One solid piece of information came out: 'I could see the ends of her hair, and

I'd swear that it was a wig. There was just something un-hair-like about it. And

I could see her hands, and I saw her face when she first came to the door, and she just wasn't that real fair complexion that redheads have.'

'But you couldn't describe her face?'

'No, you know, she had this box, and I looked at the box…'

'Do you still have the box?'

'No, I… threw it away,' she said. 'It's in the dumpster behind the apartment.

It's a FedEx box.'

'Was she wearing gloves?'

'Oh, yeah. I can remember that. They were disposable plastic gloves, like dentists use. Oh, yeah.' The gloves impressed her: a professional killer, after all.

When they were finished, Lucas said, 'I can't see you being called as a witness.

Your information helps us a lot, in some ways, but it's not something that we'd use in court.'

'I won't testify,' Davis said. 'I mean, I won't'

'So let's talk about what you want to do now,' Sherrill said.

What Davis wanted to do was to pretend that nothing had happened. 'Could she know about this? That we talked to you?'

'Uh, word leaks out of police stations from time to time,' Lucas said carefully, thinking about Carmel's sources. 'Is there any possibility that you could take off for a couple of weeks, or a month?'

'I've got a job I've got to go to at the U,' she said. 'I gotta eat…'

'I can fix that,' Lucas said. 'I can probably fix a paid leave, and if I can't, we can find some money in city funds to make up what you lose. Do you have some folks…?'

Davis shook her head. 'I don't want to go there. You know what? If you can do it? I've got a laptop, I could do a lot of work on my thesis if I could get somewhere quiet, just Heather and me. When I was still with Howard, we stayed at these townhouses up on the North Shore, they were really nice.. .'

'We can do that,' said Lucas. He turned to Sherrill: 'Call Bretano down in Sex.

Get her going on this.' He turned back to Davis. 'We'll hook you up with Alice

Bretano. She works with abused mothers and kids and knows about hiding them and getting money and so on… she'll take care of the whole thing.'

'And you're sure they won't find us?' Davis asked doubtfully.

'They won't even bother to look,' Lucas said. 'There's just no percentage in it.'

When she didn't appear convinced, Lucas said, 'Let me tell you about the Mafia.

They're a bunch of guys who are willing to hurt people for money, and they hustle dope and prostitutes and they loan-shark and all of that. But they're just a bunch of guys. They don't have any big intelligence service and they don't back each other up like they say they do… they're just sort of aaa.. .' His eyes went to Heather, who was looking up at him with big eyes. '… jerks. But I won't lie to you: this one woman, the one you saw last night, is somebody to be afraid of. But we're gonna get her. And we're not going to give her any reason to hurt you. If she didn't hurt you last night, she's not going to.'

Sherrill called Bretano in Sex, explained the problem, and Bretano said she'd handle the whole thing; she could be at the school in ten minutes.

Outside, while they waited, leaning against Lucas' Porsche, Sherrill asked, 'Now what?'

'We got two things out of that, for sure: we know she's a redhead, or at least wearing a red wig, and that she's a small woman in good shape, which means that you probably saw her last night. So now we crank everything up. We put a twenty four-hour watch on Carmel's building, and if we get her inside, we take her – this woman.'

'On what?'

'On nothing. On bullshit. On assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, anything. But I want her picked up and identified. Nailed down. I want to know where she comes from. I want mug shots of her, so we can paper the country with them if she gets out, and then runs. That means you're gonna be living outside

Carmel's building. We maybe see if we can find a place, an apartment or an empty office, where you can watch from.'

'I'm out of the investigation?' Sherrill asked.

'A little bit out – but if we nail this woman quick, you're gonna be the one to do it.'

'What're you gonna do?'

'First thing, I'm gonna get some guys and I'm gonna knock on every door for two blocks around Davis' apartment. There are people on the streets there at night.

Somebody must've seen this woman, whoever she is.'

Lucas got a half-dozen uniformed cops walking the neighborhood. He hated the job himself, and wasn't good at it. The good ones had open Irish or Scandinavian faces, young guys who looked like they might slap you on the back, women who might enjoy the odd bit of gossip. Empathizers.

Lucas and Bretano had brought Davis and her daughter back to the apartment, and waited while they packed. When they left, Davis gave the keys to Lucas: 'Use the phone or the toilet, if you have to. I'll pick them up when we get back.' Having the cops around had restored some confidence – but she still wanted to get out of town, and in a hurry.

Lucas used the apartment as a temporary headquarters, while the uniformed cops worked the neighborhood, moving back and forth, visiting and revisiting homes, waiting for people to get home from work, sorting bullshit from egg cremes. A little after three o'clock, a cop named Lane wandered into the apartment, carrying a Pepsi, and sat down in a kitchen chair. Lucas was at the kitchen table, just getting off the phone.

'What?' he asked.

Lane leaned back, took a hit on the Pepsi: 'I've been trying to get a break into plainclothes for more'n a fucking year now, and I can't get it done.'

'I thought I saw you in plainclothes…'

'Yeah, yeah, that was just the drug guys looking for a fresh face. After a few weeks, my face wasn't fresh, and I was back sitting in a squad. What I'm saying is, you gotta help get me outa this fuckin' uniform.'

Lucas shrugged: 'I don't know you very well, you know? I don't know what you'd bring to the job especially…'

'I was the guy who found that. 380 in the McDonald case last fall, you remember?

I mean, there was luck involved, but I'm a lucky guy. I pushed it, and we rang the bell.'

Lucas nodded. 'I remember. And being a lucky guy is pretty critical…'

'I know. But I keep getting this bullshit about being good on the streets, and all that. How they don't want to lose me off patrol. But I don't want to be on patrol, and they're gonna lose me anyway, if they don't move me. I'll go someplace else…'

'This is the only place to work in the state,' Lucas said. Then he tried to put him off. 'Anyway, you know, let me ask around…'

Lane cracked a grin. 'I really didn't come in here to make a speech about getting off patrol, but I thought I'd take the opportunity, especially since I look so good right now.'

Lucas' eyebrows went up. 'Oh, yeah?'

'Yeah. I was down the street, at 1414, there's a Mrs. Rann, Gloria Rann. She got home at about nine-fifteen last night. She knows because she caught the bus at

University and Cretin when she got off work at nine, and it takes ten minutes to get home, and she was hurrying because she had a show she wanted to watch at nine-thirty. She just had time to put the garbage out before the show started.

She sees a small athletic woman getting into what she thinks might have been a green car parked on the street, right on the curb at her house. She couldn't see the woman's face, but she thought she might be a college kid, because she looked athletic and because the neighborhood has a lot of college kids around. And.. . she had big hair.'

Lucas leaned forward: 'That'd be right.'

Lane said, 'Yeah. She fits the profile you gave us.

Anyway, I ask Mrs. Rann if she'd ever seen the car before, and she said, 'No, it wasn't from around here.' And I say, 'How do you know that?' And she says, because when she was walking home from the bus, it was still a little light, and she looked at the car because it was parked right in front of her house.'