"Which gets us away from the question I want answered, and I want to know that I'm being told the truth," Ruth said, squaring off against Calb and Davis. She had her wintery fighting smile fixed on her face. "This kidnapping thing. This Sorrell girl. You didn't know about it, you didn't have any part of it, either of you. This wasn't some kind of money-making deal that went wrong."

"My God, Ruth. No. Never. I'm not nuts," Calb said. The way he said it made her believe him.

Davis was quieter, but just as convincing: "The thing is, Ruth, if these news stories are right, the kidnappers wanted a million bucks for this kid. They were gonna cut it three ways that we know of, and probably had to be four, since it seems like there's a fourth one on the loose. That'd be a quarter-million apiece, for risking the death sentence. Gene and I make that much, every year, just running our quiet little car business. There wouldn't be no sense in it."

"Some sense for somebody like Deon," Singleton said. "He was getting nothing but chump change."

"Just like you, Loren, and both of you happy to get it," Calb snapped.

"Hey-shut up," Ruth said. She looked at the two men, poked a finger at them. "We don't need a quarrel. So… what does Gene say to the police?"

"He plays dumb," Davis said. "That'll work, if you let it work. If you don't get smart. You go ahead and sweat, and wiggle around, and apologize-the man always likes to see that. But just be dumb. Yeah, you hired him, because I asked you to, to get him out of the neighborhood. They come to me, and I say, 'Hell, yes, it was a big favor, gettin' Deon off my back, and his old lady, too.' "We tell them that his pay probably wasn't enough for some city boy who wants to put cocaine up his nose, and so he went off on his own," Davis continued. "I mean, this thing they did with this little girl-Deon's crazy enough, but no cop down in KC who knows me would say that I'd do it. Nobody up here would think that Gene would, either."

HE PAUSED, AND in the absence of words, a full-color motion picture popped up behind Singleton's eyes: a picture of Mom getting the little bottle of drugs out of her bag, and the syringe, and sucking the fluid out, and holding the needle up, and squirting a little bit of it, then putting the smile on her face before she went in with the girl.

The older girl might have known what was going on. She'd taken the shot with a dark-eyed passivity, her eyes locked on Singleton's. She'd had a blue ribbon in her hair, with a knot in the middle.

The younger one had a stuffed toy that Jane had gotten her, a hand-sized white-mouse puppet with a pink tail. She'd said, "Okay," and had lain back on the folding bed and rolled her arm around to take the shot. Brave little kid: went to sleep with the mouse on her chest.

He'd dug her down through the clay cap and placed her in a pile of old Yellow Pages phone books, and that was that.

Wasn't hard. Didn't seem crazy; just was.

DAVIS STARTED TALKING again, and popped Singleton out of the mental movie. "So we play it dumb: what you see is what you got. Three dumb assholes decide to kidnap a girl because they want more money and they get killed for their trouble."

"Four dumb assholes," Calb said distractedly. "Maybe the other guy was like down on the other end of the thing, set up the girl, or something." He looked at Singleton. "They never mentioned a friend or anything?"

"No. They kept talking about all their friends down in KC."

"Whatever," Ruth said. "The thing is, I need something to tell the women who work with me. Some of them are afraid that somehow, everything is linked-the cars, the drugs, and the kidnapping. If somebody put pressure on them, came at them the right way, they'd probably give up the whole story. Feel morally obligated to."

"Shit," Davis said.

"Well, I agree with them," Ruth said, showing the cold smile again. "The only difference is, I know Gene." She lifted a hand toward Calb. "If I thought we had anything to do with all of this, I'd go to the police myself. But I think it was Deon Cash and Jane Warr and Joe, trying to make some money. And the fact is, even though we don't know anything about it, it could drag us all down."

"So tell them the truth," Calb said. "Tell them that we're just as scared and confused as they are. We don't know what the hell's happening, and we're desperate to find out."

"Dumb is best," Davis said again. "Believe me on that-you don't know nothin' about nothin'. If you don't know nothin', nobody can trip you up-not your friends, not the cops."

THEY TALKED FOR another half-hour, and then broke up. Davis said he was heading back to KC that night, after eating dinner at the Calbs'. Katina walked out with Singleton and Ruth. Ruth kept going, across the highway and down toward the church. Katina held back and said, "I'd like to come over."

"You're the goddamned horniest little thing," Singleton said. He touched her face and said, "Don't worry. You worry too much."

"I just want everything to be right," she said. "You never talked to Deon about anything, did you?"

By anything, she meant the kidnappings, Singleton realized.

"Jeez, Katina… " He was insulted.

"I'm sorry, I'm just so upset."

"It'll be okay, honey."

"Not just that. I sorta need to… get close to somebody. After all this." She stood close to him and fumbled for his hand.

"So come over. We'll just, you know… hang out."

"I'll see you there," Lewis said. "I'll take my car so I can get back. Maybe we could go down to the Bird for dinner."

"Love you," Singleton said, talking down to her. First time he'd said that; no place romantic, just standing in a snow-swept parking lot in the middle of nowhere. "Love you," he said.

Lucas and Del went north in a two-car convoy, Lucas leading in the Acura, Del trailing in the rented Olds. They left the Big New House at three-thirty in the morning, out past the airport, around the sleeping suburbs, then northwest on I-94.

Rose Marie had called ahead and cleared them with the overnight highway patrolmen, and Lucas put the cruise control on eighty-five, with Del drafting behind him. They made the turn north at Fargo in three hours, picking up a few snowflakes as they crossed the narrow cut of the Red River. The snow got heavier as they drove north up I-29, but was never bad enough to slow them. After a quick coffee-and-gas stop at Grand Forks, they continued north, then cut back across the border to Armstrong, and pulled into the Law Enforcement Center a few minutes before nine o'clock.

Bitter cold now, but the snow had quit for the moment. More was due during the day, and Lucas wanted to get started in Broderick before conditions got too bad. The sheriff wasn't around-probably at church, the comm center man said-so they left a message that they'd be somewhere around Armstrong or Broderick, then stopped at the Motel 6. With the discovery of the bodies of Hale and Mary Sorrell, most of the reporters had gone, and they got rooms immediately.

"Like a land office in here the night before last," the clerk said. "Now we're back to Sleepy Hollow."

"All the reporters gone?"

"All but one." The clerk leaned across the desk and dropped his voice. "A black guy from Chicago. He says he's a reporter, but I wouldn't be too sure."

"Hmm," Lucas said wisely, and took the room key.

ON THE WAY out of Armstrong, rolling through the bleak landscape, Del punched up the CD player and found Bob Seger's "Turn the Page," in the cover version by Metallica.

They listened for a while, and then Del said, "I like Seger's better."

"Close call, they're both good," Lucas said. "I go for the Metallica. Great goddamn album, anyway."