"I'll talk to Jack about it," Lucas said. "He was supposed to get that guy from Epp's."

"I heard the guy fell off a stepladder and broke his foot-that's what I heard," the electrician said, pitching his voice down. "Don't tell Jack I mentioned it."

"I won't. I'll get somebody out here," Lucas said.

Goddamnit. Now he was back in yelling mode again. Much of the problem of building a new house was in the sequencing-sequencing the construction steps and all the required inspections in a smooth flow. One screwup, of even a minor thing like phone and cable-television wiring, which should take no more than a day, could stall progress for a week, and they didn't have a lot of time to spare.

Besides which, living in Weather Karkinnen's house was driving him crazy. He didn't have any of his stuff. Everything was in storage. Weather had even lost her TV remote, and never noticed because she watched TV only when presidents were assassinated. For the past two months, he'd had to get up and down every time he wanted to change channels, and he wanted to change channels about forty times a minute. He'd taken to crouching next to the TV to push the channel button. Weather said he was pathetic, and he believed her.

INSIDE THE SHELL of the new house, everything smelled of damp wood and sawdust-smelled pretty good, he thought. Building new houses could become addictive. Everybody was working on the second story, and he made a quick tour of the bottom floor-four new boxes were piled on the back porch; toilet stools-and then took the central stairs to the second floor. One nail-gun guy and the table saw guy were working in the master bedroom, fitting in the tongue-in-groove maple ceiling. The other nail gunner was working in the main bathroom, fitting frames for what would be the linen closet. They all glanced at him, and the guy on the saw said, "Morning," and went back to work.

"Jack around?"

The saw guy shook his head. "Naw. I been working. Harold's been kinda jackin' around, though."

"Rick…" No time for carpenter humor. "Is Jack around?"

"He was down the basement, last time I saw him."

Lucas did a quick tour of the top floor, stopped to look out a bedroom window at the Mississippi-he was actually high enough to see the water, far down in the steep valley on the other side of the road-and then headed back downstairs. His cell phone rang when he was halfway down, and he pulled it out and poked the power button: "Yeah?"

"Hey." Marcy Sherrill, a detective-sergeant who ran his office and a portion of his life. "That FBI guy, Mallard, is looking for you. He wants you to get back to him soon as you can."

"Did he say what he wanted?"

"No, but he said it was urgent. He wanted your cell phone number, but I told him you kept it turned off. He gave me a number to call back."

"Give it to me." He took a ballpoint out of his jacket pocket and scribbled the number in the palm of his hand as she read it to him.

"You at the house?" she asked.

"Yeah. They're about ready to put in the toilets. We got four of the big high-flow American Standard babies. White."

He could feel her falling asleep, but she said, "Getting close."

"Two months, they say. I dunno. I'll believe it when I see it."

"Call Mallard."

In the basement, Jack Vrbecek was peering up at the ceiling and making notes on a clipboard. "Hey, Lucas. Seven guys today."

"Yeah, that's good. That's good. Looks like things are moving. What're you doing?"

"Checking the schematics on the wiring. You're gonna want to know where every bit of it is, in case you need to get at it."

Lucas bent his head back to peer at the ceiling. "Maybe we ought to put in a Plexiglas ceiling, finish it off-but then we'd be able to see everything."

"Except that the workshop would sound like the inside of the brass-band factory every time you turned on a saw," Vrbecek said. "This will be fine. We'll get you a complete layout, and with the acoustic drop ceiling, your access will be okay and you'll be able to hear yourself think."

Lucas nodded. "Listen, we've got to get somebody to do the cable and telephone stuff, and I heard someplace today, down at City Hall, I think, that the guy from Epp's broke his foot. If we don't get that in, with the inspector coming Tuesday…"

"Yeah, yeah. We're moving on it." He made a note on his clipboard.

"And one of the guys up on the roof is drinking what might be Perrier water, but might not be, and if he falls off and breaks his neck, I'm not the one who gets sued."

"Goddamnit. They're supposed to be in a twelve-step program, and if that's a goddamn bottle of beer…" They started for the basement stairs. At any other time, Lucas might have felt guilty about ratting out the roofers. But this was the house.

TWO MONTHS EARLIER, Lucas had stood on the edge of a hole where his old house had once been, looking into it with a combination of fear and regret. Both he and Weather wanted to remain in the neighborhood, and they were old enough to know exactly what they wanted in a house, and to know they wouldn't get it by buying an older place. Building was the answer: taking down the old house, putting up the new.

Only when he looked into the hole did he realize how committed he'd become, after a long life of essential noncommitment. The old house was gone and Weather Karkinnen was, as she'd announced, With Child. They'd get married when they had time to work out the details, and they'd all live happily ever after in the Big New House.

As he'd stood on the edge of the hole, the low-spreading foundation junipers clutching at his ankles as though pleading for mercy-they'd get damn little, given the practicalities of building a new house-he'd expected to live with the regret for a long time.

He'd bought the place when he was relatively young, a detective sergeant with a reputation for busting cases. He was working all the time, roaming the city at night, building a web of contacts-and working until five in the morning writing role-playing games, hunched over a drawing board and an IBM Selectric.

A couple of the games hit, producing modest gushers of money. After wasting some of it on a retirement plan and throwing even more down the rathole of sober, long-term investments, he'd finally come to his senses and spent the remaining money on a Porsche and a lake cabin in the North Woods. The last few thousand made a nice down payment on the house.

Standing at the edge of the old basement, he'd thought he'd miss the old place.

So far, he hadn't.

THE HOLE HAD been enlarged, the new foundation had gone in, and in short order, the frame for the replacement house had gone up and been enclosed. He found the process fascinating. He'd enjoyed the design stage, working with the architect. Had enjoyed even more the construction process, the careful fitting-together of the plans, and the inevitable arguments about changes and materials. He even enjoyed the arguments. Sort of like writing a strategy game, he thought.

The old house, though comfortable, had problems. Even living in it alone, he'd felt cramped at times. And if he and Weather had kids, the kids would have been living on top of them, in the next bedroom down the hall. The Big New House would have a grand master bedroom suite with a Versailles-sized bathroom and a bathtub large enough for Lucas to float in-Weather, a small woman, should be able to swim laps. The kid-kids?-would be at the other end of the hall, with a bathroom of his own, and there'd be a library and workrooms for both himself and Weather and a nice family room and a spot for Weather's piano. The new house was a place he thought he could happily live and die in. Die when he was ninety-three, he hoped. And with any luck, it should be finished before the kid arrived…

Right now, he didn't want to leave. Not even with the screaming up on the roof. He wanted to hang around and talk with the foreman and the other guys, but he knew he'd just be sucking up their time. He walked around the first floor once more, thinking about color schemes that would fit with the rock he'd picked for the fireplace. Twenty minutes after he arrived, he dragged himself back to the car.