''Gonna have to keep an eye on Sandy,'' Butters said.
LaChaise nodded. ''Yeah. She's the dangerous one. We'll want to get out of the trailer soon as we can.''
Butters looked sideways at him. ''You and Sandy ever…''
''No.'' LaChaise grinned. ''Woulda liked to.''
''She's a goddamned wrangler,'' Butters agreed.
Butters drove them through a web of back roads, never hesitating. He'd driven the route a half-dozen times. Forty minutes after killing Sand, they made the trailer, without seeing another car.
LaChaise said: ''Free.''
''Loose, anyway,'' Butters said.
''That's close enough,'' LaChaise said. He unconsciously rubbed his wrists where the manacles had been.
LOGAN, THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR, RAN INTO THE chapel like a small, drunk tailback, knocked down a halfdozen metal folding chairs, staggered, nearly bowled over Amy
LaChaise, struggled briefly with the door handle and was gone out the front door.
Sandy looked at Amy LaChaise across the closed caskets.
''What the hell was that?'' Amy asked.
''I don't know,'' she said, but she felt suddenly cold.
Ten seconds later, the cop who'd been parked out front ran in the door with his pistol in a two-handed grip. He pointed the gun at Sandy, then at Amy, then swiveled around the room: ''Hold it. Everybody hold it.''
''What?'' Amy asked. She clutched her purse to her chest. Logan peeked out from behind the deputy. ''Mr. LaChaise is gone.''
Amy screeched, like a crow killing an owl, a sound both pleased and intolerable.
''Praise the Lord.''
''Shut up,'' the deputy screamed, pointing the pistol at her. ''Where's the prison guy? Where's the prison guy?''
Logan poked a finger toward the back. ''In there…''
''What's wrong with him?'' Sandy asked.
The deputy ran through the door into the back, and Logan said, ''Well, he's dead. LaChaise cut his throat.''
Sandy closed her eyes: ''Oh, no.''
A HIGHWAY PATROLMAN ARRIVED FIVE MINUTES LATER. Then two more sheriff's deputies. The deputies split Amy LaChaise and Sandy, made them sit apart.
''And keep your mouths shut,'' one of the deputies said, a porky man with a name tag that said Graf.
LaChaise, Sandy thought, was at Elmore's daddy's trailer, out at the hill place.
Had to be. That whole story about Martin and Butters needing a place to stay-it sounded like bullshit as soon as Elmore had told her about it.
But the problem was, she was Candy's sister, LaChaise's sister-in-law. She'd been present when LaChaise had escaped and murdered a man. And now LaChaise was up at a trailer owned by her senile father-in-law.
She'd seen LaChaise railroaded by the cops for conspiracy to commit murder: they'd do the same to her, and with a lot more evidence.
Sandy Darling sat and shivered, but not with the cold; sat and tried to figure a way out.
THE TRAILER WAS A BROKEN-DOWN AIRSTREAM, SITTING on the cold frozen snow like a shot silver bullet. Buttersand LaChaise crunched through the sparse snow on fourwheel drive, then they got out of the truck into the cold and Butters unlocked the trailer. ''I come by this morning and dropped off some groceries and turned on the heat… Can't nobody see you in here, but you might want to keep the light down at night,'' he said. ''You don't have to worry about smoke.
Everything's electric and it works. I turned the pump on and filled up the water heater, so you oughta be okay that way.''
''You done really good, Ansel,'' LaChaise said.
''I owe you,'' Butters said. And he turned away from the compliment: ''And there's a TV and a radio, but you can only get one channel-sort of-on the TV, and only two stations on the radio, but they're both country.''
''That's fine,'' LaChaise said, looking around. Then he came back to Butters, his deep black eye fixing the other man like a bug: ''Ansel, you ain't owed me for years, if you ever did. But I gotta know something for sure.''
Butters glanced at him, then looked out the window over the sink: ''Yeah?''
''Are you up for this?''
Ansel glanced at him again, and away: it was hard to get Crazy Ansel Butters to look directly at you, under any conditions. ''Oh yeah. I'm very tired. You know what I mean? I'm very tired.''
''You can't do nothin' crazy,'' LaChaise said.
''I won't, 'til the time comes. But I am getting close to my dying day.''
The words came out with a formal stillness.
''Well, that's probably bullshit, Ansel,'' LaChaise said, but he said it gravely, without insult intended or taken.
Butters said, ''I come off the interstate, down home, up an exit ramp at night, with pole lights overhead. And I seen an owl's shadow going up the ramp ahead of me-wings allspread, six or eight feet across, the shadow was. I could see every feather. Tell me that ain't a sign.''
''Maybe it's a sign, but I got a mission here,'' LaChaise said. ''We all got a mission now.''
''That's true,'' Butters said, nodding. ''And I won't fuck you up.''
''That's what I needed to know,'' LaChaise said.
FOUR
A CLERK NAMED ANNA MARIE KNOCKED ON LUCAS'S office door, stuck her head inside, struggled for a moment with her bubble gum and said, ''Chief Lester said to tell you, you know Dick LaChaise?''
''Dick?''
She paused for a quick snap of her gum: ''Dick, who was married to that one woman who got shot, and was brother to the other one? Last week?''
Lucas had one hand over the phone mouthpiece and said, ''Yeah?''
''Well, he escaped in Wisconsin and killed a guy. A prison guard. Chief Lester said you should come down to Homicide.''
''I'll be down in two minutes,'' Lucas said.
A HEAVYSET PATROL COP, WITH A GRAY CREW CUT, WAS walking down the hall when
Lucas came out of the office. He took Lucas's elbow and said, ''Guy comes home fromwork and he finds his girlfriend with her bags packed, waiting in the doorway.''
''Yeah?'' The cop was famous for his rotten jokes.
''The guy's amazed. He says, 'What's going on? What happened?' 'I'm leaving you,' says the girlfriend. 'What'd I do? Everything was okay this morning,' says the guy. 'Well,' says the girlfriend, 'I heard you were a pedophile.' And the guy looks at his girlfriend and says, 'Pedophile? Say, that's an awwwwfully big word for a ten-year-old… ' ''
''Get away from me, Hampsted,'' Lucas said, pushing him off; but he was laughing despite himself.
''Yeah, you'll be tellin' all your friends…''
LESTER WAS TALKING TO THE HOMICIDE LIEUTENANT, turned when Lucas came in, dropped his feet off the lieutenant's desk and said, ''Dick LaChaise cut the throat of a prison guard during the funeral of Candace and Georgia LaChaise, and vanished. About an hour ago.''
''Vanished?'' Lucas said.
''That's what the Dunn County sheriff said: vanished.''
''How'd he cut the guy's throat? Was there a fight?''
''I don't know the details,'' Lester said. ''There's a clusterfuck going on at the funeral home. It's over in Colfax, ten, fifteen miles off I-94 between Eau
Claire and Menomonie. Probably an hour and a half drive.''
''Hour, in a Porsche,'' the lieutenant said lazily.
''I think you ought to send one of your group over there,'' Lester said.
''Hell, I'll go,'' Lucas said. ''I'm sitting on my ass anyway. Do we have any paper on LaChaise?''
''Anderson's getting it now,'' Lester said. ''Anyway, the sheriff over there says LaChaise might be heading this way. LaChaise's mama says he's gonna get back at us for Candace and Georgia. 'Eye for an eye,' she says.''
Lucas looked at the lieutenant. ''Can I take Sloan?''
''Sure. If you can find him.''
Lucas picked up a half-pound of paper from Anderson, the department's computer jock, beeped Sloan, and when he called back, explained about LaChaise.
''You want to go?'' Lucas asked.
''Let me get a parka. I'll meet you at your house.''
LUCAS DIDN'T DRIVE THE PORSCHE MUCH DURING THE winter, but the day, though bitterly cold and sullenly gray, showed no sign of snow. The highway had the hard bone-dry feel that it sometimes got in midwinter.