Across the Mississippi and then south. Nice neighborhood… Damn St. Paul addresses, the numbers had nothing to do with the streets. Started at 1 and went however high they needed to go…

Davenport's house was not particularly impressive, he thought when he found it, except for the location. One-story rambler, stone and white siding, big front yard. Nice house, but not terrific. Stephanie wouldn't have given it a second look. Lights in the windows.

He rang the doorbell, and a moment later Davenport was there.

"Officer Davenport," Bekker said, nodding, pleased to see Lucas. He had his hands in the pockets of his hip-length leather coat. "You said you would see that I'm not harassed. Why am I followed everywhere?"

Davenport, perplexed, stepped out on the porch. His face was like a chunk of wood, and Bekker stepped back. "What?"

"Why am I being followed? I know they're out there," Bekker said, flipping a hand at the street. "This is not paranoia. I've seen your officers watching me. Young men in college clothes and police shoes…"

Davenport's face suddenly tightened, seized by some sort of rictus, Bekker thought. He stepped close and gripped Bekker's coat at the lapels. He lifted and Bekker went up on his toes.

"Put me down…" Bekker said. He was strong, but Davenport held him awkwardly close and his arms were bent. He tried to push Davenport away, but the cop held him, shaking, apparently gripped by rage.

"You never come to my house," Davenport rasped, his eyes wide and crazy. "You hear that, motherfucker? The last guy that came to my house, I killed. You come to my house, I'll kill your ass just like I did him."

"I'm, I'm sorry," Bekker stuttered. Davenport was not the cool, rational cop who had walked through Stephanie's bedroom. His eyes were straining open, his head cocked forward on a tense neck, his hands hard as stones.

Davenport shoved Bekker back, releasing him. "Go. Get the fuck out of here."

Bekker staggered. Down the sidewalk, ten feet from the porch, he said, "I just wanted the surveillance pulled, I don't want to be hectored…"

"Call the chief," Lucas said. His voice was cold, brutal. "Just stay the fuck away from my house."

Davenport stepped back inside and shut the door. Bekker stood on the walk for a moment, looking at the door, not quite believing. Davenport had been friendly, he'd understood some things…

Bekker was in his car when his own anger caught him.

Treated like a Russian peasant. Kicked down the stairs. Thrown off. He pounded his palms on the steering wheel. Saw himself striking out, the edge of his hand smashing under Davenport's nose, blood rolling down his dark, bleak face; saw himself kicking, going for the balls…

"Fuckin' treat me like that, fuckin' treat me like a… a… Fuckin' treat me, you can't, you better think about it… Fuckin' treat me…"

As Bekker drove away from Davenport's house, the net still in place, a teenage boy strolled up to Kelsey Romm's car and peeked inside. Was she fuckin' somebody? What was she…

He'd been leaning on a trashcan outside the mall entrance, waiting for something to happen, somebody to show up, when he saw something happen. He didn't know what. There was this guy… He had gotten a videocassette for his birthday, a movie, Darkman, his favorite flick. And this guy looked like Darkman, no bandages, but the hat was right… And something happened.

He saw the guy duck inside the car. He was in it for a moment or two; then he got out, went to another car and drove away. It never occurred to the kid to look at the license plate. And he was not the kind of kid who knew his cars. He was just a kid who hung out and watched Darkman in the afternoons, after school…

The car with the woman didn't move. When the other car, the Darkman car, was out of sight, the kid considered for a moment, then ambled across the sidewalk, down the long rows of cars. What was she? Was she, like, a hooker, giving blow jobs in the backseat? That'd be something.

He got close, he peeked…

"Aw, Jesus… Aw, Jesus…" The kid ran toward the mall, his arms milling. Halfway there, he began screaming, "Help…"

Lucas, still hot from Bekker's visit, was working on Druid's Pursuit when the watch commander called.

A thunderstorm was rolling across Minneapolis when Lucas left his house, lightning crackling through the clouds, storm-front winds lashing the elm branches overhead. He went north, up Highway 280, the lights of downtown Minneapolis to the west, barely visible through the advancing rain. The storm caught him just before he turned east, a few drops splatting off the windshield, and then a torrent, a waterfall, hailstones pecking on the roof, small white beads of ice bouncing off the road in his headlights. He turned east on I-694 and the rain slackened, then quit altogether as he outran the storm front.

From the highway, the mall was screened by an intervening block of buildings, but he could see red emergency lights flashing off window glass. The White Bear Avenue exit was jammed. He put the Porsche on the shoulder and worked his way to the front. A Minnesota highway patrolman ran toward him, and Lucas hung his badge case out the window.

"Davenport," the patrolman said, leaning in the window. "Stay behind me and I'll make a hole in this line."

The patrolman jogged along the shoulder, leading the Porsche to a roadblock. The street was a nightmare tangle of shoppers trying to get out of the mall, gawkers trying to drive past the murder scene, and the normal traffic on and off the interstate. The patrolmen had given up trying to control the crush and had settled for getting as many people out of the mall as possible. At the roadblock, the patrolman leading Lucas said something to the others, and they stopped traffic, directed a car out of the way and let Lucas slip through to the parking lot.

"Thanks," Lucas yelled as he went through. "I came through that storm-it's a bad one, with hail. If you got rain gear…"

The patrolman nodded and waved him on.

Television vans and reporters' cars were lined up on the perimeter of the lot, a hundred yards from a battered brown Chevy. All four doors on the car were open and emergency lights bathed it in a brilliant showroom illumination. Lucas left his Porsche in a pod of squad cars and walked toward the Chevy.

"Davenport, over here." A cop in a short blue jacket, who'd been talking to another cop in a sweater, called to him, and Lucas walked over.

"John Barber, Maplewood," said the cop in the jacket. He had pale blue eyes and a long lantern jaw. "And this is Howie Berkson… Howie, go on over and tell that TV bunch it'll be another twenty minutes, okay?"

As Berkson walked away, Barber said, "C'mon."

"Any question whether it's the same guy?" Lucas asked.

Barber shrugged. "I guess not. One of your people is running around out here… Shearson? He says the technique is the same. Wait'll you see her face."

Lucas went and looked, and turned away, and they started a circle around the car. "Looks like him," he said sourly. "A copycat couldn't get up that much enthusiasm for it…"

"That's what Shearson said…"

"Where is he, by the way?" Lucas asked, looking around the lot.

Barber grinned. "He said it looked like we had it under control. I heard he's looking at shirts over in the mall."

"Asshole," Lucas said.

"That's the feeling we got. By the way, we found a kid who saw the guy."

"What?" Lucas stopped short. "Saw him?"

"Don't get your hopes up," Barber said. "He was a hundred yards away and wasn't paying too much attention. Saw the guy's car, too, but doesn't have any idea about make or model or even color… Didn't get anything. Says the killer looked like a guy from some comic-book movie."