what’s going on here,” he said. “We can’t find anybody who might have tried to pull you off the street, who killed Screw…”

“It’s those fuckin’ Klines, you fuckin’ moron,” Kathy Barth shouted, trying to get back on her feet. The fireman caught her under one arm, and helped her get up.

Lucas said, “Ah, Jesus, I’m sorry about this…”

“It’s all my pictures, all of Jesse’s things from when she was a kid, all of her school papers, my wedding dress…” She took a step toward the house, and the fireman said, “Whoa. Not yet.”

Lucas asked him, “How bad is it?”

“The kitchen’s a mess. Miz Barth used a fire extinguisher on it, which was pretty brave, and that held it down some, and we got here pretty quick,” the fireman said. “The actual fire damage is confined to the kitchen, but there’s smoke damage, and foam. Some of the structure under the back of the house could be in trouble.”

Lucas asked Kathy Barth, “Do you have insurance?”

“Yes. Part of the mortgage.”

“Then you’ll get it fixed. Better than it was,” Lucas said. “A new kitchen. If it’s only smoke, you can save a lot of your stuff, but as soon as the fire guys let you, you’ve got to get in, and get your photo stuff out.”

She came back at him: “Why can’t you stop those guys? They’re crazy.” And to Jesse: “We should never have gotten involved with them. We should never have gone to the cops. Now our house…Oh, jeez, our house…”

“Tell me what happened,” Lucas said.

“We were watching television, and there was a crash in the kitchen—” Jesse began.

Kathy interrupted: “One minute before that I was in the kitchen getting Cheez-Its. I would have been exploded and burned up.”

Jesse, continuing: “—and we heard this window crash, this glass, and boom, there was fire all over the kitchen and I was screaming—”

“I ran and got the fire extinguisher from the closet—” Kathy said.

Jesse: “I called nine-one-one and got the fire department to come—”

“I squirted the fire extinguisher but there was fire all over, I could smell the gasoline and it wouldn’t go out, the whole kitchen was full of fire and we had to run,” Kathy said. She was looking anxiously at the house.

Jesse: “The fire department took forever to get here…”

“Six minutes from when the call came in,” the fireman said. “Fire was out in seven.”

LUCAS FOUND the fireman in charge in the backyard. He was talking with another fireman, pointing up at the roof, broke off when Lucas came up. Lucas flashed his ID: “These folks were part of an investigation we did at the BCA.”

“The Klines—they told us,” the fireman said.

“Yeah. They say it was a bomb, came in through the window. What do you think?” Lucas asked.

“Our arson guy’ll look it over when he gets here, but it could have been. There was a big flash all over the kitchen, all at once. You can still smell the propellant if you get close. Gas and oil.”

“A Molotov cocktail?”

“Something on that order,” the fireman said. “Maybe like a gallon cider jug.”

“Be pretty heavy to throw,” Lucas said.

The fireman nodded. “You ever in the Army?”

“No.”

“Well, in the Army they’ve got this thing in Basic Training where you try to throw a dummy grenade through a window from twenty or thirty feet. Most guys can’t do it, even with three chances. You got grenades bouncing all over the place,” the fireman said. “Most guys couldn’t throw a bottle any better. I’d say somebody ran up to the window, and dunked it, like a basketball.” He hesitated, then added, “If it was an outsider who did it.”

“The alternative would be…?”

The fireman shrugged. “The owner wants a vacant lot. This is a nice piece of property, and it might even be worth more if the house wasn’t here. The house isn’t so hot. You take the insurance, you sell the lot…you move to Minnetonka.”

Lucas looked back at the house. He could see Kathy Barth on the front lawn, arms wrapped tight around herself.

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “She was worried about their pictures being burned, Jesse’s school stuff, her wedding dress.”

“Well, that’s something,” the fireman agreed. “You don’t see people burning up that kind of thing, not unless it’s a revenge trip. They don’t burn up their own stuff that much.”

The second fireman chipped in: “There was a lot of damage right over the kitchen sink. There are dishes in the sink, and we haven’t gone through it yet, but I betcha