Lucas dreamed of Bekker's face. Had to be drugs. Had to be. In the dream he kept arguing that point, that it was drugs; but no drugs were found, and Bekker, lightly restrained by two faceless cops in blue uniforms, would swoop up and screech, I'm high on Jesus…

The dream was one of those where Lucas knew he was dreaming but couldn't get out. When the alarm went off, just after one in the afternoon, it was a positive relief. He rolled out, cleaned up and was about to pour a cup of coffee when Del banged on the door.

"You're up," Del said, when Lucas answered.

"Come on in. What's going on?"

"Got some calls on the tip line. Nothing much." He shook a no-nicotine, no-tar cigarette out of a crumpled pack and lit it with a Zippo as they walked through the house to the kitchen. "And Sloan talked to a woman named Beulah Miller this morning-another one of Stephanie Bekker's friends. He asked about the psychologist, and she said, 'Maybe.' "

"But the shrink denies it…"

"So does his wife," Del said. He settled at the kitchen table, and when Lucas held up a pot of coffee, he nodded. "Sloan went back and got her alone. She said he'd had an affair, years ago, and she knew about five minutes after it started. There haven't been any since. And she said that after Sloan went away after the first visit, she went straight back to her husband and asked him. He denied it. Still denies it. And she believes him."

"Has she got a job of her own?" Lucas asked, handing him a cup of hot coffee.

"Sloan thought of that," Del said. "And she does-she's a lobbyist for the Taxpayers' Forum and a couple of other conservative interest groups. She's got a law degree, Sloan says, and she probably makes a pretty good buck."

"So she doesn't need a meal ticket."

"Guess not. Anyway, she suspected that Stephanie was having an affair. They never talked about it, but there were some pretty heavy hints. And she says she thinks they never talked about it because she probably knew the guy, and maybe the guy's wife, and Stephanie didn't know how she'd react. Like she was afraid Miller'd freak out or something."

"So she says it's not her husband, but probably somebody they know…"

"Yeah."

"Did Sloan get a list of possibilities?"

"Naturally. Twenty-two names. But she said some of them were pretty remote possibilities. Sloan's looking at the most likely ones today, the rest of them tomorrow… but he got something else you might be interested in."

Lucas raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"Bekker apparently had an affair sometime back, two or three years ago. A nurse. Common talk around the hospital. Sloan got her name and address, went over to see her. She told him to get lost. He pulled the badge, but you know Sloan, he likes people a little too much…"

"Huh. You think…?"

"What I think is, you'd be the perfect guy to talk to her," Del said.

"Why not you?"

"I'd like to come along, but I don't look right to do it by myself," Del said, shaking his long black hair. "I look a little too much like Charlie Manson. People don't let me in the door, even, unless they're assholes. But you-when you put on one of those gray suits, you look like the fuckin' Law."

Cheryl Clark didn't want to let them in.

"This is about a murder, Miss Clark," Lucas said, cool and official, his ID in her face. "You can talk to us, and the chances are about ninety percent that we'll walk away. Or you can refuse to talk, and we'll take you downtown and let you call a lawyer, and we'll talk to you that way."

"I don't have to talk."

"Yes you do. You don't have the right to refuse to talk. You have the right not to incriminate yourself. If you think you're going to incriminate yourself, then we'll go downtown, you can call a lawyer, we'll get you a grant of immunity from prosecution-and then we'll talk. Or you'll go to jail for contempt of court," Lucas said. His voice warmed up a couple of notches. "Look, we don't want to be jerks-if you haven't done anything criminal, I'm telling you, it'd be a lot easier just to have an informal chat right now."

"I really don't have anything to say," she protested. Her eyes skittered past Lucas to Del, who waited at the foot of the stoop, looking at a motorcycle.

"We'd like to ask anyway," Lucas said.

"Well… all right. Come in. But I might not answer," she said.

Her apartment was tidy but impersonal, almost like a motel room. A television was the most prominent piece of furniture, dominating one wall, facing a couch. The couch was covered with a thick green baize that might have been taken off a pool table. A sliding door led to a tiny balcony, with a view toward the Mississippi River valley.

"Is that your boyfriend's Sportster outside?" Del asked, friendly.

"It's mine," Clark said shortly.

"You ride? Far out," Del said. "And you smoke a lot of dope?" He stood in front of the balcony doors, looking out at the river. He was wearing a long-sleeved paisley shirt under a jean jacket, and dirty black jeans with a silver-studded black biker's belt.

"I don't…" Clark, dressed in her white nurse's uniform, sat rigidly on her couch. Her eyes, sunk deep in her pale face, were underlined by black smudges. She looked at Lucas. "You said…"

"Don't bullshit us," Del said, but in a friendly voice. "Please. I don't give a fuck about the dope, just don't bullshit us. You could get a goddamn contact high off these things." He flicked the curtains with his fingers.

"I don't…" she started, then shrugged and said, "… smoke a lot."

"Don't worry about it," Lucas said to her. He sat on the couch himself, half turned toward Clark. "You had a relationship with Michael Bekker."

"I told the first officer. It was almost nothing." Her hands fluttered at her chest.

"He's under investigation in the murder of his wife. We're not accusing him, but we're looking at him," Lucas said. "You seem like an intelligent person. What we need from you is… an assessment."

"Are you asking me…?"

"Could he kill his wife?"

She looked at him for a moment, then broke her gaze away. "Yes."

"Was he violent with you?"

There was a moment of silence, and then she nodded. "Yes."

"Tell me."

"He… used to hit me. With his hands. Open hands, but it hurt. And he choked me once. That time, I thought I might die. But he stopped… He'd go into rages. He seemed unstoppable, but he always… stopped."

"What about sexual practices? Anything unusual, bondage, like that?"

"No, no. The thing is, there almost wasn't any sex." She looked up at Lucas to see if he believed her.

"He's impotent?" Lucas asked.

"He wasn't impotent," she said. She glanced at Del, who nodded, encouraging her. "I mean, sometimes we did, and sometimes we didn't, but he didn't seem driven so much by sex as…"

"What?"

Clark's fear of them had slipped into the background and she seemed to be searching for the right phrase, interested despite herself. "He needs to control things. He'd make me do… you know, oral sex and so on. Not because it turned him on, I don't think, but because he liked to make me do it. It was the control he liked, not the sex."

"Did he ever use drugs while you were around?"

"No… well, he maybe smoked a little marijuana. You know, though, I think he might have used steroids. He has a very good body…" She dropped her eyelashes. "But he had very small testicles."

"Small?"

"Very small… almost like marbles," she said. "You know, he lifts weights, and weightlifters sometimes use steroids. Testicles can shrink with prolonged use of steroids, so I asked him, and he got angry… That was the time he choked me."

"Did you ever see him dance?" Lucas asked.

"Dance? His dance?" Clark pulled back. "You've been watching him…"

"So you've seen it," Lucas said. Del was frowning at him, confused.