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candidate to replace him, but Carlson or Rankin could jump up and get it. None of those people would reappoint me.”
    “Huh,” Lucas said. Then: “Why don’t you run?”
    She shook her head. “You make too many party enemies in this job. If I could get through the party primary, I could probably win the general election, but I’d never get through the primary. Not in Minneapolis.”
    “You could switch and become a Republican,” Lucas said.
    “Life isn’t long enough.” She shook her head. “I tried to get him to go for one more term, but he says he’s gotta earn some money before he’s too old.”
    “So what are you going to do?” Lucas asked.
    “What are you going to do?”
    “I . . .” Lucas shrugged.
    Rose Marie sighed. “You’re a political appointee, Lucas, and I’ll tell you what: The only likely internal candidate is Randy Thorn, and he won’t reappoint you. He’s a control freak, and he doesn’t like the way we let you operate.”
    “You think he’ll get it?” Lucas asked.
    “He could. He’s a damn good uniform chief. All that rah-rah shit and community contacts and brother-cop backslapping. He put on some combat gear last week and went on a raid with the Emergency Response Team. There’re a couple of macho assholes on the council who like that stuff.”
    “Yeah. I’m not sure he’s smart enough.”
    “I’m not, either. It’s more likely that the new mayor’ll bring somebody in from the outside. Somebody with no other local loyalties. Somebody who’s big with the New York no-tolerance style. I doubt that any outsider would reappoint the current deputy chiefs. He’d want to put his own people in. Lester and Thorn are still civil service, and captains. If they don’t keep their deputy-chief spots, they’ll still have a top slot somewhere. But you’re not civil service.”
    “So we’re both history,” Lucas said. He leaned back, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and exhaled.
    “Maybe. I’m gonna start working on something,” Rose Marie said.
    “What?”
    She waved him off. “I can’t even start talking about it yet. I’m gonna have to stab a couple of people in the back. Maybe give a couple blow jobs.”
    “Not at the same time. You could pull a muscle.”
    She smiled. “You’re taking this pretty well. Which is good, because I’m not. Goddamnit. I wanted one more term. . . . Anyway, I wanted you to know that we’re probably on the way out.”
    “I was starting to have fun again,” Lucas said.
    “What about you and Weather?” Rose Marie asked. “Is she pregnant yet?”
    “I don’t know, but it could happen.”
    Rose Marie laughed, a genuine, head-back, chest-shaking laugh, and then said, “Excellent. That’s really perfect.”
    “And if she is . . .” Lucas squinted at the ceiling, calculating. “You and I oughta be getting fired just about the time the baby arrives.”
    “Like you need the job. You got more money than Jesus Christ.”
    “I do need the job. I need some job,” Lucas said.
    “Then hang on. It’s gonna be a ride.”
     
    AFTER LEAVING ROUX’S office, Lucas went back to Homicide, got an exact reading on where Aronson’s body had been found, marked it on a map and Xeroxed the map, then walked over to the Fourth Street parking ramp and got into his Tahoe. On the way south, out of town, he passed within a block of Aronson’s apartment, and remembered talking with her parents when she disappeared: trying to reassure them, when he felt in his cop heart that their daughter was already dead. They’d all been together at her apartment, her parents waiting for a phone call, from her, from anybody, and he remembered wandering around inside . . . .
    Aronson’s apartment had been in a six-story brown-brick prewar building south of the loop, and her mother had been waiting at the door when Lucas turned the corner on the stairs.
    “Glad you could come,” she’d said. He remembered that the apartment building hallways had