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be real.
    He sat and looked at paper, which, after the day hunting for the girls, looked like silly paper . Games. Something awful was happening outside, and he was sitting at the kitchen table looking at silly paper .
    He fooled with the coaching modules for a while, then gave up and got a second beer, glanced at the clock. Two o’clock in the morning. He wondered if Cherry and McGuire had gone down to Kenny’s, and what they’d found.
    Restless, he picked up his sport coat, climbed in his Jeep, and headed downtown, left the car at the curb, and walked into City Hall. The place was dark but busy, with cops all over the hallways. Lucas stopped a uniformed guy named Morgan and asked what had happened. “Nothing,” Morgan said. “No sign of them. People are talking about the river again.”
    “I don’t think they’re in there,” Lucas said. “How many guys are working it?”
    “Right now? A half-dozen. Daniel’s still here, but people are starting to freak—the TV people are driving around in their truck. It’s turning into a circus.”
    “You seen Cherry or McGuire?” Lucas asked.
    “Not for a while.”
    Lucas went down to Homicide, stuck his head in the office, spotted Daniel with his feet up on a desk, talking to a couple of detectives. Lucas went in, idled off to the side for a minute, until Daniel said, “Davenport. What’s happening?”
    “I wondered if Cherry and McGuire got anything at Kenny’s?”
    Daniel shook his head and said, “Not much more than you got.” He looked at a piece of paper on his desk. “The place was closed, but they talked to the manager. He says it’s a guy named John. Nobody knows where he lives, or how to get in touch. Just a guy.”
    “So they struck out,” Lucas said.
    “Well, it’s something,” Daniel said.
    “Right,” said one of the detectives. “We’ve got a suspect named ‘John.’ That narrows it down.”
    Daniel ignored him: “How come you’re still running around?” he asked Lucas.
    “Couldn’t sleep,” Lucas said. “I was thinking, you know, if it’s all right with you . . . I might go down and hit that massage place across from Kenny’s. Unless Cherry and McGuire already did.”
    “No, they didn’t,” Daniel said. “Why would they?”
    “Didn’t they get that? That John knows some of those chicks? Maybe that’s why they call him John. Maybe he is one,” Lucas said.
    An annoyed look crept across Daniel’s face. “I guess they didn’t get that. You didn’t mention it?”
    “They told us to take a hike,” Lucas said. “So . . . I’m not doing much.”
    “Step outside with me,” Daniel said, standing up.
    In the hall, he said, quietly, but showing some teeth, “You’re not fuckin’ with us, are you? Withholding information so you can get a shot at it? With these two girls, this wouldn’t be the time to make points.”
    “Hell no,” Lucas lied. “I wouldn’t do that.”
    “You should have told Cherry and McGuire what the woman said.”
    “They didn’t want to hear it,” Lucas said. “They were like, ‘Uh-huh, go knock on doors, rook.’”
    Daniel looked at him for a minute, then said, “I can’t pay you overtime. But if you go down there, I’ll back you up if anything comes out of it.”
    Lucas nodded. “Okay. How long you gonna be here?”
    “Not much longer. Don’t call me unless you get something serious—but call me if you do.” He gave Lucas his office and home phone numbers.
    “Did we get anything tonight? Anything?”
    Daniel shook his head. “We got that blouse, and it was Mary’s. Nobody knows how it got there. We think the kids might have walked past Andy’s Cleaners. One of the desk girls says she saw them. That’s only about a block from their house, so maybe she did. It was early, before they were missing.”
    “But they were together?”
    “That’s what the girl says,” Daniel said.
    “Were they walking toward their house, or away?”
    “Away.”
    “Any blood on the blouse?”