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Bemidji?’’
    â€˜â€˜Almost fifteen thousand,’’ Garue said. ‘‘Growing more every day. Nearly seven thousand students at Bemidji State University.’’
    Jareau asked, ‘‘Crime problem at all?’’
    â€˜â€˜Mostly petty stuff. Certainly nothing like what you folks are here for. Some burglaries and so on. The usual meth freaks you find anywhere. With poverty so high on the reservations, you get some B and Es, people trying to get by however they can.’’
    Rossi said, ‘‘That was plural—‘reservations’?’’
    Garue nodded, eyes on the road. ‘‘Three. I grew up on the Red Lake Reservation, north of here. The Leech Lake Reservation is to the east, the White Earth Reservation, west.’’
    â€˜â€˜Things are tough for them,’’ Rossi said, not a question.
    â€˜â€˜Yeah,’’ Garue agreed glumly. ‘‘The White Earth Band is doing the best, unemployment rate only twenty-five percent. At Leech Lake, it’s over thirty, and nearly forty percent at Red Lake.’’
    â€˜â€˜That’s a lot of people,’’ Rossi said, ‘‘with a lot of time and not many worthwhile ways to fill it.’’
    â€˜â€˜Got that right,’’ Garue said. He shook his head. ‘‘Desperation makes people do things they might not otherwise.’’
    â€˜â€˜This UnSub,’’ Jareau said, thinking it time to steer the conversation back toward the case at hand, ‘‘seems to have done just what he wanted to with these girls.’’
    Garue turned right onto Irvine Avenue and the retail strip was left behind for rows of well-kept older homes, mostly two-story clapboards.
    For a couple of blocks, their driver said nothing and they lapsed into silence.
    Finally breaking it, Garue said, ‘‘You know, you do this job long enough, you think you’ve seen everything.’’
    â€˜â€˜Yeah,’’ Hotchner said, years of experience coloring that single word.
    â€˜â€˜We had a case a few years ago,’’ Garue said, ‘‘crazy bastard stabbed his wife thirteen times. Then went into the bedroom, woke his three-year-old and slit the kid’s throat. Woke him up first—Jesus.’’
    Despite the heater, a chill settled over the car’s interior.
    â€˜â€˜When we got to the scene,’’ Garue was saying, ‘‘Daddy had propped the dead kid on the counter so the corpse could ‘watch’ as he made cutlets out of Mommy with a meat cleaver.’’
    No one said anything.
    â€˜â€˜That was bad enough. Thought I’d never see any crime scene that could get to me again.’’ He grimaced. ‘‘But after what I saw in the woods the other day . . .’’
    Garue turned left onto Eighth Street. A parking lot spread out before them on their right and beyond that sat a cluster of matching buildings.
    Rossi asked, ‘‘What did you see in the woods?’’
    Another block passed in silence before Garue turned right onto Minnesota Avenue.
    Finally, Garue said, ‘‘They looked so peaceful lying there. The coats, the blankets, the plastic, they were prepared by someone who . . . who loved them.’’
    No one said anything. On the right, Jareau saw the first of the matching redbrick buildings. This one had the legend COUNTY ADMINISTRATION over its entrance.
    â€˜â€˜In the end,’’ Garue said, ‘‘it was the complete lack of violence at the scene that got to me most. The last grave was shallower than the first two. Like maybe the perp . . . what did you call him? The UnSub?’’
    â€˜â€˜Yes,’’ Hotchner said. ‘‘That’s our shorthand for Unknown Subject.’’
    Garue nodded. ‘‘It was almost like your UnSub was rushed that last time. Everything else was identical, except the depth of