"Need a workout?"

"Like what?"

"No sex until you pin me for a three-count?"

"Aw, c'mon…"

"You c'mon, wimpy…"

They wrestled, and after a time, but not too long, she was pinned.

Beauty arrived home at about the same time. The night's work had been both frightening and exhilarating. A disappointment in some ways, true, but then again: he could go back. He still had Sybil to do. As Lucas and Cassie made love, Bekker ate two more MDMAs and danced to Carmina Burana, bouncing around the Oriental carpet until he began to bleed…

Lucas heard the first newspaper hit the front porch. That'd be the Pioneer Press. The StarTribune should be ten minutes later. He dozed, half listening, drifting from dream to linear thought and back to dream, dream editing reality, Jennifer and the baby, Cassie, other faces, other times. He inserted the thwap of the StarTribune; but the dream logic wouldn't buy it, and he woke up, yawned and stumbled out to get the paper. At five-thirty it was still dark, but he could see the heavy gray clouds groaning overhead and smell the rain heavy in the air.

Not responsible… Lucas Smith.

He glanced at the comics and went back to bed, falling facedown across the sheets. Cassie's perfume lingered on them, although she'd insisted on going back to her apartment.

"We're getting close on the play. I shouldn't fool around late and get up late. I have to work," she'd said as she dressed.

The perfume was comforting, a sign of society. He slept on her side, dreaming again, until the telephone rang. Startled, he thought, Loverboy, and rose through his dreams and snatched at the telephone, almost knocking the lamp off the bedstand.

"Davenport."

"Lucas, this is Del…"

"Yeah, what's happening?" He sat up, put his feet on the floor. Cold.

"I'm, uh, over at Cheryl's. We were talking last night, and she told me that Bekker has been creeping around her ward. He's been seeing a woman patient almost every day-and the thing is, this woman can't communicate."

"Not at all?"

"Not a thing. Her mind's still okay, but she's got Lou Gehrig's disease and she's, like, totally paralyzed. Cheryl says she's got maybe a week or two to live, no more. Cheryl can't figure Bekker-he's not exactly the social type. Anyway, I thought it might be something."

"Hmph. I got a guy over there. I'll give him a call," Lucas said. "Are you on Druze today?"

"Yeah, I'm about to go over."

"I may see you."

Lucas hung up, yawned, glanced at the clock. After ten, already: he'd slept more than four hours after looking at the paper. He dropped back on the pillow, but his mind was working.

He got up, called Merriam, was told the doctor wasn't in yet, left a message and went off to shave. Merriam called back just as he was about to leave the house.

"There's a woman there I'd like you to check," he said. "Her name is Sybil…"

Lucas stopped at Anderson's office first.

"Where's Druze?"

"Still bagged out at his apartment."

At his own office, the answering machine showed two messages. Loverboy? He punched the message button as he took off his jacket.

"Lucas, this is Sergeant Barlow. Stop and see me when you come in, please." God damn it, he had no time for this. If he could slip out without encountering Barlow… The machine clicked and started again.

"Lieutenant Davenport, this is Larry Merriam. You better come over here right away. I'll leave a note at the desk to send you up. Pediatric Oncology. I'll be out in the ward. Talk to the duty nurse and she'll chase me down."

Merriam sounded worried, Lucas decided. He put his jacket back on and was locking the office door when Barlow came down the steps at the end of the hall and saw him.

"Hey, Lieutenant Davenport, I need to talk to you," he called.

"Could I stop up later? I'm kind of on the run…"

Barlow kept coming. "Look, we gotta get this done," he said, his mustache bristling.

Lucas shook him off: "I'm up to my ass. I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

"God damn it, Davenport, this is serious shit." Barlow moved so that he was between Lucas and the door.

"I'll talk to you," Lucas said, irritated, letting it show. They stared at each other for a second; then Lucas stepped around him. "But I can't now. Talk to Daniel if you don't believe me."

Barlow hadn't been good on the street. He was a control freak and didn't deal well with ambiguities-and the street was one large ambiguity. He'd done fine with Internal Affairs, though.

IA usually went to work on a cop only if there was a blatantly public foul-up, and that was okay with most of the cops in the department, outside of a few hothead brother-cop freaks. Better IA, the feeling went, than some outside board full of blacks and Indians and who knows what, which seemed to be the alternative.

The department had barely managed to fight off a city council proposal that would have formed a review board with real teeth. The study commission on that-the commission Stephanie Bekker had served on-had gone a bit too far, though, had given the impression that it wanted to get on the cops a little too much. That hadn't gone down well with voters scared by crime…

So a gross screw-up in public would get you an IA investigation. A cop could find himself a target also if he got too deep into drugs, or started stealing too much. Screwing off and getting your partner hurt, that would do it too.

But IA didn't worry much if a pimp got slapped around in a fistfight. Especially not if he'd pulled a knife. Half of the cops on the force would've shot him and let it go at that, and they would have been cleared by the board. And if the fight had taken place during an arrest on a warrant charging a violent crime, and if the victim of that crime was scarred for life and still around to testify, to be looked at…

Where was Barlow coming from? Lucas shook his head. It didn't compute. Anderson was going in the door and Lucas was going out, when Lucas hooked him by the arm.

"You think… the guys in the department would like to see me fall? Get taken off by IA?" Lucas asked.

"Are you nuts?" Anderson asked. "What's happening with IA?"

"They're on me for the fight with that kid, the pimp. I can't figure out where it's coming from."

"I'll ask around," Anderson said. "But when the guys decide somebody ought to fall, it's no big secret. You know that. And nobody's talking about you."

"So where's it coming from?" Lucas asked.

Barlow stayed in the back of Lucas' mind all the way to the university campus. He dumped the car in a no-parking zone outside the hospital, stuck a police ID card in the window and went inside. Pediatric Oncology was on the sixth floor. A nurse took him down through a warren of small rooms, past a larger room with kids in terry-cloth robes, sitting in wheelchairs and watching television, into another set of hospital rooms. They found Merriam sitting on a bed, talking to a young girl.

"Ah, Lieutenant Davenport," he said. He looked at the girl in the bed. "Lisa, this is Lieutenant Davenport. He's a police officer with the Minneapolis Police Department."

"What's he doing here?" she asked, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. The girl was completely bald and had a very pale face and unnaturally rosy lips. The chemotherapy aside, Lucas thought, touched with a cold finger of fear, she looked a lot like his daughter would in ten years.

"He's a friend of mine, stopping to chat," Merriam said. "I've got to go for a while, but I'll be back before they start setting up the procedure."

"Okay," she said.

Outside, in the hall, Lucas said, "I couldn't do this." And, "Do you have kids?"

"Four," Merriam said. "I don't think about it."