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the semicolons and that Kline had admitted an affair with Mom.
    “The newest thing is, Kline wants to do something like a consent agreement,” Lucas said. “Everybody agrees that nobody did anything wrong and that nobody will ever do it again. He, in return, pays them another year’s rent on the room and a car-storage fee for her garage, like twenty thousand bucks total.”
    “That’s bullshit. You can’t sign a consent agreement that gets you out of a statutory-rape charge,” Rose Marie said. “Especially not if you’re a state senator.”
    “So I’ll send Virgil around and you tell him what you want him to do,” Lucas said.
    She made a rude noise, shook her head. “That fuckin’ Flowers…”
    “C’mon, Rose Marie.”
    She sighed. “All right. Send him up. Tell him to bring the file, make a presentation. Three or four people will be there, he doesn’t have to be introduced to them, or look them up later. Tell him to wear a jacket, slacks, and to get rid of those goddamn cowboy boots for one day. Tell him we don’t need an attitude. Tell him if we get attitude, I’ll donate his ass to the Fulda City Council as the town cop.”
    “I’ll tell him…” He looked around. Several panels in the wall of the dining room had been pulled open. One showed a safe door; another, rows of liquor bottles; a third, crockery serving dishes with molded vegetables as decoration.
    “Listen. This is a sideshow,” she said, waving a hand at the trashed room. “The governor wants a presence here, because she’s big political and social money. But you need to focus on Kline.” She popped a piece of Nicorette gum, started chewing rapidly, rolling it with her tongue. “I don’t care who fixes it, but it’s gotta be fixed.”
    “Why don’t we just go the grand jury route? You know, ‘We presented it to the grand jury and in their wisdom, they decided to indict’? Or not indict?”
    “Because we’re playing with the legislature, and the Republicans still own it, and they know that’s bullshit. Radioactive bullshit. We need to be in position before this girl shows up on Channel Three.”
     
    L UCAS WALKED HER out to her car; when she’d gotten out of her spot in a neighboring driveway, he started back to the house. On the way, thinking more about Kline than about the Bucher murder, he spotted a red-haired reporter from the Star Tribune on the other side of the police tape. The reporter lifted a hand and Lucas stepped over.
    “How’d she get it?” Ruffe Ignace asked. He was smiling, simple chitchat with a friend.
    “There are two of them,” Lucas said quietly. “A maid named Sugar-Rayette Peebles and Constance Bucher. Peebles was killed downstairs, near the front door. Her body was wrapped in a Persian carpet in a hallway. The old lady was killed in her bedroom. They were beaten to death, maybe with a pipe. Skulls crushed. House is ransacked, bedrooms tossed. Probably Friday night.”
    “Any leads?” Ignace was taking no notes, just standing on the neighbor’s lawn with his hands in his jacket pockets. He didn’t want to attract the attention of other reporters. Lucas had found that Ignace had an exceptional memory for conversation, for however long it took him to go somewhere and write it down.
    “Not yet,” Lucas said. “We’ll be talking to people who knew the women…”
    “How about that place down the street?” Ignace asked. “The halfway house? Full of junkies.”
    “St. Paul is looking into that,” Lucas said.
    “Did it look like junkies?” Ignace asked.
    “Something like that, but not exactly,” Lucas said.
    “How not exactly?”
    “I don’t know—but not exactly, ” Lucas said. “I’ll get back to you when I figure it out.”
    “You running it?”
    “No. St. Paul. I’ll be consulting,” Lucas said.
    “Okay. I owe you,” Ignace said.
    “You already owed me.”
    “Bullshit. We were dead even,” Ignace said. “But now I owe you one.”
     
    A WOMAN called him. “Lucas!