"He's a saint. Oh, boy."
"Oh boy" was rough language from Elle. "What?"
"He reallyis a saint. He's an evangelical Christian, he believes the rapture is coming next month or next year or whatever, because he can see it coming. Rolling in, like a wave. He might be schizophrenic; he is definitely an ecstatic. We had a novice here, from out that way, the Red River. She went home to visit her folks. He was preaching at a bowling alley. She went to see him with some of her girlfriendssort of a lark. She came back and quit the convent and quit the church and began wandering around the Red River preaching Christ's gospel. I try to stay in touch with her: She told me that Olson sometimes gets the stigmata." Her voice hushed with the word "stigmata."
"You gotta be sh kidding me."
"No. I'm not."
As a Catholic, Lucas was severely lapsed, but he nevertheless felt a chill crawl down his spine at the idea of the stigmata. Bleeding from Christ's wounds in the hands, the feet, the side, even from the crown of thorns. "So he thinks he's God?"
"Oh, no. Absolutely not," Elle said. "He sees himself as a messenger, preparing the way."
"John the Baptist, then," Lucas said.
"I don't think he'd put it that way. You're being cop-sarcastic, and he's a very serious man."
"He was in the office today. He was intense."
"Where was he when the murder was committed?" Elle asked.
"In Fargo. Out there somewhere. That's his story. But you think he could have done it?"
"I don't know. Sainthood is generally a mystery, but it involves very deep emotional streams, and often something very dark. He may have very deep feelings about his sister. And because of his emotional condition, he might be very demonstrative."
"He was, with the chief."
They talked for a few more minutes, Lucas filling in the details of the crime. Elle would think about them, and call if anything occurred to her. They said goodbye, and Lucas started back to the study. Halfway there, he turned, went back to the phone, and called the nunnery again. The same young depressive nun answered, and he waited the same two minutes for Elle to pick up.
"Something else?"
"You know what you said to me when you first came to the phone?"
"I don't know. I was teasing you."
"You asked something like, 'What's going on with the Alie'e Maison murder?' "
"Yes?" She was puzzled.
"Nobody ever asks about the other woman. Lansing. She's like a piece of Kleenex that got used."
"Mmm. To be honest, Ihaven't thought of her," Elle confessed.
"You know, when you were hurt you were hurt because somebody was trying to distractme. And it worked for a while. With everybody saying Alie'e, Alie'e I hope we're not looking in the wrong direction."
"As long as we keep that in mind," Elle said. After a second of silence, she added, "I'll think about her. Pray for her."
Late that night, as he sat on the bed taking off his socks, Lucas remembered Trick BentoinTrick the gambler, the man who wasn't dead, who hadn't been killed by a brand-new lifer out at Stillwater. Lucas had forgotten to call the county attorney, and so, apparently, had Del; they'd talked to each other a dozen times during the day, and neither had mentioned it again.
Lucas muttered a short obscenity to himself. Folks were gonna be pissed about the delay. Even though itwas kinda funny.
But he wasn't thinking about Trick when he drifted off to sleep. He was thinking about what he should wear to lunch tomorrow. Lunch with Catrin.
Even later that night, not far from Lucas, but across the Mississippi in Minneapolis, Jael Corbeau heard a scratching 'round her door. Her eyes popped open, and she sat up. She was exhausted, but she hadn't been able to sleep. She'd taken a pill, but her body fought it. Alie'e: Amnon said she was infatuated, that Alie'e was nothing more than a willing reflection of Jael's own need for a special kind of pleasurefor a languid, wicked, fashionable lover. A beautiful lover. And Jael feared it was true, that she was shallow, dissolute. Trendy.
The scratching on the door popped her out of the depressive cycle. She recognized the sound as soon as she heard it. Somebody was trying to get in.
Jael lived in a small house on the south side of the loop, not far from the Metrodome. Her bedroom was on the second floor; the first was occupied by her workshopa throwing room, a glazing room, a kiln room with two big electric Skutts, and a wedging room where she stored clay and did the preliminary workups. The workups that'd built her arms and shoulders: The cops had asked her about that. One had taken her hand, told her to squeeze. She had, and he'd pretended to wince. Fucking with her. Trying to intimidate her. It hadn't worked.
She wasn't intimidated by the cops, and she wasn't intimidated by the scratching at the door. During the worst of the crack years, the scratching would come every week or two. But crack was fading, burning out: She hadn't had an attempt in a year or more.
Still.
She rolled out, knelt as if in prayer, and felt under the edge of the bed. Her fingers picked it up immediately: the cold steel of the barrel. She pulled it out, an old pump Winchester 12-gauge. Moving swiftly through the dark, she went into the bathroom to the barred, frosted-glass window over the tub. The window was double-hung, and the slides were waxed. She unlocked it, slipped it up.
Down below, a heavyset man in black crouched on the stoop, prying amateurishly at the lock. Bushes flanked the stoop, so he would be invisible from the street, unless somebody looked straight up the walk.
She spoke softly but clearly: "Hey, you, down there."
The figure froze, then half-turned. She could see a crescent of his face in the ambient light from the street, like a sliver of the moon seen through a thin cloud, pale, obscure.
"I have a shotgun." She pumped it, the old steel action cycling with the precisechick-chick sound effect heard in a thousand movies. "It's a twelve-gauge. I'm pointing it at your head."
The crescent of face disappeared. The man turned, quick as a thought, and bolted from the porch, down through the bushes, around the corner, and down the street, hands and heavy legs pumping frantically.
Watching him go, Jael allowed herself the first smile she'd enjoyed in twenty-four hours. But as she slid the window back down and locked it, a vagrant thought crossed her mind.
He hadn't looked like a crackhead. Not at all.
He looked like some kind of redneck.
Chapter 11
Sunday. The second day of the Maison case.
Lucas retrieved thePioneer Press from his front porch, looked at the large dark headline: "Alie'e Maison Murdered." And beneath that, the subhead "Strangled in Minneapolis."
The headline, he thought, was smaller than the moonwalk, and possibly even smaller than reproductions he'd seen of the Pearl Harbor news flash.
But not much.
And he thought: Trick.
County Attorney Randall Towson was not exactly a friend, but he was a decent guy. He took the phone call at his breakfast table and said, "Tell me we got everything we need."
"What?"
"On the Alie'e Maison killerwho you're calling to tell me you caught."
"I have something much better. Honest to God." Lucas tried to inject sincerity into his voice. "I've found a chance to serve justice."
The attorney betrayed a cautious curiosity. "You're bullshitting me. Sorry, darlin'."
"No, no, I've found an innocent guy in the prison system. You can get him out. And then you can take the credit, and the grateful taxpayers will undoubtedly return you to office for thewhat, fifth time?"
"Sixth," Towson said. "What the fuck sorry darlin'I'm eating breakfast with my granddaughter. What are you talking about?"
"Del Capslock was at the Alie'e party the other night. He wasn't there at the time of the murder, but he did meet an old friend of ours."
"Who?" Suspicious now.
"Trick Bentoin." Silence. Silence for so long that Lucas added, "Trick had gone to Panama to play gin rummy."