"You did."
Lucas shrugged. "I was trying to figure out why you might claim that you were at the LaCourts' when you weren't, and why you couldn't tell us." They were standing in the entry, coats, gloves, and hats still on. Bergen faced them on his feet, didn't invite them to sit.
"I was at the LaCourts'. I was there," Bergen said.
Lucas looked him over, then nodded. "Then we've still got a problem," he said. "The time."
"Forget the time," Bergen said. "I swear: I was there and they were alive. I believe the killer came just as I left-maybe even was there before I left, and waited until I'd gone-and killed them and spread the gas around, but accidently set it off too soon. If the firemen are wrong by a few minutes, then the times work out and you're barking up the wrong tree. And you've managed to severely… damage me in the process."
Carr looked at Lucas. Lucas looked at Bergen for a long beat, nodded, and said, "Maybe."
Bergen looked from Lucas to Carr, waiting, and Carr finally said, "Let's go." To Bergen: "Phil, I'm sorry about this. You know I am."
Bergen nodded, tight-mouthed, unforgiving.
Outside, Carr asked, "Do you believe him now?"
"I believe he's not gay."
"That's a start." They walked to the car in silence, then Carr said wearily, "And thanks for taking the rap on Bob Dell. Maybe when this is over, Phil and I can patch things up."
"I'm going to get Gene and take Harper. Why don't you catch a nap for a couple of hours?"
"Can't. My wife'd be cleaning," Carr said. "That's pretty noisy. I can't sleep worth a damn when she's working."
Lucas called Climpt on the radio, got him headed back toward the courthouse. While Carr returned to his office, Lucas found Henry Lacey talking to a deputy.
"I need to talk to you for a minute," he said.
Lacey nodded, said, "Check you later, Carl." And to Lucas, "What's going on?"
"There're rumors that Shelly's having an affair with a lady at the church. I think I met her the other night."
"So…?" Lacey was defensive.
"Is she married or what?"
"Widowed," Lacey said reluctantly.
"You think you could get Shelly over to her house? On the sly? Get him a nap, get her to stroke him a little? The guy's on the edge of something bad."
Lacey showed the shadow of a smile and nodded. "I'll do it. I should have thought of it."
Lucas, Climpt, and the young deputy Dusty, who'd first talked to John Mueller at the school, took Harper out of his gas station at 4:30, just before full dark.
Lucas and Climpt ate a long lunch, reviewed the newest information coming out of the Madison laboratory crew at the LaCourt house, stalled around until the county judge left the courthouse, then picked up Dusty and headed out to Knuckle Lake. When they pulled into the station in Climpt's Suburban, they could see Harper through the gas station window, counting change into a cash register. He came out snarling.
"If you ain't got a warrant I want you off my property," he said.
"You're under arrest," Climpt said.
Harper stopped so quickly he almost skidded. "Say what?"
"You're under arrest for the promotion of child pornography. Put your hands on the car."
Harper, dumbfounded, took the position on the truck. Dusty shook him down, then cuffed his hands. A kid who'd been working in the repair bay came out to watch, nervously wiping his hands with an oily rag. "You want him to stay open or you want to close down?" Climpt asked.
"You stay open until the regular quitting time, and there better be every last dime in the register," Harper shouted at the kid. He turned and looked at Lucas. "You motherfucker." And then back at the kid: "I'll call you. I should be out real quick."
"There's no bail hearing until Monday. Court's closed," Climpt told him.
"You fuckers," Harper snarled. "You're trying to do me." And he shouted at the kid: "You're in charge over the weekend. But I'm gonna count every dime."
On the way back to town, Lucas turned over to look at Harper, cuffed in the back. "I'll say two things to you, and you might talk them over with your attorney. The first is, the Schoeneckers. Think about them. The next thing is, somebody is gonna get immunity to testify. But only one somebody."
"You can kiss my ass."
Harper called an attorney from the jail's booking room. The attorney ran across the street from the bank building, spoke with Harper privately for ten minutes, then came out to discuss bail with the county attorney.
"We'll ask the judge to set it at a quarter million on Monday, in court," the county attorney said. He was a mildly fat man with light-brown eyes and pale brown hair, and he wore a medium-brown suit with buffed natural loafers.
"A quarter million? Eldon, my lord, Russ Harper runs a filling station," said Harper's attorney. He was a thin, weathered man with long yellow hair and weather-roughened hands. "Get real. And we figure this is important enough that we can get the judge out here tomorrow morning."
"I wouldn't want to call him on a Saturday. He goes fishing on Saturdays, and gets quite a little toot on, sittin' out there in that shack," the county attorney said. "And Russ's station could be worth a quarter million. Maybe."
"There's no way."
"We'll talk to the judge Monday," the county attorney said.
"I'm told that this gentleman"-Harper's attorney nodded at Lucas-"and Gene Climpt have already beat up my client on one occasion-and this is more harassment."
"Russ Harper's not the most reliable source, and we're talking about child pornography here," the county attorney said. But he looked at Lucas and Climpt. "And I'm prepared to guarantee that Mr. Harper will be perfectly safe in jail over the weekend. If he's not, somebody else will be sitting in there with him."
"He's safe enough," said Lacey, who'd joined them. "Nobody'll lay a finger on him."
Carr was in his office, looking perceptibly brighter.
"Get some sleep?" Lucas asked. "You're looking better."
"Three, four hours. Henry talked me into it," he said, a ribbon of guilt and pleasure running through his voice. "I need a week. All done with Harper?"
"He's inside," Lucas said.
"Good. Wanna call Dan?"
Dan Jones was the perfect double of the junior high principal. "We're twin brothers," he said. "He went into education, I went into journalism."
"Dan was all-state baseball, Bob was all-state football. I remember when you boys were tearing the place up," Carr said, his face animated. And Lucas thought: He does like it, the good-old-boy political schmoozing.
"Glory days," said Dan. To Lucas: "Did you play?"
"Hockey," Lucas said.
"Yeah, typical Minnesota," Dan said, grinning. Then he turned to Carr and asked, "Exactly what is it you want, Shelly?"
Carr filled Jones in about Harper, and Jones took notes on a reporter's pad. "We don't want to mislead you," Carr said, just slightly formal. "We're not saying Russ killed the LaCourts-in fact, we know he didn't. But as background, so you won't go astray, we want you to know that we developed the information about the porno ring out of the murder investigation."
"So you think the two are related?"
"It's very possible… if you sort of leaned that way, you'd be okay," Carr said.
"To be frank-no bullshit-we want the story out to put pressure on the other members of this child-molester group, whoever they are. We need to break something open, but we don't want you to say that," Lucas said. "We think there's a chance that Harper'll try to deal. Go for immunity or reduced charges. That could be significant. But we'd like to have it reported as rumor," Lucas said.
Climpt was digging around on his desk, found the porno magazine from Milwaukee, said, "You can refer to this, but you can't say directly what's in it," and passed it across to the newspaper editor.
Jones recoiled. "Jesus H. Christ on a crutch," he said. Then he remembered, and glanced up at Carr: "Sorry, Shelly."