“Then what?”

Virgil said, “I can’t give you all the details, but a group of men went to Vietnam a long time ago, when they were still young, and this group is now being murdered. The men whose bodies are being left at the veterans’ monuments.”

“The lemon murders. The lemons in the mouth.”

Virgil frowned. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Television, last night, and this morning. The papers must have it. The lemon murders.”

“Damn it. We’d held that back,” Virgil said.

“Well-it’s on the news now. So, Warren, how’s he tied in?”

“He was one of the guys,” Virgil said.

Homewood leaned forward, hands on his knees, intent. “Wait a minute. You think Warren ’s a killer?”

“We don’t think anything, other than this killer is killing these guys. There are only two left alive, and I’m going to talk to Warren. Del told me you might have some background that I couldn’t get anywhere else.”

Homewood leaned back, looked around the jumble of the office, and then waved a hand at it. “I’m a real estate consultant, Virgil. Nobody knows as much about real estate in the Twin Cities as I do. I know what the values are, what the values should be, what the values will be. Ralph Warren has made a living by selling pie in the sky to a dozen city councils. Bullshitting them into providing taxpayer financing, buying council votes when he had to, buying planners and inspectors, threatening people. Makes a hash out of my values: I tell you, I can see what’s going to happen. He sold the city on one deal, twenty years ago, it’s now in its twelfth refinancing; the city’s still on the hook for eight million dollars, sixteen million if you count all the interest over the years, all so Ralph Warren could take out a mil. I mean, the guy-if you’d told me that he’s a killer, I’d say, probably.”

“Who’s he threatened? That you know for sure?”

“Me,” Homewood said. “I testified for the Minneapolis Planning Board against a ridiculous, absurd proposal for low-income housing-and I’m in favor of low-income housing, don’t misunderstand me, but this was a fraud. A straight-out fraud. We came out of the hearing and Warren was laughing, and he came over to me, joking, and he said, ‘Don’t fall off no high bridges,’ like it was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke. I kept a gun in my desk drawer for six weeks after that. Every time I heard a sound at night, I jumped.”

“But he never did anything,” Virgil said.

“People don’t believe me when I tell them what’s going to happen,” Homewood said. He shrugged. “ Warren figured that out. If I’m not going to have any effect, why worry about me? People believe what they hope will happen, and that’s what Warren peddles to them-hope that something good will happen. Something good does happen, but only for Warren. And then the taxpayers wind up holding the bag, just like they have with Teasdale Commons.”

“So he’s an asshole,” Virgil said.

“More than that.” Homewood shook a finger at him. “He’s a criminal and a sociopath. How often do you have one of those, in the same… environment… as a bunch of crazy awful murders, and he didn’t have anything to do with them?”

“That’s a point,” Virgil said. “That’s a point.”

JENKINS AND SHRAKE were throwing a Nerf football around the BCA parking lot when Virgil pulled in, and Virgil took a pass and the three of them threw it around for a few more minutes. The NFL preseason was around the corner, and as they headed inside, the three of them agreed that the Vikings were screwed this year.

Inside, they borrowed Davenport ’s office again and Virgil briefed them on Ralph Warren. “I’m going to get Sandy to research him, but to tell you the truth, I don’t think we’re going to find anything in research. We’ll find it in some kind of action. He’ll do something. So we watch him. If nothing happens for a couple of days… we might try a sting.”

“What do we have to sting him with?” Jenkins asked.

“I’ve got some photos from Vietnam, of him raping a dead woman. Or a dying woman, anyway,” Virgil said. “If somebody were to call him, and offer them for sale, and if that guy were an out-of-town hoodlum like Carl Knox might hire… it might have enough credibility to get him to act.”

“Yeah, and if he’s as bad a dude as you think, his action might be to blow somebody’s head off,” Jenkins said.

“There’re ways around that. We could work that out,” Virgil said. “But we’d have to work it so that he talked about it.”

“So let’s watch him for a while,” Shrake said. “Just the three of us?”

“Just the two of you, for today,” Virgil said. “I’m running around poking sticks into things. You can talk to Lucas and see if he can give you somebody else.”

“What’re you poking your stick into?” Shrake asked.

“I’m going to ask a woman up to Davenport ’s cabin for the day and I’m gonna try to get her on the couch so that…” He spun and looked at the big map of Minnesota on Davenport ’s wall.

Jenkins said, “You gonna get this chick on the couch so that… what?”

“So I can betray her,” Virgil said. “I need to get some stuff out of her about her father. Without her knowing what I’m doing. So I can fuck with her old man.”

They all thought about that for a while, then Shrake said, “Well, shit. We’re cops.”

MAI WAS HAPPY to hear from him: “I’m standing outside an ice cream parlor on Grand Avenue, thinking about eating a giant ball of fat and sugar, so my ass will blow up to the size of a dirigible.”

“Want to go fishing?”

“Sure. Where?”

“My boss has a cabin up north-two hours from here,” Virgil said. “It’s pretty far, but we could be there by early afternoon, go fishing, go for a walk, whatever, and be back here by bedtime.”

“There’s this restaurant at Grand and Victoria that makes good sandwiches and desserts,” she said. “I’ll go get some. You can pick me up outside-if that’s not too quick for you.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Virgil said, and he was running.

DAVENPORT ’S CABIN was twenty miles east of Hayward, a bit more than two and a half hours from the Cities, but they ate lunch in Virgil’s truck and never slowed down and made good progress. Mai had never been in a police vehicle before, other than Virgil’s, and wanted to know what all the pieces were, and for a while, when nobody was around on Highway 70, Virgil ran with lights and sirens to give her the feel. Mai was wearing blue jeans and a black cotton blouse, and her physical presence was all over the truck, her high-pitched girly voice, a tendency to giggle at vulgar jokes, a flowery scent.

“Peach blossom,” she told him.

“I thought perfumes were called ‘Sin’ or ‘Obsession,’” Virgil said.

“Eh, that’s so inane. Do you wear a scent?”

He smiled at the word. “Aftershave sometimes, ‘Big Iron Panzer Diesel. ’ It makes me feel more masculine.”

They talked growing up in the Midwest, about going to Big Ten rival schools in Madison and Minneapolis. She confessed to never having gone to a Wisconsin football or basketball game, though she’d once gone on a date to a wrestling match, Wisconsin against the University of Iowa. “We got crushed,” she said. “I mean, they got crushed. I personally didn’t wrestle.”

“I bet that disappointed everybody.”

“Especially my date,” she said, and patted him on the thigh.

Virgil said, “Have I told you about my illustrious baseball career?”

“You haven’t mentioned it.”

“The salient fact is, I couldn’t hit a college fastball. I could hit the covers off a high school fastball, but not a college fastball. Anyway, I played for a couple of years and we went down to Madison three or four times a season. I’d hang out on the Terrace, eat ice cream, try to pick up women at the Rat…”

“Successfully?”