"How do you know he'll kill them?" Roux asked.

"I know. He's had them a long time. The pressure must be terrific. With this chase, he'll have cracked like a big fuckin' egg. And he's smart. He'll know we've got the van, and he'll know that we'll get the computer store, that we'll get his prints, that well identify him as John Mail. He'll figure all that out-or he already has." Lucas nodded toward the hospital. "A cop has a shotgun, and Mail took him on with a club. He's freaking out."

Roux nodded. "All right. We can have the photo out in twenty minutes. He'll make all the morning news shows."

"Ask the TV guys to show the pictures at the beginning of the broadcasts, and to tell everybody to get their friends and come and watch, and show them again a couple of minutes later. As many times as they can. Flatter 'em: tell 'em if TV can't find the guy, Andi Manette's gonna die, and the kids, too. That'll keep them pushing the picture out there."

"How long have we got?"

"No time," Lucas said. "No time at all. If we don't find Manette in the next couple of hours, they're gone."

"Unless he's still in the perimeter," Lester said. "They think he might be, the guys up there."

"Yeah. We've gotta keep the perimeter tight. I'm gonna go over there, see if I can figure the odds that he's inside."

"Is there anything else?" Roux asked. "Any goddamn thing?"

Lucas hesitated, then said, "Two things. The first one is, I'd be willing to bet that wherever he's got them, it's within a few miles of that computer shop. That's where the phone calls were coming from, when we were trying to pinpoint the cellular phone. I think we oughta get everybody with a gun-highway patrol, local cops, everybody-and send them down there. We oughta filter every goddamn road. We don't have to stop everybody, but we ought to slow everything down, look in every backseat, see if we can spot somebody trying to elude the blockade."

"We can do that," Roux said.

Lucas looked at Lester, grinned slightly, and said, "Frank, could you call in? Could you get the picture thing going?"

Lester looked from Lucas to Roux and back, and then said, "What? I don't want to hear this?"

Lucas said, "You really don't."

Lester nodded. "All right," he said. "Back in a minute," and he went inside.

"What?" Roux asked when Lester was gone.

"I might call you later in the morning and suggest that you… I don't know, what?" He looked around, and then said, "… that you come over here and visit White. Spontaneously, without telling anybody exactly where you're going. You won't have to be out of touch long. Maybe half an hour."

She narrowed her eyes. "What're you going to do?"

"Are you willing to perjure yourself and say you didn't know?" Lucas asked. "Because you might want to say that."

Roux's vision seemed to turn inward, although she was gazing at Lucas's face. Then she said, "If it's that way…"

"It's that way, if you want to get them back-and keep your job."

"I'd do any fucking thing to get them back," she said. "But I hope you don't call."

"So do I," Lucas said. "If I do call, it'll mean that everything's gone in the toilet."

Mail picked out a house with lights on in the back. From the alley, he could see an older woman working in what must be the kitchen. He crossed a chain-link fence into the yard, wary of dogs, saw nothing. As he passed the garage, he stopped to look in the window. There was a car inside, a Chevy, he thought, not new, but not too old, either. That would work.

He went on to the house, to the back door, leaned the shotgun against the stoop, took out the pistol, looked around for other eyes, other windows, and knocked on the door.

The woman, curious, came to look. She was sixty or so, he thought, her gray hair pulled back in a bun, her thin face just touched with makeup. She was wearing a jacket over a silky shirt. A saleswoman, maybe, or a secretary. She saw the police hat and the uniform jacket and opened the inner door, pushed out the storm door, and said, "Yes?"

Mail grabbed the handle on the storm door, jerked it open, and before she could make another sound, shoved her as hard as he could, his open hand hitting her in the middle of the chest. She went down, and he was inside, and she said, "What?" She tried to crawl away, slowly, and he straddled her and gripped the back of her neck and asked, "Where are your car keys?"

"Don't hurt me," she whimpered. Mail could hear a television working in the other room and turned his head to look at it. Was somebody else out there?

"Where're the fuckin' car keys?" he asked, keeping his voice down.

"My purse, my purse." She tried to crawl out from under him, her thin hands working on the vinyl floor, and he tightened his grip on her neck.

"Where's your purse?"

"There. On the kitchen table."

He turned his head, saw the purse. "Good."

He stood up to get a better swing, and hammered her on the side of the head with the butt of the shotgun. She went down, hard, groaned, kicked a couple of times, and was still. Mail looked at her for a moment, then made a quick check of the small house, A weatherman with what looked like false teeth was pointing at a satellite loop of the Twin Cities area: "… a lake advisory with these winds, which could kick up into the thirty-mile-per-hour category by this afternoon…"

The bedroom had only one bed, a double, already made up.

A black-and-white photograph of a man in a Korean War Army uniform sat on the nightstand, under a crucifix. Nobody else to worry about.

He started back to the kitchen, and was stopped by his own image peering out of the television.

A woman was saying, "… John Mail, a former inmate at the state hospital. If you know this man, if you have seen him, contact the Minneapolis police at the number on your screen."

Mail was stunned. They knew him. Everything was gone. Everything. But they didn't know where he was. And they didn't say anything about the LaDoux name, they didn't say anything about finding Andi and the kid. And the TV would have that. So he was okay, for a while, anyway. But he had to get out, and get out now.

That fuckin' Davenport. Davenport was the one who'd done this. And it made him angry. That fuckin' Davenport, he wasn't fair. He had too much help.

The woman hadn't moved, and he dumped her purse on the kitchen table: car keys and a billfold. He opened the billfold, found twelve dollars.

"Shit."

He went back to the door, pausing to kick the woman in the side: twelve fuckin' dollars. You can't do anything with twelve fuckin' dollars. Her body moved sideways under the blow, leaving a trail of blood on the vinyl; she was bleeding from her ear.

Mail went on, through the door, picked up the shotgun at the stoop, and walked back to the garage. The side door was locked, and none of the keys fit it. He walked around to the alley side, tried the overhead door. That wouldn't budge, either. He walked back to the side door, used an elbow to put pressure on a window pane in the door, and pushed it in. Then he reached through, unlocked the door, and went inside.

A doorbell button was fixed to a block of wood beside the door. Mail pushed it, and the overhead door started up. He climbed in the car, started it, checked the gas. Damnit. Empty, or close enough. He'd have to risk a stop, or find another car. But there was enough to get him out of the neighborhood, anyway.

After Mail had gone, a neighbor woman looked out the back of her house and said, "That's odd."

"What?" Her husband was eating toast while he read the Wizard of Id in the comics.

"Mary left her garage door up."

"Getting old," her husband said. "I'll get it on the way to work."

"Don't forget," the woman said.

"How can I?" he asked, irritated. "I'm right across the alley."