s a legal problem, but if you could talk to him . . .”

“Sure,” Lucas said.

Rusty and Dusty were sitting at the conference table drinking coffee, Rusty with his feet on the table. They were both large, beefy, square-faced, white-toothed, with elaborately casual hairdos, Rusty a Chippewa, Dusty with the transparent pallor of a pure Swede. Rusty hastily pulled his feet off the table when Lucas and Jones walked in, leaving a ring of dirty water on the tabletop.

“Where’s the kid?” Lucas asked.

“Back in his math class,” said Dusty.

“I’ll get him,” Jones volunteered. He promptly disappeared down the hall, his heels echoing off the terrazzo.

Dusty wiped the water off the tabletop with his elbow and pushed a file at Lucas. “Kid’s name is John Mueller. We pulled his records. He’s pretty much of an A-B student. Quiet. His father runs a taxidermy shop out on County N, his mother works at Grotek’s Bakery.”

Lucas sat down, opened the file, started paging through it. “What about this other kid? You said on the phone that another kid was murdered.”

Rusty nodded, taking it from Dusty. “Jim Harper. He went to school here, seventh grade. He was killed around three months back,” Rusty said.

“October 20th,” said Dusty.

“What’s the story?” Lucas asked.

“Strangled. First they thought it was an accident, but the doc had the body sent down to Milwaukee, and they figured he was strangled. Never caught anybody.”

“First murder of a local resident in fourteen years,” Rusty said.

“Jesus Christ, nobody told me,” Lucas said. He looked up at them.

Dusty shrugged. “Well . . . I guess nobody thought about it. It’s kind of embarrassing, really. We got nothing on the killing. Zero. Zilch. It’s been three months now; I think people’d like to forget it.”

“And he went to this school, and he was in classes with the LaCourt girl . . . I mean, Jesus . . . .”

Jones returned, ushering a young boy into the room. The kid was skinny and jug-eared, with hair the color of ripe wheat, big eyes, a thin nose and wide mouth. He wore a flannel shirt and faded jeans over off-brand gym shoes. He looked like an elf, Lucas thought.

“How are you? John? Is that right?” Lucas asked as Jones backed out of the room. “I understand you have some information about Lisa.”

The kid nodded, slipped into the chair across the table from Lucas, turned a thumb to the other two deputies. “I already talked to these guys,” he said.

“I know, but I’d like to hear it fresh, if that’s okay,” Lucas said. He said it serious, as though he were talking to an adult. John nodded just as seriously. “So: how’d you know Lisa?”

“We ride the bus together. I get off at County N and she goes on.”