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dick on him, too,” said Schnurr, the sheriff’s deputy.
    Lucas turned on him, his teeth showing. “Shut the fuck up. Honest to Christ, if I hear anybody talking like that, I’ll personally slap the shit out of him.”
    “Didn’t mean nothin’,” Schnurr said. He shuffled his feet like a child who’d been bad in class; but he had mean eyes.
    “If a reporter heard that, or even heard you’d said it, sheriff’s deputies making cracks like that, we’d have twice as much trouble as we do now. So keep your fuckin’ mouthshut,” Lucas finished. To Anderson: “I don’t know how much you like your job, but your whole goddamn county is about to get smeared in the national media. Do you understand that?”
    “I . . . don’t know,” Anderson said, uncertainly.
    “Believe me, it’s gonna happen. And one asshole making comments like this guy, it could mean that you don’t only lose your job, but you gotta move to Arizona and change your name.”
    Anderson glanced nervously at Schnurr and said, “We’ll keep a lid on it.”
    Dickerson was peering up at the bodies, embarrassed, Lucas thought, to be from the same agency as Lucas. “You better,” Lucas snarled. He looked again at Schnurr, nailing him in place, then asked Anderson, “The little girl who found the bodies—is she in town?”
    “Giving a statement,” Anderson said.
    “We’d appreciate it if you’d have somebody call in, tell them to keep her there until Del and I have a chance to talk to her.”
    Anderson nodded.
    Lucas said to Dickerson, “Good luck. You guys got it.”
    “We got it,” Dickerson said.
    “N EED TO GET to that little girl,” Lucas said, as they walked back out to the line of cars. “If the sheriff’s crew is as bad as it looks, we need to talk to her before somebody fucks her up.”
    “Gotta get some wheels,” Del said.
    “Get them at a car dealer, probably, if we get there fast,” Lucas said. “Tomorrow morning, you won’t be able to rent a car anywhere north of Fargo.”
    “Zahn oughta know.”
    Z AHN DID KNOW. “Holme’s Motors in Armstrong,” he said. “Fix you right up. How many do you want?”
    “Two?”
    As they bounced slowly down the dirt road, past the girl’s house to the highway, Zahn fumbled out a cell phone, pushed a speed-dial button, and said, “This is Ray Zahn. Let me talk to Carl.” And a moment later, “Hey. I gotta couple of cops in town from St. Paul. They need two cars, good shape. Uh-huh.” He turned to Lucas: “What kind of credit card?”
    “American Express or Visa, whatever they take,” Lucas said.
    “American Express or Visa . . . yeah. Yeah. Ten minutes. Yeah, see you then.” He hung up. “All fixed,” he said. “One of you gets a loaded three-year-old Oldsmobile, the other one gets a six-year-old five-liter Mustang.”
    “I’ll take the one with the best heater,” Del said.
    “We need to get over to the sheriff’s department, quick as we can,” Lucas said. “Is that the courthouse?”
    “Law Enforcement Center,” Zahn said. “Three years old, state-of-the-art, behind the courthouse and right across the street from Holme’s car lot. The LEC is the reason Dick Anderson’s the sheriff.”
    “He built it?” Lucas asked.
    “No. The last sheriff did. Bobby Carter,” Zahn said. He grinned at Lucas and pumped his eyebrows. “Don’t tell anybody I said so—Bobby’s a friend of mine—but he got a little too close to the construction process. Nobody went to jail, but people around here figure that a good chunk of money stuck to his fingers. He’s back to farming.”
    “What was Anderson? Not a deputy?”
    “He was a lawyer, private practice. Real estate, mostly.He worked with the county attorney, sometimes. When Bobby got into trouble and figured he better get out, he put up one of his good old boys to run. That pissed people off. Anderson jumped in at the last minute and got elected.”
    “A political wizard, huh?” Del said.
    Zahn smiled into his