The funeral home was built of tan stone, in what some funereal architect must have supposed was a British style. Inside, it was simply cold. A hundred people came to the funeral, people from the decorating world, from the university. The women, he thought, all in their dark dresses, looked at him speculatively as he walked slowly up the aisle. Women were like that. Stephanie not yet cold in the grave…

He sat down, blocked out the organ music that seeped from hidden speakers and began toting up the assets. Hard to do with the phenobarbital in his blood, but he persisted. The house was worth better than half a million. The furnishings another two hundred thousand-not even her asshole relatives realized that. Stephanie had bought with an insider's eye, had traded up, had salvaged. Bekker didn't care for the place, but some people considered it a treasure house. For himself, Bekker wanted an apartment, up high, white walls, pale birch woodwork, a few Mayan pieces. He'd get it, and still put a half-million in the mutual funds. He'd drag down seventy-five thousand a year, if he picked his funds carefully. On top of his salary…

He almost smiled, thinking about it, caught the impulse and glanced around.

There were a number of people he didn't recognize, but most of them were sitting with people he did, in obvious groups and pairings. People from Stephanie's world of antiques and restoration. Stephanie's family, her father, her brothers and sisters, her cop cousin. He nodded at her father, who had fixed him with a glare, and looked farther back into the crowd.

One man, sitting alone near the back, caught his attention. He was muscular, dark-complected, in a gray European-cut suit. Good-looking, like a boxer might be. And he seemed interested in Bekker. He'd followed his progress up the aisle, into the chair that half faced the coffin, half faced the mourners. Safe behind the sunglasses, Bekker returned the man's gaze. For one goofy minute, Bekker thought he might be Stephanie's lover. But that was crazy. A guy like this wouldn't go for Stephanie, would he? Chunky Stephanie? Stephanie No-Eyes?

Then Swanson, the cop who had interviewed him when he got back from San Francisco, walked into the church, looked around and sat next to the stranger. They leaned their heads closer and spoke a few words, the stranger still watching Bekker. The tough guy was a cop.

All right. Bekker dismissed him, and looked again through the gathering crowd. Philip George came in with his wife, Annette, and sat behind the cop. Bekker's eyes traveled across him without hesitating.

The lover. Who was the lover?

The funeral was mercilessly long. Twelve people spoke. Stephanie was good, Stephanie was kind. Stephanie worked for the community.

Stephanie was a pain in the ass.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me…

Bekker went away…

When he came back, the mourners were on their feet, looking at him. It was over, what? Yes, he should walk out, one hand on the side rail of the coffin…

Afterward, at the cemetery, Bekker walked alone to his car, aware of the eyes on him. The women, looking. He composed his face: I need a mask, a grave mask, he thought. He giggled at the pun. He couldn't help himself.

He turned, struggling to keep his face straight. The crowd was watching, all right. And on the hillside, in the grass, the man in the European suit, watching.

He needed something to enhance his mood. His hand strayed to the cigarette case. He had two more of the special Contacs, a half-dozen methamphetamines. They'd be fine after the barbs.

And a little ecstasy for dessert?

But of course…

The funeral was crowded, the coffin closed. Lucas sat next to Swanson, the lead investigator. Del sat with Stephanie Bekker's family.

"The sonofabitch looks stoned," Swanson mumbled, poking Lucas with an elbow. Lucas turned and watched Bekker go by. Astonishingly good-looking: almost too much, Lucas thought. Like a mythological beast, assembled from the best parts of several animals, Bekker's face seemed to have been assembled from the best features of several movie stars.

"Is he hurt?" Lucas whispered. Bekker was walking awkwardly, his legs like lumber.

"Not that I know of," Swanson whispered back.

Bekker walked down the aisle; one hand on the coffin, unbending, his eyes invisible behind dark sunglasses. Occasionally his lips moved, as though he were mumbling to himself, or praying. It did not seem an act: the woodenness appeared to be real.

He followed the coffin to the hearse, waited until it was loaded, then walked down the block to his car. At the car he turned and looked directly at Lucas. Lucas felt the eyes and stood still, watching, letting their gazes touch. And then Bekker was gone.

Lucas went to the cemetery, curious. What was it with Bekker? Grief? Despair? An act? What?

He watched from a hillside as Stephanie Bekker's coffin was lowered into the ground. Bekker never changed: his beautiful face was as immobile as a lump of clay.

"What do you think?" Swanson asked, when Bekker had gone.

"I think the guy's a fruitcake," Lucas said. "But I don't know what kind."

Lucas spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening putting the word out on his network, a web of hookers, bookstore owners, barbers, mailmen, burglars, gamblers, cops, a couple of genteel marijuana dealers: Anything on a hit? Any nutso walking around with big cash?

A few minutes after six, he took a call on his handset and drove back downtown to police headquarters in the scabrous wart of Minneapolis City Hall. Sloan met him in the hall outside the chief's office.

"You hear?" Sloan asked.

"What?"

"We got a letter from a guy who says he was there when Stephanie got killed. Loverboy."

"No ID?"

"No. But there's a lot of stuff in the letter…"

Lucas followed Sloan past the vacant secretary's desk to the inner office. Daniel sat behind his desk, rolling a cigar between his fingers, listening to a Homicide detective who sat in a green leather chair in front of the desk. Daniel looked up when Sloan rapped on the open door.

"C'mon in, Sloan. Davenport, how are you? Swanson's filling me in."

Lucas and Sloan pulled up chairs on either side of the Homicide detective and Lucas asked him, "What's this letter?"

Swanson passed him a Xerox copy. "We were just talking about possibilities. Could be a doper, scared off by Loverboy. Unless Loverboy did it."

"You think it's Loverboy?"

The detective shook his head. "No. Read the letter. It more or less hangs together with the scene. And you saw Bekker."

"Nobody has a good word for the guy," Sloan said.

"Except professionally. The docs at the university say his work is top-notch," Swanson said. "I talked to some people in his department. 'Ground-breaking,' is what they say…"

"You know what bothers me?" Lucas said. "In this letter, Loverboy says she was on her back in a pool of blood, dead. I saw the pictures, and she was facedown next to the wall. He doesn't mention a handprint. I think he left her there alive…"

"He did," Swanson said, nodding. "She died just about the time the paramedics got there-they even gave her some kind of heart shot, trying to get it going again. Nothing happened, but she hadn't been dead very long, and the blood under her head was fresh. The blood on the floor, though, the blood by the sink, had already started to coagulate. They figure she was alive for fifteen or twenty minutes after the attack. Her brain was all fucked up-who knows what she could have told us? But if Loverboy had called nine-one-one, she might still be around."

"Fucker," Sloan said. "Does that make him an accomplice?"

Swanson shrugged. "You'd have to ask a lawyer about that."