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spot the Coke machine right there, with a brick sitting next to it, had smashed open the machine with the brick, and was still scooping up the coins when the cops arrived. On Friday, he was back in Stillwater for the remaining three years of his original term.
    Yowza.
    They crossed the St. Croix River into Minnesota, and twenty-five minutes later, were home. There were lights all over the house, and from the garage, they could hear Letty, their ward, shrieking with laughter. Inside, they found Letty and Sam playing a kind of volleyball using a sponge batted over a string.
    Sam quit the moment he saw Weather and Lucas, and Letty called, “Quitter,” which he understood, and he said, “No-no-no-no,” one of his few dozen words, and ran to Weather.
    Perfect, Lucas thought. Just perfect. The kid was obviously brilliant, as well as athletically gifted, and probably the best-looking toddler in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. And Letty was growing up into something interesting. Her mother had been murdered in a case broken by Lucas; and he’d been so taken with the child that he’d brought her home to Weather.
    Now she was growing up, and Lucas and Weather were back in court, with her consent, to formally adopt her, to make her Letty Davenport. She feigned nonchalance, but once or twice a week, she’d ask, “So, how’s things with the court?”
    * * *
    LUCAS BROUGHT IN a fabric cooler full of beer with a slab of wall-eye fillets—the only cooler he’d found that would fit in the Porsche—and Weather’s overnight case. He gave Letty a hug, Sam a head-rub, got a piece of blueberry pie from Ellen, and went off to the den and brought up the computer.
    The file on Justice Shafer was sitting in the e-mail at his office, at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. He pulled it out, opened it, and read it as he ate the pie.
    Shafer was one of the border-states bad boys who looked like an antique photo of Cole Younger or Jesse James: hair like straw, freckles, pale eyes, bones in his face; like he hadn’t had enough to eat as a kid, like he’d never had baby fat. In the photograph, he was standing next to the back of a pickup truck, a pump .22 in his hands, a pile of dead squirrels on the tailgate. His tongue was tucked in one corner of his mouth, the tip protruding, and it made him look both stupid and crazy, the kind of guy who couldn’t keep his tongue out of the cold.
    His file was full of the small detail that spelled trouble: never made it out of high school; juvenile record for theft; failed the psychological tests for both the marines and the army. Might have robbed a couple of gas stations, but hadn’t gotten caught at it. Hung out with the Clan, a mid-continent neo-Nazi motorcycle club that mostly got in fights with other neo-Nazi groups and Chicano gangs.
    All right. Lucas did some editing on the file, then called the duty man at the BCA and told him to circulate the file to sheriffs’ departments in Minnesota and western Wisconsin.
    Kicked back, and thought about the Republican convention.
    In the months leading up to the main event, the nomination of John McCain for the presidency, he’d argued that the Twin Cities weren’t prepared to deal with it. He’d made the argument hard enough, and loud enough—he had excellent contacts with the local TV stations and the two major newspapers—that the local agencies finally got some intelligence work under way, and contracted with police agencies around the country to bring in more cops. In doing that, he’d made himself unpopular enough that he’d been disinvited from the party.
    Well, what the hell. He didn’t want to go anyway.
    Glanced at his watch, called a pal in the Ramsey County sheriff’s office. “Surprised you’re home,” he said, when the guy came up. “I thought you’d be out violating the rights of the protesters.”
    “I would be, but my kid’s leaving for Madison this weekend. I’m packing a trailer,” the guy said.
    “Not