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skin aroundhis waist that were not consistent with his underpants, and which might have been consistent with a money belt.
    There were details: the Duluth cops had found a fresh trail through the weeds along the lakeshore, which showed signs of a number of falls, which they thought might represent a chase, which seemed odd, in what otherwise looked like an execution. There was no question that the dead man had been killed where he was found: there were bullet impressions on the concrete under his head.
     
    L UCAS MULLED IT all over: there was information to work with, which wasn’t always the case. He began to put together a list of questions.
     
    S ATURDAY EVENING , they barbecued: Sloan and his wife came over, and Del and his wife—Del worked in Lucas’s office and was investigating the McDonald’s thefts. Sister Mary Joseph, wearing street clothes, showed up with a post-doc student in psychology, who’d wanted to meet Weather and talk about cranial-facial surgery.
    Earlier in the summer, Lucas had met a white-haired Georgia man on a flight between Chicago and Atlanta. The man was wearing a burgundy-colored baseball cap that said Big Pig Jig on the front, and it turned out that he was a barbecue judge.
    In the ensuing conversation, James Lever of Tifton, Georgia, recommended that Lucas try his special competition Pig Jig spareribs. Getting the ingredients together had been a pain in the ass, cutting the membrane off the bone with a dull knife had been a pain in the ass, marinating the ribs for two hours had been in a pain in the ass, and Weather had insisted that they go the whole route and grind their own spices, which had been interesting in its own way, leaving the kitchen redolent with garlic, fennel, ginger, oregano, basil, and marjoram. And thoughshe’d insisted on going the whole way, Weather quailed at the idea of mixing the two cans of Coca-Cola with a bottle of Chianti, but Lucas, in his turn, had insisted.
    Just before getting off the plane, Lever had said that the ribs should be accompanied by Miller Genuine Draft beer, “because if you drink some fruity Mexican beer with these ribs, you’ll be fart’n’ up a storm.”
    Lucas refused to drink Miller Genuine Draft on moral grounds, and so they made do with a case of Leinie’s.
    While Lucas was barbecuing, Weather roasted sweet corn, still in the husk, in the oven; at the end of it, the kitchen looked like Anzio Beach, but everybody agreed the food was wonderful.
     
    S UNDAY WAS EVEN slower than Saturday, but still a great day: blue skies, cool enough to make your face and skin feel good. On Sunday afternoon, Lucas and Weather took a long walk down to a bookstore off Ford Parkway and along the way talked about what he should do.
    “I like working for Rose Marie, but the governor . . . the governor. After a while, it feels a little like prostitution,” Lucas said. “This is the first time I’ve felt sleazy. Chasing people down for political reasons.”
    “You’re putting the same old assholes into jail,” Weather pointed out.
    “Yeah, but not because anybody gives a shit—it’s because the politicians don’t want the TV people talking about crime waves, or because some out-state sheriff fucked it up and we go bail them out so he’ll owe us.”
    “If you go back to school . . .”
    “Jesus, Weather.”
    “Listen, you’ve got a B.A.”
    “Yeah. Not worth the paper it’s printed on.”
    “Sure it is, because it means you don’t have to go through a lot of other shit to study something you’re interested in. I was thinking: youreally liked building the Big New House. That’s the happiest I’ve ever seen you, when you were doing that. You drove everybody a little crazy, but look at the house. What a great house.”
    “Not that great. If I find the guy that sold me the front door, I’ll cut his nuts off. And how in the hell . . . ?”
    “Shut up for a minute. You loved doing it. Building the house. Have you ever thought