"My God." He still thought it was mildly funny.

"Nothing anybody can do about it. She's in therapy, but it doesn't help," Weather said. "A friend told me that she won't have sex with Shelly because it's dirty. I mean, not psychologically dirty, but you know-dirty. Physically dirty."

"So Carr solves his problem by having it off with a woman in his Pentecostal group."

"Having it off is such a romantic way to put it; British, isn't it?" she teased.

"You don't act like a doctor," Lucas said.

"You mean because I gossip and flirt?"

"Mmmm."

"You have to live here a while," she said with a hint of tension in her voice. She looked around the room, at the people talking over the red votive candles. "There's nothing to do but work. Nothing."

"Then why stay?"

"I have to," she said. "My dad came here from Finland, and spent his life working in the woods, in the timber. And sailing on the lakes. Never had any money. But I maxed out in everything at school."

"You went to the high school here in Grant?"

"Yup. Anyway, I was trying to save money to go to college, but it looked tough. Then some of the teachers got together and chipped in, and this old fart county commissioner who I didn't know from Adam called down to Madison and pulled some strings and got me a full-load scholarship. And they kept the money coming all the way through medical school. I paid it all back. I even set up a little scholarship fund at the high school while I was working in Minneapolis, but that's not what everybody wanted."

"They wanted you back here," Lucas said.

"Yes." She nodded. She picked up her empty wineglass and turned it in her hands. "Everything around here is timber and tourism, with a little farming. The roads are not much good and there's a lot of drinking. The timber accidents are terrible-you ought to see somebody caught by a log when it's rolling down to a sawmill. And with tractor accidents and people run over with boat propellers… They had an old guy here who could do enough general surgery to get you on a helicopter to Duluth or down to the Cities, and as long as he was here I didn't feel like I had to come back."

"Then he retired."

"Kicked off," Weather said. "Heart attack. He was sixty-three. He ate six pancakes with butter and bacon every morning, cream in his coffee, cheeseburger for lunch, steak for dinner, drank a pint of Johnnie Walker every night and smoked like a chimney. It was amazing he made it as long as he did."

"They couldn't get anybody else?"

She laughed, not a pleasant laugh, looked out the window at the snow: "Are you kidding? Look outside. It's twenty-five below zero and still going down and the movie theater is closed in the winter."

"So what do you do for entertainment?"

"That's a little personal," she said, grinning, reaching across the table to touch the back of his hand, "for this stage of our relationship."

"What?"

The dinner left Lucas vaguely mystified but not unhappy. They said good-bye in the restaurant parking lot, awkwardly. He didn't want to leave. The talk ran on in the snow, the air so cold that it felt like after-shave. Finally they stepped apart and Weather got in her Jeep.

"See you," she said.

"Yeah." Definitely.

Lucas watched her go, pulled his hat on, and drove the six blocks to the church. Carr was waiting in the vestibule with two women, the three of them chatting brightly, nodding. One of the women was as large as Lucas and blond, and wore a red knitted hat with snowflakes and reindeer on it. Her coat carried a button that said Free the Animals. The other woman was small and dark, with gray streaks in her hair, lines at the corners of her eyes. Carr called the dark one Jeanine as Lucas came up.

"This is Lucas Davenport…" Carr was saying.

"Lieutenant Davenport," Jeanine said. She had soft, warm hands and a strong grip. "And our friend Mary…"

Mary fawned and Lucas retreated a couple of steps, said to Carr, "We better go."

"Yeah, sure," Carr said reluctantly. "Ladies, we gotta work."

They walked out together and Lucas asked Carr, "Did you talk to Bergen?"

"Not myself-Helen Arris got him. I had to go back out to the house. They're taking the place apart."

"How about the Harper warrant?"

"Got it." Carr patted his chest and then yawned. "It's getting to be a long day."

"How about the Harper place? What can we do?"

"We're allowed to go into the kid's room and the other principal rooms of the house, not including any office or Harper's own bedroom if that's separate from the kid's. We can look at anything we believe is the kid's, or that Harper says is the kid's."

"I'd like to poke around."

"So would I, but the judge didn't want to hear about it," Carr said. "He was gonna confine us to the boy's room, but I got him to include his other personal effects-we can look inside closets and cupboards and so on, in the main rooms. Of course, if we see anything that's clearly illegal…"

"Yeah. By the way, Gene Climpt…"

"… invited himself along, which is fine with me. Gene's a tough old bird. And Lacey's coming; said he didn't want to miss it."

They'd walked around the church and started down the carefully shoveled sidewalk to the rectory.

"How many accidents has Bergen had? Car accidents?" Lucas asked.

Carr looked at him, frowning, and said, "Why?"

"I heard you fixed a couple of drunk-driving tickets for him," Lucas said. "I just wondered if he ever hit anything."

"Where'd you hear…"

"Rumors, Shelly. Has he ever hit anything?"

They'd stopped on the sidewalk and Carr stared at him for a moment and said, finally, "I got no leverage with you. You don't need the job."

"So…"

Carr started down the walk again. "He was in a one-car accident three years ago, hit a pylon at the end of a bridge, totaled out the car. He was drunk. He got caught two other times, drunk. One was pretty marginal. The other time he was on his butt."

"Gotta be careful about your relationship with him," Lucas said. "People are talking about this. The driving problems."

"Who?"

"Just people," Lucas said.

Carr sighed. "Darn it, Lucas."

"Bergen lied to me yesterday," Lucas said. "He told me he was a good driver… a small lie but it kind of throws some doubt on the rest of what he said."

"I don't understand it," Carr said. "I know in my soul that he's innocent. I just can't understand what he's hiding. If he's hiding anything. Maybe we just don't understand the sequence."

They were at the rectory door. Carr pushed the doorbell and they fell silent, hands in their pockets, breathing long gouts of steam out into the night air. After a moment Carr frowned, pushed the doorbell again. They could hear the chimes inside.

"I know he's here," Carr said. He stepped back from the porch, looked at the lighted windows, then pushed the doorbell a third time. There was a noise from inside, a thump, and Carr stood on his tiptoes to peer through the small window set in the door.

"Oh, no," he groaned. He pulled open the storm door and pushed through the inner door, Lucas trailing behind. The priest stood in the hallway, leaning on one wall, looking at them. He was wearing a white t-shirt, pulled out of his black pants, and gray wool socks. His hair stood almost straight up, as though he'd been electrocuted. He was holding a glass and the room smelled of bourbon.

"You idiot," Carr said quietly. He walked across the room and took the glass from the priest, who let it go, his hand slack. Carr turned back toward Lucas as though looking for a place to throw it.

"You know what they're saying," Bergen said at Carr's back. "They're saying I did it."

"Jesus, we've been trying…" Lucas started.