Sherrill was still asleep when Lucas called. 'We maybe got a break,' he said.

She picked up the intensity in his voice, heard the traffic in the background.

He was on a cell phone. She sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes with the heel of her hand. 'What happened?'

'That little kid called in, Heather Davis – she called Officer Friendly, you know the guy, what's-his-name…'

'Ennis.'

'Yeah. She says the shooter was at their apartment last night, and warned her mother not to talk to us. She told them if they did talk to us, she'd come back and kill them both.'

Sherrill hopped out of bed and started for the bathroom, trailed by a twenty foot coil of white phone wire. 'What time was that?'

'Nine, or a little after. Just dark.'

'Then it wasn't Carmel,' Sherrill said. 'We got her coming out of her building around eight-thirty, followed her to the Swan, and watched her dance the night away.'

'You did that? Tracked her?'

'Yeah, me and Tom. You sound surprised…' She lifted the toilet seat and sat down.

'I wasn't sure you were going to, the way we left it yesterday,' Lucas said.

'Seemed like a long shot…'

Sherrill lost the rest of what Lucas was saying, suddenly falling off into a mental movie of the previous night. She came back when Lucas asked, 'Marcy? Are you still there?'

'Lucas… Goddamnit, I think we might have seen the shooter. Last night.

Coming out of Carmel's building.'

'What?' He didn't believe it. 'Honest to God.' She told him about the redhead who'd left as Hale Allen was going in. In her mind's eye, she could see the woman brushing past Hale, giving him the once-over, then stepping outside on the walk and looking up and down the street. 'Could you identify her?'

She thought about it for less than a second: 'I don't think so. I wasn't paying attention to her. I mean, there's a good chance it's not even her. .. but still, she was a shorter woman, a small woman, but in pretty good shape, like a gymnast; like Baily said. And she had big red hair.'

'That was her – I'd bet you a hundred bucks it was her,' Lucas said. 'We've gotta throw a net around the building. And we've got to get something on

Carmel's phones. Find somebody who'll sign a warrant to tap them.'

'Where are you? Are you at Davis's house?'

'No, I'm in my car, heading for the kid's school. She's still there – I'll be there in five.' 'I'll get dressed and head out…'

The inside cop, the tipster, called Carmel just as Lucas and Sherrill were breaking off their conversation:

'You're in the clear,' he said. He didn't bother to identify himself.

'What happened?'

'I'm not sure exactly, but the rumor is, this little kid called in, and said that the shooter was back at her house last night and her mother was afraid to talk about it. And the rumor is, you were being tracked, and they know it can't be you because you were out dancing at some fancy place. I'll tell you what,

Davenport went running out of here like a fullback. I mean, he was runnin'.'

'Jesus, they were following me?' She was shocked. She hadn't felt it. She'd always thought she'd be able to feel it. Maybe because of Hale, his closeness.. .

'All over you, I guess,' the cop said. 'A good thing, because you're in the clear.'

'Why didn't you call me before? When you heard they were putting the tail on me?'

After a pause, the cop said, 'You know I can't do that.'

Carmel promised another payment, rang off and dialed Rinker.

'And it was the kid who called the cops,' Carmel said, as she finished relating the cop's tip.

'Jesus, I never thought about that,' Rinker said. 'She's so small.'

'But it works out,' Carmel said, excitedly. 'You found out that there really was nothing coming out of them, and even if the cops force the mother to talk this time, what can she give them? And now, the cops know I wasn't there. They just stepped all over their own case. All you have to do is disappear, and we're cool.'

'Bout time,' Rinker said.

'Although,' Carmel said pensively, 'we still don't know why they were messing with me to begin with.'

'Let it go,' Rinker said. 'I'm getting out of here. If I move now, I can be through KC before the rush hour.'

'Don't go yet,' Carmel said. 'Hang around for a day or two. If they're following me, you can't come around here, but… just hang around.'

'You think?'

'Yeah. Just overnight, to see what happens – to see if we need to settle anything else. See if the kid and her mom keep their mouths shut. See if anything comes of that.'

'All right,' Rinker said reluctantly. Minneapolis seemed more and more like a tar-baby. She was anxious to get out. 'One more night.'

Lucas arrived at Mrs. Gartin's School a little after ten o'clock in the morning.

He parked on the street down the block, and walked back under low-hanging maple trees. A light summer breeze had popped up, and a patch of yellow coneflowers bobbed their bright heads and brown eyes at him from the school garden. Behind the garden, and behind a low wooden fence, he could see a playground for small kids, with tractor-tire sandboxes and a gentle tube-slide.

Mrs. Gartin was a heavy woman in a print dress, with small jowls and smile lines. She was surprised to see him.

'Heather called you?'

'Yes. It's important that I talk to her right away.'

'I should call her mother…'

'Her mother may be in some danger, which is why I have to talk to her right away.' He let a little cop show through his polite smile. 'If you could take me to her?'

'Well, I…' She spasmodically shuffled some papers on her desk, cleared her throat and said, 'She's down in Mrs. Roman's room.'

Heather sat in Mrs. Roman's office with Lucas, and told the story: Lucas took her over it twice, and when they finished, had no doubt that she was telling precisely the truth. Sherrill arrived just before they finished with the second runthrough, and Davis arrived two minutes later. She was panic-stricken.

'What are you doing?' she screamed. 'What are you doing with my daughter? You have no right to talk to my daughter…'

'Yes, we do,' Lucas said, as gently as he could. But it didn't come off well, and Davis grabbed Heather's arm and would have been out the door if Sherrill hadn't been blocking it.

'You can't leave,' Sherrill said.

Heather began to cry, and said, 'I only told them…'

'I'll call a lawyer,' Davis shrilled.

'You can call anyone you want to, but life would be simpler for all of us, including you, if we talked about this for a few minutes,' Lucas said.

'She's going to kill us, she said she would kill us…'

'She's not going to hurt anyone,' Lucas said.

'You weren't there,' Davis snapped. 'She said she was going to kill us, and she meant it. Frankly, I'm not nearly as impressed with you and your cops as I am with her.'

'We will put you where she can't find you…'

'She's with the Mafia,' Davis screamed. 'They can find anybody.'

Lucas shook his head and Sherrill said, 'Listen, quiet down. Whatever's happened, has already happened. We need to ask you a few questions, and then we need to arrange things so you're absolutely safe.'

'That's impossible now,' Davis said. The anger was still closer to the surface than the fear, but now the fear was bubbling up, too.

'No, it's not, not at all. We have experts in it,' Sherrill said. 'You know why you don't hear about the

Mafia killing cops? Because they're afraid to. Just think about that…'

When Davis had calmed down – not before a few nasty moments with Mrs. Gartin, who made an ill-timed appearance with a box of ginger snaps – they took her through Rinker's assault. Heather sat on her mother's knee during the talk, and

Davis even showed a small tremulous smile when told about how her daughter called Officer Friendly.