“Take a company car,” he said. “Please.”

Bernadette rolled her eyes. Garcia had been scolding her for continuing to drive her Ford pickup on the job. “All right. I’ll take the damn Vicky. You happy?”

“Never,” he said, and hung up.

She checked the holstered Glock tucked into her slacks, slipped her coat on over her blazer, and pulled on her leather gloves. It was cold out, but that’s not why she shielded her hands. She didn’t want any surprises this time. Even though it was a cloudy day, she plucked her sunglasses off her desk and dropped them in her pocket. Once she got to the scene, she didn’t want to surprise anybody with her eyes.

SHE BUMPED OUT of the parking ramp and steered the Crown Vic to Wabasha Street. After a half mile of stop-and-go movement through the heart of downtown St. Paul, she turned onto Interstate 94 heading west. Traffic was heavy and got worse as she neared the Minneapolis border. Ever since she’d returned to her home state, she’d been struck by how congested the Twin Cities roads had become. She took the Huron Boulevard exit to the University of Minnesota. Huron Boulevard Southeast became Southeast Fourth Street.

Braking at a red light, she took in the storefront shops and restaurants lining the street. While she’d been born and raised on a farm, she had cousins who’d lived in town and attended the “Zoo of M,” as they called it. They told her Minnesota native Bob Dylan wrote “Positively 4th Street” about this particular route and that he’d lived somewhere around Dinkytown. She’d visited the neighborhood a couple of times when she was a teenager. The Varsity Theater looked pretty much the way she remembered it, and so did many of the storefronts, but the students looked a little dressier. They seemed younger, too. Maybe that was because she was so much older than the last time she’d called the state home.

Adjusting the rearview mirror of the bureau car, she noted that the woman in the reflection was pale and tired looking—she rarely got a full night’s sleep—but carried no lines on her face. When she dressed in jeans and sweatshirts (her preferred weekend attire), she could pass for a teenage boy. Was that a good thing or a bad thing for a thirty-eight-year-old woman? Frowning into the mirror, she took her sunglasses out of her coat and put them on. Now she looked like a teenage boy wearing shades.

The light turned green, and she accelerated.

Chapter 2

BERNADETTE DIDN’T NEED to double-check the address as she approached the house; the circus had to be visible from outer space. A fleet of Minneapolis squad cars lined both sides of the narrow road. Parked on the street directly in front of the house were an EMS ambulance and a medical examiner’s wagon; only one of the rigs would be leaving with a passenger. Uniformed officers and plainclothes investigators milled around the walk leading up to the home. Police tape stretched across the front yard and ran down each side. The lawn was planted with cardboard tombstones. Television crews were going to have a field day setting up with those props in the background. She’d lay money at least one television reporter was going to use the word ironically during a live shot.

What’s that behind you, Angela?

Ironically, Jeff, Halloween grave markers decorate the victim’s front yard.

Bernadette cruised past the house and drove two blocks down to the reporters’ ghetto. She parked between two television news vans, both plastered with propaganda claiming their station was number one in breaking news. While she walked, she dug her ID wallet out of her coat.

When she got to the sidewalk that ran in front of the home, she could make out the tombstones’ inscriptions. Here rests the Pillsbury Doughboy. He will rise again. Another read: RIP. Barry M. Deep. The house was a two-story box covered in wood clapboard, with a sagging open porch running across the width of it. The front of the house was painted lemon yellow and the sides were lime green. She wondered which fruity clearance color decorated the back.

Two uniforms from Minneapolis PD stopped her the instant she stepped over the yellow tape. She held up her identification, and the bigger officer took it. She waited for him to ask her to remove her shades, but he didn’t. He handed the ID back to her. “They’re waiting for you.”

Bernadette stuffed the wallet back in her pocket and navigated around the police officers clogging the walk.

A blob in a wrinkled suit stepped in front of her and blocked her way. He was Greg Thorsson, an agent from the bureau’s Milwaukee office. He compensated for his diminutive stature with a gargantuan mouth. She’d worked with him years earlier when they were both posted in St. Louis. He started in with the insults as if they’d never parted ways. “What’d you do, stop for a latte?”

“Nice to see you, too, Greg.” She veered around him. “Has your wife wised up yet and left you for another woman?”

He was on her heels as she started up the front steps. “Garcia must be desperate if he called in the witch doctor.”

“Voodoo priestess,” she said over her shoulder. “Get it right.” As she weaved through the bodies crowding the porch, she felt the stares burning a hole in her back. As soon as she was inside, the cops would join Thorsson with the lame jokes. She’d heard it all before, behind her back and to her face. She could write the one-liners herself.

Where’re her broom and crystal ball? … Maybe she can bring Hoover back from the dead … How about I dig my Ouija board outta the closet for backup?

Following her onto the porch, Thorsson continued the jabs. “Gonna cast an evil spell on me?”

She pivoted around and looked pointedly at his round belly. “I already have.”

“You’re not very Minnesota nice.”

“Neither are you.” She threw open the front door and went inside.

In the home’s foyer, she spotted two men from the bureau’s Minneapolis office yapping with a homicide detective. One of the agents gave her a nod and continued talking. The Minneapolis crew didn’t know her well, and that was fine with Bernadette. While she’d initially wanted to work in the bureau’s larger downtown Minneapolis office, she’d grown used to her basement digs in downtown St. Paul.

Garcia had instructed her to go to the second floor, and she started up the open staircase.

Someone yelled after her, “Hey!”

Thorsson had followed her inside. “Go away,” she said without turning around. Looking to the top of the stairs, she could see her ASAC standing by himself, his black hair trimmed with Marine efficiency and his weight lifter’s arms pushing out the sleeves of his trench coat. His back was to the stairs.

The pain in the ass jogged up next to her. “I heard you blew away a bad guy this spring. Any of that post-traumatic shit going on with you? You gonna snap on us?”

Thorsson was referring to a case she’d worked the previous May with Garcia. She and her boss had shot the killer dead. “If I snap, Greg, I promise to take you out first.”

When the two agents reached the second floor, Garcia turned around and glared at Thorsson. “Don’t you have someplace you need to be, Agent?”

Thorsson folded his stumpy arms in front of his bowling-ball body. “Sir. I thought Agent Saint Clare needed—”

“Agent Saint Clare doesn’t need a damn thing,” Garcia snapped.

Bernadette stifled a grin.

“Yes, sir,” said Thorsson. He hesitated for a moment, seemingly unsure of where to go, then turned around and thumped down the stairs. He headed for a knot of police officers gathered at the bottom.

Garcia watched Thorsson with a frown and then looked at Bernadette. “Jesus. Did you fly here or what?”