driving and the other one tried to hit me,” she said.

“What’d he try to hit you with?” Lucas asked.

“Like a cane.”

“A cane?”

“Yeah, like a cane,” she said.

“Could it have been a pipe?”

She thought for a minute, and then said, “Yeah. It could have been a pipe. About this long.” She held her hands three feet apart.

Lucas turned away for a second, closed his eyes, felt people looking at him. “Jesus.”

“What?” Kathy Barth was peering at him. “You havin’ a stroke?”

“No, it’s just…Never mind.” He thought: the van guys were in the wrong case. To Jesse: “Honey, let’s go look at the dog, okay?”

THEY FOUND the dog lying in the headlights of a St. Paul squad car. The cop was out talking to passersby, and broke away when Lucas pulled up. This cop he knew: “Hey, Jason.”

“This your dog?” Jason was smiling, shaking his head.

“It’s sorta mine,” Jesse said. She looked so sad that the cop’s smile vanished. She got up close and peered down at Screw’s body. “That’s him. He looks so…dead.”

The body was important for two major reasons: it confirmed Jesse’s story; and one other thing…

Lucas squatted next to it: the dog was twisted and scuffed, but also, it seemed, broken. Better though: its muzzle was stained with blood.

Lucas stood up and said to the cop, “Somebody said Animal Control was coming?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know how to do this, exactly, but I want an autopsy done,” Lucas said. “I’d like to have it done by the Ramsey medical examiner, if they’ll do it.”

“An autopsy?” Jason looked doubtfully at the dead dog.

“Yeah. I want to know how he was killed. Specifically, if it might have been a pipe,” Lucas said. “I want the nose, there, the mouth, checked for human blood. If there is human blood, I want DNA.”

“Who’d he bite?” the cop asked.

“We don’t know. But this is seriously important. When I find this guy, I’m gonna hang him up by his…I’m gonna hang him up,” Lucas said.

“By his balls,” said Jesse.

GABRIELLA DIDN’T NOTICE the broken window in the back door until she actually pushed the door open and was reaching for the kitchen light switch. The back door had nine small windows in it, and the broken one was bottom left, above the knob. The glass was still there, held together by transparent Scotch tape, but she could see the cracks when the light snapped on. She frowned and took a step into the kitchen and the other woman was right there.

JANE WIDDLER had just come down the stairs, carrying the sewing basket. She turned and walked down the hall into the kitchen, quiet in running shoes, Leslie twenty feet behind, when she heard the key in the back door lock and the door popped open and the light went on and a woman stepped into the kitchen and there they were.

The woman froze and blurted, “What?” and then a light of recognition flared in her eyes.

Jane recognized her from the meeting at Bucher’s. The woman shrank back and looked as though she were about to scream or run, or scream and run, and Jane knew that a running fight in a crowded neighborhood just wouldn’t work, not with the dog bites in Leslie’s legs, and Leslie was still too far away, so she dropped the basket and launched herself at Coombs, windmilling at her, fingernails flying, mouth open, smothering a war shriek.

Coombs put up a hand and tried to backpedal and Jane hit her in the face and the two women bounced off the doorjamb and went down and rolled across the floor, Coombs pounding at Jane’s midriff and legs, then Leslie was there, trying to get behind Coombs, and they rolled over into the kitchen table, and then back, and then Leslie plumped down on both of them and got an arm around Coombs and pulled her off of Jane like a mouse being pulled off flypaper.

Coombs tried to scream, her mouth open, her eyes bulging as Leslie choked her, and she was looking right in Jane’s eyes when her spine cracked, and her eyes rolled up and her body went limp.

Jane pushed the body away and Leslie said, “Motherfucker,” and backed up to the door, then turned around and closed it.

Jane was on her hands and knees, used the table to push herself up. “Is she dead?”

“Yeah.” Leslie’s voice was hoarse. He’d been angry with the world ever since the dog. His arms, ass, and legs burned like fire, and his heart was pounding from the