"Huh." Lucas looked up toward the tower. Two men were there, talking. "Who are those guys?"
"Bomb squad. We were all over the place before somebody thought it might be a bomb, so we don't think it's dangerous to get near. A time bomb doesn't make sense, because he didn't know when we'd find it."
"Let's take a look," Lucas said.
The bottom of the tower was enclosed by the hurricane fence, with a truck-sized gate on one end. "Cut the chain on the gate and drove right in," Carpenter said. They were at the crest of the hill, and below them a steady stream of cars was leaving the neighborhood.
"But nobody saw it."
"We don't know-we were talking about a door-to-door, but then the bomb idea came up, and we never got to it."
"Maybe later," Lucas said.
The two bomb squad cops walked over and Lucas recognized one of them. He said, "How are you? You were on that case out in Lake Elmo." The guy said, "Yeah, Bill Path, and this is Jesus Martinez." He threw a thumb at his partner, and Lucas said, "What've we got?"
"Maybe nothing," Path said, looking back at the tower. Lucas could see the black oil drum through the hurricane fence. It sat directly under the bulb of the four-legged water tower. "But we don't want to try to move it. We're gonna pull the lid from a distance and see what happens."
"We've drained the tower," Carpenter said. He wiped his sweating face on his sleeve again. "Just in case."
"Can I?" Lucas said, nodding at the oil barrel.
"Sure," said Path. "Just don't kick it."
The barrel sat in the shade of the tower, and Lucas walked over to look at it, and then around it: a standard oil barrel, with a little rust, and a lid that looked professionally tight.
"One of the first guys knocked on it, and nothing happened; so we knocked on it when we got here," Martinez said, grinning at Lucas. He stepped up to the barrel and knocked on it. "It's full of something."
"Could be water," said Path. "If it's full, and it's water, it'd weigh about four-fifty."
"How'd he move it?" Lucas asked. "He couldn't use a fork lift."
"I think he rolled it," Path said. "Look…"
He walked away from the barrel, peered around, then pointed. There was a deep edge-cut in the soft earth, then a series of interlocking rings along with a wavy line. "I think he rolled it to here, then tipped it up, then rim-rolled it to the middle."
Lucas nodded: he could see the pattern in the dirt.
"Hey, look at this, Bill," Martinez said to Path. He pointed at a lower corner of the barrel. "Is that just condensation, or is there a pin-hole?"
A drop of liquid seemed to be squeezing out of the barrel. Path got to his knees, peered at it, then grunted, "Looks like a pinhole." He picked up a dandelion leaf, caught the drop on the leaf, smelled it, and passed it to Martinez.
"What?" Lucas asked.
Martinez said, "Nothing-probably water."
"So let's jerk the lid."
Path fixed a block to an access ladder on the water tower, while Martinez fitted a harness around the lid. Then he tied a rock climber's rope to the harness, ran it up through the block and down to the tow truck. The truck let out all of its cable, and when they finished, they were a hundred and fifty yards from the barrel.
"You ready for a big noise?" Path asked Carpenter.
The chief said, "Don't talk like that. Do you mean that? Do you think?"
They all squatted behind cars, the wrecker rolled forward, and the lid flipped off like a beer cap. Nothing happened. Lucas could hear a plane droning down the river.
"Well, shit," Martinez said after a moment. He stood up. "Let's go look."
They walked slowly back to the barrel. From thirty feet away, Lucas could see that it was filled with water. When they got next to it, they looked carefully inside. A small body was at the bottom of the barrel, a pale oval face turned to look up at them. The water was cloudy with a sediment of some kind, and the body shimmered, out of focus, a white dress floating around it like gauze, black hair drifting around the head.
Martinez looked in the barrel and said, "No. I don't do this." And he walked away.
"Oh, shit. Who is it?" Carpenter asked, peering open-mouthed into the barrel.
The body was small. "Probably Genevieve Dunn," Lucas said. "Are we sure this is water?"
Path, looking in, put his face close to the surface and said, "Yeah. It's water. He could have a big chunk of white phosphorus in there, waiting for us to get rid of the water."
Lucas shook his head: "Nah. This is what he wanted me to see. A jack-in-the-box. The motherfucker is playing games… Is that the Medical Examiner down there?"
Carpenter nodded. "Yeah. I'll get him."
Lucas stepped away and looked down the hill, waiting. There should be something else-or Mail would call again, to gloat. Carpenter, standing beside him, said, "I'd pull the trigger on this guy. How can you kill a kid?"
Lucas said, "Yeah?" He remembered the line from a Vietnam vet, a street guy. How can you kill a kid? Just lead them a little less…
The Medical Examiner was a young man with a thin face, thin spectacles, and a large Adam's apple. He walked up, glanced in the barrel, and said, "What's the shit in the water?"
Nobody knew.
"Well, give me something I can fish around with, huh?" He was unselfconsciously cheerful, even for a Medical Examiner. "Give me one of those fire axes. I don't want to put my hand in there if we don't know what it is."
"Take it easy with the ax," Carpenter said.'
"Don't worry about it," the examiner said. He looked in the barrel again. "That's not a kid."
"What?" Lucas walked back.
"Not unless she had deformed hands and too big a head," he said confidently.
Lucas looked in the water again-it still looked like a child's body. "I think it's some kind of big plastic doll," the examiner said. A fireman came up with a long curved tool that looked like an oversized poker. "Here."
The Medical Examiner took it, grabbed the body, but it slipped away. "Anchored with something," he grunted. "Look, if this is just water, why don't we dump it?"
They did; the water spilled out on the grass, and the ME reached inside and pulled out a four-foot doll, plastic flesh, black hair, and paint-flaking baby blue eyes. Its feet were folded beneath it and tied to a brick to keep the doll from floating.
"Got the big sense of humor, huh?" said the examiner. A white plastic tag floated from the doll's neck. The examiner turned it. It said, in black grease pencil, "CLUE."
"I don't think he has a sense of humor," Lucas said. "I really don't think he does."
"Then what is this shit?"
"I don't know," Lucas said.
Lucas called in, then headed back toward Minneapolis. As he passed the refinery off Highway 61, Mail called again.
"Goddamn, you were fast, Lucas. Can I call you Lucas? How'd you like all those fire trucks? I drove by while you guys were up there. What were you doing? Somebody said they thought it was a bomb or something. Is that right? Did you have the bomb squad up there?"
"Listen, we think you might have some trouble, you know, making the world work right. And we think you might know it. We can get you help…"
"You mean I'm fuckin' nuts? Is that what you mean?"
"Listen, I personally had a bad episode of depression a few years back, and I know what it's like. The shit in your head is wrong, and it's not your fault…"
"Fuck that, Davenport, there's nothing wrong with my fuckin' head. There's something wrong with the fuckin' world. Turn on your TV sometime, asshole. There's nothing wrong with me."
And he was gone again.
The phone company was automatically tracing all calls to Lucas's cellular phone and alerting the Dispatch Department at the same time. Dispatch would start cars toward the phone. But when Lester called, two minutes after Mail hung up, he said, "He was too quick. He was on the strip near the airport. We had cars there in two minutes forty-five seconds after he rang you, but he was gone. We stopped seven vans, nothing going there."
"Damnit. He won't talk for more than ten seconds or so."