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Eight or ten guys, help with the county attorney, whatever.”
    “What authority would I have?”
    Carr dipped one hand in his coat pocket and at the same time said, “Do you swear to uphold the laws of the state of Wisconsin and so forth and so on, so help you God?”
    “Sure.” Lucas nodded.
    Carr tossed him a star. “You’re a deputy,” he said. “We can work out the small stuff later.”
    Lucas looked at the badge in the palm of his hand.
    “Try not to shoot anybody,” Weather said.

CHAPTER

3
    The Iceman’s hands were freezing. He fumbled the can opener twice, then put the soup can aside and turned on the hot water in the kitchen sink. As he let the water run over his fingers, his mind drifted . . . .
    He hadn’t found the photograph. The girl didn’t know where it was, and she’d told the truth: he’d nearly cut her head off before she’d died, cut away her nose and her ears. She said her mother had taken it, and finally, he believed her. But by that time Claudia was dead. Too late to ask where she’d put it.
    So he’d killed the girl, chopping her with the corn-knife, and burned the house. The police didn’t know there was a photo, and the photo itself was on flimsy newsprint. With the fire, with all the water, it’d be a miracle if it had survived.
    Still. He hadn’t seen it destroyed. The photo, if it were found, would kill him.
    Now he stood with his fingers under the hot water. They slowly shaded from white to pink, losing the putty-like consistency they’d had from the brutal cold. For just a moment he closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the sense of things undone. And time was trickling away. A voice at the backof his head said, Run now. Time is trickling away.
    But he had never run away. Not when his parents had beaten him. Not when kids had singled him out at school. Instead, he had learned to strike first, but slyly, disguising his aggression: even then, cold as ice. Extortion was his style: I didn’t take it, he gave it to me. We were just playing, he fell down, he’s just a crybaby, I didn’t mean anything.
    In tenth grade he’d learned an important lesson. There were other students as willing to use violence as he was, and violence in tenth grade involved larger bodies, stronger muscles: people got hurt. Noses were broken, shoulders were dislocated in the weekly afternoon fights. Most importantly, you couldn’t hide the violence. No way to deny you were in a fight if somebody got hurt.
    And somebody got hurt. Darrell Wynan was his name. Tough kid. Picked out the Iceman for one of those reasons known only to people who pick fights: in fact, he had seen it coming. Carried a rock in his pocket, a smooth sandstone pebble the size of a golf ball, for the day the fight came.
    Wynan caught him next to the football field, three or four of his remora fish running along behind, carrying their books, delight on their faces. A fight, a fight . . .
    The fight lasted five seconds. Wynan came at him in the stance of an experienced barehanded fighter, elbows in. The Iceman threw the rock at Wynan’s forehead. Since his hand was only a foot away when he let go, there was almost no way to miss.
    Wynan went down with a depressive fracture of the skull. He almost died.
    And the Iceman to the cops: I was scared, he was coming with his whole gang, that’s all he does is beat up kids, I just picked up the rock and threw it.
    His mother had picked him up at the police station (his father was gone by then, never to be seen again). In the car, his mother started in on him: Wait till I get you home, she said. Just wait.
    And the Iceman, in the car, lifted a finger to her face and said, You ever fuckin’ touch me again I’ll wait until you’re asleep and I’ll get a hammer and I’ll beat your head in. You ever touch me again, you better never go to sleep.
    She believed him. A good thing, too. She was still alive.

    He turned off the hot water, dried his hands on a dish towel. Need to think. So much