But Minneapolis-a lead Minneapolis investigator might catch as many killings in a couple of years as a BCA agent saw in a career. They were a bunch of flatfeet, but their paper was very good, full of the kind of intuitive detail that caught a guy’s eye after ten years on the street and another ten doing violent crime.

At eleven o’clock, Lucas stopped. His brain was getting clogged up. He thought about calling Del. No chance he’d be asleep; the guy was like a bat. His old lady was another matter. He worked through the equities for a minute, then dialed.

Del picked up on the second ring: “What’d ya want?"

"I don’t want to interrupt anything,” Lucas said.

“I wish you were."

"Where’s your old lady?"

"In bed,” Del said. “She’s been feeling kinda rocky. What’s up?"

"Meet you at the apartment?"

"Fifteen minutes.”

THE ALLEY BEHIND the drugstore was dark and cold, and something-a raccoon?-was banging around inside the dumpster. Lucas fumbled for the key to the back door, got inside, turned on the stairway light and went up. The apartment was quiet and cold. He pushed the thermostat higher, in the light coming through the front window, and tuned the boom box to a golden oldies station, playing low; picked up the glasses and looked across the street at Heather Toms’s apartment.

Toms was in, watching TV in the middle of the three rooms he could see. She was drinking something from a can, a beer or a Pepsi, he thought. Probably a Pepsi, because of the baby. He couldn’t quite pick out the logo in the flickering light of the television.

Del showed up a couple of minutes later, trudging up the stairs. Lucas heard the key in the lock, and Del stepped inside, bringing along the odor of hot coffee. He handed Lucas a paper cup and Lucas said thanks, and took a sip. The coffee had never seen Seattle, or even heard of it. But it was okay. Free cop coffee.

Del tipped his head at the boom box: “Clarence Carter-‘Slip Away.’ ” The golden oldie slipped through the room and they sipped along for a moment and then Del took the glasses from Lucas’s hand and looked across the street and said, “She’s got her shirt on.”

“Yup. Took it off last time, though."

"She still looking healthy?"

"Starting to bulk up with the new baby,” Lucas said. “Nipples still point up?"

"So far."

"Wonder if she knows whether it’s a boy or a girl?"

"You could call and ask…”

DEL WAS WEARING jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and a cracked- leather Goodwill jacket with a fake- sheepskin collar. “Who’s dead?” he asked.

“Guy named Roy Carter,” Lucas said. “Also a guy named Dick Ford and a girl named Frances Austin.”

“Know about Ford and Austin.” Del handed the glasses back to Lucas. “I didn’t hear about Carter.”

“He was just a couple of hours ago,” Lucas said. He took two minutes to tell the story, then asked, “What do you think?”

“Well, there’s a lot of choices. You think the fairy did it?"

"She knows about it,” Lucas said, looking out into the night. “So she’s at least an accomplice."

"I think so."

"From what you say, Frances sounds like she was playing Goth, but was gonna wind up as an executive somewhere. Not really into the poverty lifestyle. So if you don’t find a fairy, or if she didn’t do it, you’ve really got to think about the possibility that you’ve got two separate things going on here. Austin, and the others.”

“Be easier if it was all one thing,” Lucas said. “The world isn’t easy,” Del said. He finished his coffee and pitched the cup toward an oversized plastic wastebasket, and missed. Clarence Carter went away and Jefferson Airplane came up, “Plastic Fantastic Lover.”

“It’s not two things,” Lucas said, after a while. “They’re connected. We don’t have Frances’s body, but the lab says there was a lot of blood. Just like Ford and Carter. They could have yelled, their throats weren’t cut, but nobody heard them yell because, probably, by the time they thought of it, they were already going.”

“Unless the knife went up into the diaphragm,” Del said. “Jesus, though, that’d take some expertise-a doctor or something.”

“There’s that."

"And from what you say, there’s other big differences,” Del said

“When they killed Frances, they went to all the risk of moving the body and getting rid of it. Since it hasn’t popped up yet, they did a pretty good job. But Ford and Carter, they leave out on the street, like calling cards. Right out there in public, like advertisements.”

“Advertisements for what?"

"You’re the detective,” Del said. Lucas slurped on the coffee, which tasted sort of brown, like a cross between real coffee and the paper sack it came in. “If they’re advertisements, there’ll be more of them. And now that you brought it up, another question about Frances. People were going to miss her pretty quickly, so why bother to move the body at all?”

Del shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe to shift time, to give themselves an alibi. Maybe to shift the place, so you wouldn’t look at people who had keys to the Austin house. But then, if you’re right, and the cases are connected, why does the fairy let herself be seen now? Doesn’t she care? There are probably what, a half- dozen people who’d recognize her now?”

“Maybe she just doesn’t give a shit,” Lucas said. “You know what it adds up to?” Del said. “Either you’ve got two separate things, or she’s nuts. She lets herself be seen, then she runs and hides. It’s like a game to her.”

Across the street, Heather got up, stretched, loafed into the kitchen, got something out of a cupboard-black corn chips, Lucas thought, and a bottle of salsa. They watched her carefully fixing the snack. “Is salt okay at this point? In the pregnancy?” Del asked. “Those chips have got a lot of sodium.”

“Dunno.” Lucas said, after another moment, “There’s something else going on, too. Austin-Alyssa-says her husband might have been sleeping with his assistant. Smart, pretty, big boobs; that’s Alyssa’s description. Alyssa said she didn’t care too much.”

“Bullshit,” Del said. “… because on other levels, the marriage was still okay. They had a solid partnership."

"Wasn’t okay. Another woman gets to her husband in a way she can’t? That’s never okay,” Del said. “If she tells you that, she’s lying.” Lucas shrugged. “All I can do is tell you what she said."

"Did you check the plane crash?"

"Not personally. I read some paper on it. Supposedly, he’s at a fly- in fishing place up in Canada. He’d been there before, had gone up by himself, meeting some pals. On the day he’s scheduled to leave, he takes off, had a power problem when he’s a hundred feet up, tries to turn back down the lake, dead stalls, and goes straight into the ground. The Canadian investigators didn’t find anything particularly suspicious. Happens a few times a year up there. This was an old rebuilt plane, a Beaver. And boom. Alyssa was back here; the daughter was back here.”

“What about the guys up there? His pals? Alyssa didn’t have anything going with any of them?”

“You’re a suspicious motherfucker,” Lucas said. And, “I’ll check that.”

“Wup- wup- wup…” Del said, pointing across the street. Toms was running toward the kitchen and Lucas put the glasses on her. “Phone call,” he said. He looked at his watch and noted the time. She spoke for ten seconds then hung up.

“Quick call,” Del said. “Setting up a meet?"

"Dunno.” Toms walked back through the visible rooms, then disappeared down a hall that led only to the door. “Somebody coming up?”

“Didn’t see anybody going in the front."

"I think somebody called her from the door.” They sat cocked forward on the folding chairs, tensed up; Toms was gone for another ten seconds, then reappeared, pushing an old woman in a wheelchair. “Ah, shit,” Lucas said. “It’s her mom.”