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prison guard.
    Sand dropped LaChaise at the Eau Claire County Jail for the night. The next morning, he put LaChaise back in the car and drove him through the frozen landscape to the Logan Funeral Home in Colfax. LaChaise’s mother was waiting on the porch of the funeral home, along with Sandy Darling, Candy’s sister. A sheriff’s car was parked in the street, engine running. A deputy sat inside the car, reading a newspaper.
     
     
     
    AMY LACHAISE WAS a round, oily-faced country woman with suspicious black eyes, close-cropped black hair and a pencil-thin mustache. She wore a black dress with a white collar under a blue nylon parka. A small hat from the 1930s sat nervously atop her head, with a crow’s wing of black lace pulled down over her forehead.
    Sandy Darling was her opposite: a small woman, slender, with a square chin and a thin, windburned face. Crow’s-feet showed at the corners of her eyes, though she was only twenty-nine, four years younger than her sister, Candy. Like Candy, she was blond, but her hair was cut short, and she wore simple seed-pearl earrings. And while Candy had that pure Wisconsin milkmaid complexion, Sandy showed a scattering of freckles over her windburned nose and forehead. She wore a black wool coat over a long black dress, tight black leather gloves and fancy black cowboy boots with sterling silver toe guards. She carried a white cowboy hat.
    When the rental car pulled up, Amy LaChaise started down the walk. Sandy Darling stayed on the porch, turning the cowboy hat in her hands. Wayne O. Sand popped the padlock on the seat-chain, got out, stood between Amy LaChaise and the car door and opened the door for LaChaise.
    “That’s my ma,” LaChaise said to Sand, as he got out. LaChaise was a tall man, with heavy shoulders and deep-set black eyes, long hair and a beard over hollowed cheeks. He had fingers that were as thick and tough as hickory sticks. With a robe, he might have played the Prophet Jeremiah.
    “Okay,” Sand said. To Amy LaChaise: “I’ll have to hold your purse.”
    The deputy sheriff had gotten out of his car, nodded to Sand, as Amy LaChaise handed over her purse. “Everything okay?” he asked.
    “Yeah, sure.” Sand drifted over to chat with him; LaChaise wasn’t going anywhere.
     
     
     
    AMY LACHAISE PLANTED a dry lizard’s kiss on her son’s cheek and said, “They was shot down like dogs.”
    “I know, Mama,” LaChaise said. He looked past her to Sandy Darling on the porch, and nodded curtly. To his mother he said, “They told me about it.”
    “They was set up,” Amy said. She made a pecking motion with her nose, as if to emphasize her words. “That goddamn Duane Cale had something to do with it, ’cause he’s just fine, talking like crazy. He’ll tell them anything they want. All kinds of lies.”
    “Yeah, I know,” LaChaise said. His mother was worried because Candy had given her money from some of the robberies.
    “Well, what’cha gonna do?” Amy LaChaise demanded. “It was your sister and your wife . . .” She clutched at his arm, her fingers sharp and grasping, like buckthorn.
    “I know, Mama,” LaChaise said. “But there ain’t much I can do right now.” He lifted his hands so she could see the heavy cuffs.
    “That’s a fine thing,” Amy LaChaise moaned, still clutching at him. “You just let it go and lay around your fat happy cell.”
    “You go on into the chapel,” LaChaise said, with a harsh snap in his voice. “I want to take a look at ’em.”
    Amy LaChaise backed away a step. “Caskets are closed,” she ventured.
    “They can open them,” LaChaise said, grimly.
    Sandy Darling, still on the porch, watched the unhappy reunion, then turned and went inside.
     
     
     
    LOGAN, THE FUNERAL director, was a small, balding man, with a mustache that would have been tidy if it hadn’t appeared moth-eaten. Although he was gray-faced, he had curiously lively, pink hands, which he dry-washed as he talked. “In a case like