"Getting set up for Washington," Del said.
"Like a flame for a moth," Lucas said. "I'll bet you ten bucks that Anderson winds up out there."
"No bet."
THE TWIN CITIES were southeast from Armstrong, but the fastest way home was on a state highway that went directly west for almost forty miles, where they would hook up with the north-south I-29 in North Dakota. They'd take I-29 to Fargo, where they'd catch I-94 east into the Cities. It was a long way around, but both Anderson and Dickerson said it was the quickest way, by at least an hour.
On the way out of town, they called home to tell their wives that they were on the way. The housekeeper told Lucas that Weather was at the supermarket on Ford Parkway, but she'd pass the message on. Lucas put the speedometer on ninety and they headed through the moonless dark toward the North Dakota border.
"Ought to bring the Porsche up here, let her out," Lucas said. "Dead straight, not another car in sight, and we know where all the cops are."
" 'Course, we could hit a cow," Del said.
They rode along for a few minutes, then Lucas said, "You know, I didn't see any cows."
"Come to think of it, neither did I."
Another minute, and Lucas said, "They must've named Moose Bay after something. Maybe we'll hit a moose."
Del didn't answer. Lucas glanced over at him, found him staring out the window.
"What?"
"My God. Look at the lights. Northern lights."
Lucas couldn't see them from the south side of the car, so he stopped, and they both got out and stood next to the idling Olds. The stars were so close that they looked like headlights on a city highway, but the real show was to the north, where a rippling curtain of pale yellow and even paler violet hung from the vault of the sky. The curtain moved, swayed, brightened and then faded, and then exploded in another sector. They stood on the highway watching, until the cold began to seep into their shoulders, and then they got back in the Olds and took off.
Del still watched from his window, and finally he sighed and said, "Too much light to see them in the Cities. I mean, you can see them, but not like this."
"I can see them pretty good from my cabin," Lucas said.
"So goddamn bright that you don't need your headlights," Del said.
"Yeah?" Lucas reached out and turned off the headlights. They were immediately hurtling through a darkness so intense that it should have had Elvis paintings on it.
"Turn the fuckin' lights back on," Del said after a few seconds. "There might be a curve somewhere."
"No curves," Lucas said. "I could tie the wheel down, crawl in the back seat and go to sleep." But he turned the lights on, and they crossed the Red River into North Dakota thirty-three minutes after blowing out of Armstrong.
LUCAS DROVE THE first two hours, then Del took two, and Lucas took them into the Cities six hours after leaving the Law Enforcement Center. He dropped Del at his house, then drove through the quiet streets to Mississippi River Boulevard and the Big New House. He left the Olds in the driveway, got his bag from the trunk, fumbled his house keys out of his pocket, and trudged inside.
Weather woke when he tiptoed into the bedroom by the light from the hallway. "That you?"
"No. It's a crazed rapist."
"How'd it go?"
"We cracked it." He started to undress.
"What?" She pushed herself up. "You can turn on a light. Here… "
Her bedstand light came on. "Are you working tomorrow morning?" Lucas asked. Weather operated almost daily.
"No. I might do a palate in the afternoon, but they've got to finish some tests on the kid, so it's not a sure thing. What happened with the lynching?"
"Not a lynching," Lucas said. "It was a revenge killing. You remember that Hale Sorrell who was in the paper a month ago, his kid got kidnapped?"
"Yeah?"
"It was him."
She was amazed, and a little entertained. "Lucas, you're joking."
"No. We haven't made an arrest, but the bodies were really clogged up with somebody else's DNA, and I'll tell you what: it's gonna be Sorrell's. He found out who killed his kid, he tracked them down and he hanged them. I don't know the details, but we're gonna find out."
"Oh, God. That poor family. That poor family."
"You don't really go around hanging people," Lucas said.
"What would you do if somebody kidnapped Sam and killed him?"
Lucas got in bed but didn't answer.
She pressed him: "What would you do?"
"I don't know."
"Oh, bullshit, Lucas, I know what you'd do and so do you," she said. "You'd wait until the police weren't looking, then you'd find them and kill them."
"All right," Lucas said. Then, after a while, "Make a spoon."
She rolled away from him, and Lucas snuggled up behind her, arm around her waist. "See anything about it on TV?"
"Yeah. That Washington man and the sheriff had a press conference, and Washington lost it and started screaming at the sheriff about being a redneck bigot and the sheriff kept apologizing. It was like he admitted it, or something."
"Aw, man, we told him… "
"It was pretty funny, if you like assassinations," Weather said. "And this little girl was on. She had this amazing face, like in those pictures from the Dust Bowl."
"Letty West. I'll tell you about her in the morning," Lucas said. They snuggled for a while, and then Lucas rolled away and said, "I gotta sleep. I'm supposed to be downtown at seven o'clock or some fuckin' thing."
"Set your clock," Weather said. "Are you going to arrest him? Sorrell?"
"No, no. It's just that the goddamn governor's aide is a maniac. He wants an early meeting. Nothing's gonna happen with Sorrell for a day or two."
LOREN SINGLETON AND his mother, unaffected by the crystal clarity of the night and the rippling northern lights, were passing through Fargo as Lucas snuggled up against Weather's butt. And as Lucas stirred under the drone of the alarm clock, and Weather kicked him and he groaned, and thrashed toward the snooze button, they were rolling up the long landscaped driveway at Hale Sorrell's house in the countryside east of Rochester.
Sorrell himself, wearing blue silk pajamas, let them in the house. Singleton, in his deputy sheriff's uniform, asked, "Is your wife up yet?"
"Oh, God. Oh, my God, you found her?" Sorrell asked, his eyes wide. They clicked over to Margery, but didn't ask the question: maybe she was some kind of social worker. He turned and shouted, "Mary! Mary!"
From up the stairs: "Who is it?"
"You better come down."
"You have any relatives in the house?" Singleton asked. "Any help, any friends?"
"No, no-Mary could call her mother… " Mary Sorrell came down the stairs and said, "Is it Tammy?"
"No, it's not Tammy," Singleton said. He thought about the warm bundle he'd carried outside.
"Then what…?" Sorrell asked.
Was there fear in his eyes? Did he think Singleton was here because of the hangings? Better get it done with.
"It's just… " Singleton said, digging in his coat pocket. He glanced at his mother: they'd worked this out. "It's just… " The Sorrells were looking at his pocket, as though he were about to produce a paper or a photograph. Instead, Singleton produced a snubby.380 automatic, pushed it toward Sorrell's eyes and pulled the trigger.
At the last moment, Sorrell flinched. Even at the short distance, Singleton might have missed-but Singleton flinched the same way, and the bullet struck Sorrell between the eyes and he fell backward. After a second of stunning gun-smoked silence in the aftermath of the blast, Mary Sorrell backed a step away, and began to scream, looking at her husband's body, and then, realizing, up at Singleton.
The gun was pointing at her head and Singleton pulled the trigger and flinched again, just as Mary Sorrell flinched the opposite way, and, though he was four feet from her, the bullet clipped only the corner of her ear, and she staggered away and turned and tried to run.