on the anniversary of the hanging. Lucas didn’t believe in that kind of thing, but then, one time he’d been in the neighborhood, on the anniversary, and he’d seen the eagles . . .

“There,” Sloan said. “Holiday store. They got Krispy Kremes.”

They picked up twenty-four-packs of Coke, Diet Coke, and Dasani water; a throw-away Styrofoam cooler and a bag of ice; a couple of hot dogs; and a couple of Krispy Kremes.

“I thought you South Beach Diet guys weren’t even supposed to eat the buns, much less a doughnut,” Sloan said through a mouthful of hot dog, as they headed back into the country.

“Fuck you,” Lucas said. The Krispy Kreme tasted so good that he felt faint.

THEY FOLLOWED HIGHWAY 169 for three or four miles south of town, turned east across a thirty-foot-wide river, took a narrow blacktopped road out a mile or so, then jogged onto a gravel lane. As soon as they got onto the gravel, they could see a covey of cars, mostly cop cars with light bars, arranged under an old spreading elm tree next to a white clapboard farmhouse.

The farmhouse, with a detached one-car garage on its east side, sat on an acre of high ground. A grassy lawn supported a dozen old elms and oaks and two apple trees. A tire swing hung from one of the oaks, and bean fields crept right up to the unfenced lawn. A hundred feet out behind the house, a series of old sheds or chicken houses were slowly rotting away, slumping back into the soil. Not a working farm, Lucas thought, just the remnants of one.

“How’d he find them?” Lucas asked, as they came up. “How’d he pick them out?”

THEY WENT PAST a mailbox that said RICE, in crooked black hand-painted letters, and spotted a cop up on the lawn, looking at them through a camera lens. Four cops, including the sheriff, were standing on the lawn, just as Nordwall said they’d be. Four more people, including three women, civilians, and a cop sat in an aging Buick on the grass beside the driveway. A red-eyed woman drooped in the backseat, the door open, and looked toward them as they came up.

“Relatives,” Sloan said.

Lucas pulled onto the lawn next to the end cop car, and he and Sloan got out.

“Davenport, goddamnit, you got the crime scene coming?” the sheriff asked. He was a tall man, and wide, with white hair, a red-tipped button nose, and worry lines on a head the size of a gallon milk jug; he was anxious.

“You call them?”

“I called them, and they said they were rolling.”

“Takes awhile,” Lucas said. He turned to the house. “You shut everything down?”

“Everything.” Nordwall was looking at Sloan. “Who’s this guy?”

Lucas introduced them, and Sloan told him about Angela Larson. “Ah, jeez, I saw that in the paper,” Nordwall said. “But I don’t remember . . . you must not have given them all the details.”

“No, we didn’t,” Sloan said. Sloan dropped the cooler on the ground, and said, “Cokes, if anybody’s thirsty,” and started passing around the cans.

“Might get some to Miz Rice and Miz Carson,” Nordwall said to one of the deputies. He looked past Lucas at the Buick and said, “Rice’s mom, and her sister, and a friend. Miz Rice wants to see them, but I ain’t gonna allow it. Not until after they’re bagged. She’d have that picture in her head until she went to the grave.”

Lucas nodded and gestured toward the farmhouse. “Who found them?”

“One of my deputies, George,” Nordwall said.

One of the deputies, a thin man with shaggy black hair and a ricocheting Adam’s apple, lifted his Coke.

“Me,” the deputy said.

“Tell me,” Lucas said.

The deputy shrugged. “Well, Rice didn’t come to work. He’s the manager of a hardware store in Mankato, and he has the keys to the place. Today he was supposed to open the store. When he didn’t show, the gals who worked there called the owner, who came down to open up. He tried to call Rice, but got a phone out-of-order thing. When he still didn’t show up by ten o’clock, the owner got worried and called us.”

“And you came out?”

“Well, first Sandy, she takes our calls . . .”

“Yeah . . .”

“Sandy’s chatting with the store owner, and he says Rice had a boy in grade school. So Sandy called over to the elementary school and asked if the kid showed up. They said no, and that Rice hadn’t called in an excuse. I was down this