The first call went to the Olmsted County sheriff's office. Lucas identified himself, gave the dispatcher a quick summary of the situation for the recording tape, and got the sheriff's cell phone. The sheriff took the call on the second ring, listened for a moment, then said, "Oh, my God. I'm on my way."

"Bring the ME and tell him we're gonna need some fast body temps."

Then he called the governor, through Mitford. "Neil. Get me a number for the governor. Like right now."

Mitford said, "He's next door. Hang on, I'll walk the phone over. Did you get him?"

"Not exactly," Lucas said.

Henderson took the line. "Get him?"

"We busted down the door of his house and found Sorrell and a woman who I expect is his wife, dead in the front hallway. Shot to death. Looks like executions. Looks like they'd just come down in their bathrobes and were shot. Like somebody got them out of bed. Bodies aren't quite cold."

"Good lord. Did you… touch them?"

"Yeah. The sheriff's on the way with the ME," Lucas said. He was standing on the porch, and down at the bottom of the hill, he could see a patrol car flying down the approach road, slowing for the driveway. "We've got one coming in right now."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know. I'm a little stunned. But I'd say that either Joe's not dead, and he came back, or that there's another player."

"What do I do with the CBS interview?"

"You got what, an hour? I'll talk to the sheriff about notifying the next of kin, tell them that it's critical to move fast. If we can get that done, you could make the announcement. I wouldn't make the announcement, though, before the next-of-kin notification. Not unless we get some media out here, or something, as cover. If you do, it'll come back to bite you on the ass-some relative talking to TV about how he heard it first from you, and how awful it was."

"Let me think about that," Henderson said. "In the meantime, get the sheriff to find the next of kin."

"Okay," Lucas said.

"Take down a number," Henderson said. He read off a phone number, and Lucas jotted it in the palm of his hand. "That's the red cell phone. About ten people have the number, so don't call it too often. But call me on this."

"Okay."

"You know, if you look at this one way… our problem was solved pretty quickly."

"I wouldn't look at it that way," Lucas said. "Not in public, anyway."

"Call me back," Henderson said, and he was gone.

THE SHERIFF'S CAR reached the top of the hill and pulled around Jenkins's Dodge, slid to a stop in the snow. An apple-cheeked deputy jumped out of the driver's side, and, staying behind his car, hand on his holstered six-gun, the other hand pointed at the cops on the porch, shouted, "All right. All right."

"Jesus Christ, calm down," Shrake said, from where he was leaning on the porch rail. He blew a stream of cigarette smoke at the kid. "We're really important state cops and you're just a kid who's not important at all."

That confused the deputy, and slowed him down. "Where are the casualties?" he asked, no longer shouting.

"There are two dead bodies inside: Hale Sorrell and, we think, his wife," Lucas said.

"Oh, God." The kid jumped back inside the car and they could see him calling in.

Lucas's cell phone rang, and Rose Marie was on the line. "You gotta be kidding me."

He moved down the walkway under the eaves. "We're not. We don't know anything except that there's probably nobody inside the house, except the dead people. I haven't had a chance to think about anything."

"Sorrell for sure?"

"Yeah. You ever meet his wife?"

"A time or two-Sorrell's age, mid-forties, probably, dark hair, a little heavy, short."

"That's her, ninety-nine percent," Lucas said.

"Do I need to be there?"

"No. The locals are arriving, and I've got Henderson's direct line. If I were you, I'd get next to the governor and guide his footsteps, so as to avoid the dogshit."

"I'll do that. Call if you need anything," she said, and was gone.

THE SHERIFF'S NAME was Brad Wilson, and he arrived ten minutes after the first car came in. By that time, there were four sheriff's deputies on the scene, two of them on the porch, two more sent around to "cover the back-just in case," but mostly to get them out of Lucas's hair.

The sheriff was an older, barrel-chested man wearing a pearl-handled.45 on a gunbelt. He and Lucas had met once, when Lucas was working with Minneapolis. Lucas thought him competent, and maybe better than that. "You attract more goddamned trouble, Davenport," the sheriff said as he came up. "Hale's dead? And Mary?"

"Come on and take a look. We've been keeping everybody out so the crime scene guys'll have a chance."

The sheriff nodded and followed Lucas inside, stepping carefully. They stood back, but the sheriff, leaning over Sorrell, said, "That's Hale. And that's Mary. God bless me. How'd you come to find them?"

"We came up here to arrest him on murder charges," Lucas said. "Sorrell's the guy who hanged those two people up north."

The sheriff's mouth dropped open, then snapped close. After a moment, he said, "You wouldn't be pulling my leg, would you?"

"No. The two people he hanged were probably the people who kidnapped his daughter."

"You better tell me," the sheriff said. He looked a last time at the two figures on the floor. "Holy mackerel." And, "I got to call the feds. They are going to wet their pants."

AFTER THE SHERIFF called the FBI, Lucas got him to dispatch pairs of deputies to local homeowners. "We want to know if anybody saw a car or any other kind of vehicle here, this morning or late last night. Or anything else, for that matter. Ask them if they ever saw Sorrell in a red Jeep Cherokee."

The first media trucks from Rochester began arriving fifteen minutes later. Twenty minutes after that, a Twin Cities media helicopter flew over. Hale Sorrell's parents and Mary Sorrell's mother were notified of the deaths by the sheriff's chaplain, and said that they would notify other family members. Lucas called Henderson. "You're good to go. Next of kin are notified."

"Excellent. How are things down there?"

"We're just mostly standing around, waiting for the medical examiner. He was off somewhere, but he's on his way now."

AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK, still waiting for the medical examiner, they filed into a home theater, turned on the fifty-inch flat-panel television, and watched Henderson do the interview with CBS. Somebody-Mitford, probably-had roughed him up. His hair wasn't quite as smooth as it usually was, and a fat brown file envelope sat on the table in front of him. He looked like the harried executive with bad news, and he delivered it straight ahead, no punches pulled.

"Jesus, he looks almost… tough," Del said.

Washington came on, a moon-faced black man with a dark suit and white shirt, a man who knew he'd been seriously one-upped. The dead people were dope dealers and kidnappers? The hangman and his wife had been executed in their hallway?

"I feel there were some serious investigative shortcomings in Custer County, and I'm calling on the federal government to blahblahblahblah… "

"Bullshit bullshit bullshit," Del said. "It ain't workin'."

Fifteen minutes after they were off the air, Henderson called. "Anything new?"

"No. You looked pretty good."

"Thanks. We heard Washington is on his way home to Chicago."

"God bless him."

JENKINS AND SHRAKE were in the media room, watching the playoff from premium leather-paneled theater seats. Del was prowling the house, checking desks and bureaus and calendars and computer files. Twenty minutes after he began, he handed Lucas a piece of paper: an Iowa title transfer application from a Curtis Frank, of Des Moines, to a Larry Smith, of Oelwein, Iowa, on the purchase of a 1996 Jeep Cherokee, dated three weeks earlier.