"Oh, yeah," Friar said.
"And the chances of that carp-sucker Rand Waters letting him off are slim and none. He's a slave driver," green shirt said.
"I wouldn't work for him," said blue shirt. "He's a mean son of a bitch. I saw him pick up the back end of a Chevy Camaro one day, right down on River Street."
"Light car," gold shirt said.
"Let's see you pick one up," green shirt said. "Your balls would pop like birthday balloons."
Lucas jumped in. "So could somebody call this Waters guy, and find out if Scottwas here last Monday? That'd settle a lot."
"I can call him," the sheriff said.
"If he ain't home, he and his old lady'll probably be up at the Port," Friar said.
Gold shirt bought a round as they clustered around the bar. The sheriff got the bartenders phone book and made a series of calls from the kitchen. When he came out, he said to Lucas and Del, "We better run out to Martins house."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. He had last Monday off. He told Waters he had to go to the Cities to help the Olsons with Alie'e. He told him if he didn't get the day off, he'd quit. That's how serious he was."
Lucas looked at Friar. "So where's this guy live?" Lucas asked.
"Hard to explain, but we can show you," Friar said.
They left the bar in a convoy of two pickups and the two sheriff's department Explorers. They went into Burnt River, then out the other side, then off on a side road for a hundred yards. Martin Scott lived in a small log cabin, with a stick-built garage across a wide, snow-covered drive. The snow had been driven on, but there was no sign of truck at the house, and only a single lighted window. A pizza pan-sized satellite dish perched on the corner of the house, aimed at the satellite over Reno. A propane tank sat off on one side of the driveway, and next to the garage, a lean-to covered four or five cords of split wood. All of it was illuminated by a blue yard light.
"He ain't home," Friar said, looking at the dark house. They'd all gotten out of the truck and gathered next to one of the Explorers.
"How do you know?" Del asked. "Maybe he's asleep."
"He bums wood, and the wood-stove ain't going," Friar said. "That smoke there"he pointed at a thin stream of smoke burbling out of a four-inch-wide stack"that's from the propane burner. You only turn that on when you ain't home, to keep the wood stove going."
"Why don't you guys wait," Lucas said to the sheriff. "Del"
Lucas and Del took out their pistols and walked up toward the house. Lucas knocked, then pounded on the door; no sign of life. He opened the storm door and tried the door knob. Locked. The sheriff came up and said, "Let's look around back."
The house had a back porch, but the door apparently wasn't used much: It hadn't been shoveled since the last snow fall, and there were no tracks crossing it. Lucas stood up on the back porch and tried to peer through the window. "Want a flash?" the sheriff asked. He handed Lucas a flashlight. Lucas shined it in the window and saw a kitchen.
Gold shirt had wandered over to the garage and pulled the center-opening doors far enough apart to see inside. "Trucks gone," he said.
Lucas started down the far side of the house, Del and the sheriff trailing behind. One window showed a five-inch slit in the curtains. Lucas looked at Del and said, "If I boosted you up, could you look in there?"
"I guess."
Lucas made a stirrup out of his hands, Del stood in it, and Lucas boosted him up the side of the house. The sheriff handed him a flashlight, and Del looked through the window. A minute later he said, "All right," and Lucas let him down.
Del handed the flashlight to the sheriff and said to Lucas, "This is the guy."
"What'd you see?" The four shirts and two deputies and the sheriff pressed around.
"I'll let you look," Del said. "Could you pull one of those pickups up here?"
Gold shirt ran back to his pickup, gunned it out of the driveway and up to the house. Lucas took the flashlight from Del, and they all scrambled into the truck bed. Lucas shined the light though the window.
They were looking into what might have been a bedroom at one time; now it was a shrine. The walls were covered with the thousand faces of Alie'e Maison, all carefully cut out, all pasted flat to the wall, thousands of green eyes looking out at them from the wall opposite. In the center of the room sat a single lonely wooden chair, where a man might sit to look into the eyes.
The sheriff took it in, muttered something under his breath, then turned to a deputy. "Go yank Swede out of bed and get a warrant. Tell him I need it right now. Tell him I need it ten minutes ago, because I'm already in the house."
And Lucas added, "Get this guy's tag number and the make on his truck and call me. Quick as you can."
"Nineteen ninety-seven Dodge ram, metallic black in color, black-pipe running boards, impact bars on the front, and red script on the door that says, 'Martin Scott,' " gold shirt said.
As they walked around the front of the house, Lucas called Rose Marie. "'We ain't got him, but we know who he is," he said. "A deputy up here's gonna call Dispatch, and we need to get a truck description and tag out on the streets."
The sheriff opened the house by the simple expedient of punching out the window on the front door, reaching inside, and unlocking it. He told the four shirts to hang around, but wouldn't let them inside.
The sheriff, Lucas, Del, and one other deputy went into the house. The house smelled bad from the first step, "like he's been skinning some mink in here," the sheriff said. They went back to the shrine and looked in. From the outside, they could see only the wall opposite; from the inside, they could see that all four walls, plus the ceiling, had been done in Alie'e's face.
The sheriff shook his head. "This gives me the creeps," he said. "If he'd showed me this on a nice summer day with Alie'e running around alive, it'd give me the creeps."
"It's a little too much," Lucas agreed.
Green shirt was up on the porch. "Us guys just want to come in and take a quick look, or go back to McLeod's. It's too goddamn cold out here to be hanging around."
The sheriff looked at Lucas, who shrugged. "I don't care maybe they'll see something we don't."
So the sheriff let them come in as Del and Lucas probed Scott's bedroom and kitchen; they found a box of twelve-gauge shotgun shellsskeet shotin a bedroom closet, but no shotgun; a scoped. 300 Winchester Magnum; and a Ruger. 22 semiauto carbine.
"So maybe he's got a shotgun with him, too," Lucas said.
"I'll call it in," Del said.
A small living room had black velvet curtains to block the light; a love seat was pushed against one wall; opposite the couch was a projection TV, a Sony, with a screen five feet wide; and next to the TV, a rack of tuning and sound equipment. A Nintendo console sat on the floor next to the couch, with a dozen game boxesand next to that, a Dreamcast console with even more games. Five small speakers were spotted around the room, with a subwoofer the size of a trash can next to the TV.
"Nine hundred and ninety-nine channels of shit on the TV to choose from," Del said, sounding like he might be quoting someone.
In the kitchen, they found nothing at all. The last of the shirts had taken a look at the shrine, and gold shirt came out in the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, took out a beer, and screwed off the top.
"What the hell are you doing?" the sheriff asked.
"He ain't gonna need it," gold shirt said. "Gonna go to waste."
"Gimme one of those," Friar said. Gold shirt opened the refrigerator, handed him a beer. As he unscrewed the cap, Friar said, "The thing about Martin is, he always thought he'd be famous. That might beall he thought about. He thought he could do it by starting small here in Burnt River, and if he worked hard and kept his nose clean, Coke would take care of him. He's been working his ass off, driving that goddamned truck for ten years, and I'd have to say he ain't made much progress up the corporate ladder." He took a pull on the bottle, then added, "Such as the corporate ladder is around here."